Joan Rivers wasn’t merely a hard worker. She was addicted. Performance was no vocation for her; it was her drug of choice. In the excellent 2010 documentary on the legendary comedienne, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Rivers opened up one of her work calendars to reveal that nearly every single day was filled with a comedy gig, a photo session, a book signing, a TV appearance, or just a business lunch. She seemed oddly comforted by the hectic schedule that confronted her. She then openly admitted to the camera that she – like many comedians – only require constant validation. She flipped ahead in her book a few pages (years perhaps?) and pointed to a blank page. “That’s fear,” she said.
Rivers died this afternoon in New York at the age of 81 following a heart attack resulting from complications during surgery. She would probably be mad about it, mostly because it means she won’t get to work anymore. Rivers was a pioneer in comedy. Her antic, pointedly shocking style of standup caught the eye of everyone who heard her. Her flip, conversational comedy drew people in. And the fact that she was a woman, working her way through the male-dominated comedy world in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, proves her strength and tenacity all the more. She was brusque, she could be bitter, but she was always funny.
Rivers started her comedy career in the mid 1960 when she appeared on The Tonight Show. She made such an impression, that she would eventually become friends with Johnny Carson, and would eventually begin filling in for Carson when he was on vacation. Rivers, with her wonderfully gruff voice and completely uncaring flippant presentation was a force of nature on The Tonight Show, often – it could be argued – surpassing Carson as a superior host. When Carson retired, Rivers – and many others – merely assumed she would be offered the job in his place. And she would have been amazing. When she wasn’t offered the job – or even called on the matter – Rivers and Carson fell out completely. Rivers was not above grudges. Joan Rivers took everything very personally. Some might even say her ultra-serious professionalism was both a boon and a hindrance.
Joan Rivers was a mistress of jokes. Stand-up comedians rarely tell jokes anymore, skewing more toward observational humor and cynical commentaries. Joan had one-liners, and she had them down pat. Indeed, another astonishing sight from A Piece of Work was Rivers’ joke file: A gigantic filing cabinet chock full of thousands of note cards, each containing one joke. The jokes were arranged alphabetically by topic. Marriage, food, airports, etc. Joan had written at least a dozen jokes for each one.
If you have any interest in television history, then you likely already know the ubiquity and overwhelming presence Rivers has had. Not only did she appear on The Tonight Show, but she would float through just about every other talk and game show on the air. My first experience with Joan Rivers was as the center square on Hollywood Squares. She eventually did have her own talk show, The Joan Rivers Show, which ran for 27 episode from 1989 to 1993. The age of cable allowed her to move throughout all manner of oddball TV programs, from Celebrity Apprentice to Celebrity Wife Swap to The Talk to The View to her own shows like Fashion Police, The Joan Rivers Position, and Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best? featuring her and her daughter.
Indeed, Rivers was such a personality, that she couldn’t help but play herself. In many of her TV roles on scripted programs, as well as her dalliances in feature films, Rivers didn’t so much act as display what we already knew she had. Even when playing a role like Dot Matrix in Mel Brooks’ Star Wars spoof Spaceballs (which she voiced), she was still essentially playing Joan Rivers, even incorporating her famous catchphrase “Can we talk?”
Rivers’ film career was an odd one. She hasn’t really had a showcase role, often playing versions of herself in a supporting or cameo capacity. Rivers, it seems, had no ambition to become a movie star. TV and stage were her purview. That didn’t stop her, however, from working with John Waters in Serial Mom, playing an Anna Wintour type in a 2000 straight-to-video flick called Intern, lending her voice to a Shrek movie, appearing in a Smurfs movie, and famously smearing makeup all over Miss Piggy in The Muppets Take Manhattan. Heck, she even appeared in a Marvel movie; she had a cameo as herself in Shane Black’s Iron Man Three. She directed one feature film in her career: The completely off-the-wall and rarely celebrated HFS film The Rabbit Test, which featured Billy Crystal as a pregnant man.
Obsessive, competitive, brash, dirty, and funny, Joan Rivers was a legend. She was one of the first female comedians to explode onto the scene, and managed to stay in the public consciousness by sheer force of will. She openly grasped for spotlights and always got them. And – the real kicker – she had the energy, the talent, the humor, and the amazing jokes to back it up.
One of my favorites: Johnny Carson once declared to Joan that being pretty is not everything, and that men often respond to a woman’s intellect more than her body. Joan looked at him, roller her eyes, and shot back – on national TV no less – “No man had ever reached up a woman’s skirt looking for a library card.” Wow.
Rest in peace Joan Rivers. You’re still amazing.
Witney Seibold is a contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly Trolling articles here on Crave, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
