Saturday, June 12, 2010

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work









 
photo by Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times
 In the documentary of her last year leading up to her victory on Celebrity Apprentice, which signalled a bit of a resurgence in her career as a comedian, Joan Rivers shows her floor to ceiling card catalog of jokes.  As a librarian, I loved the fact that the jokes were in alphabetical order.  Cooking jokes were just before Tony Danza jokes.  Does she write all her own material?  She seems to in this film.  Some of the jokes are very very funny.  The movie does not lionize her in all her difficulties, but it does document how terribly hard she works.  And how personally she takes slights.  And how sad she is  when her long time manager and she break off their business relationship.

1 comment:

charli said...

Just saw Joan Rivers’ new doc, it was really interesting. I learned a lot about the life of a performer that I never knew about. For those who haven’t seen it, I won’t ruin anything, but Joan is a truly remarkable woman.