Filmmakers find something new to say about Joan Rivers
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May 22, 2010
by Emily Wilson (ComedyBeat)
Joan Rivers says she had no problem with a film crew following her around for 14 months to make the documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, which comes out on June 7. On the contrary, Rivers, who was in San Francisco for the movie’s screening at the closing night of the San Francisco International Film Festival, says she missed the crew when it was over.
“I felt naked without my microphone,” she said.
The 76-year-old groundbreaking comedian, known for, among other things, all the plastic surgery she’s had, may not have seemed an obvious topic for Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, producers and directors of the movie. Their other documentaries include The Devil Came on Horseback, about Darfur, and The Trials of Daryl Hunt, about a wrongfully convicted man.
But Sundberg says they just want to tell good stories.
“We look for remarkable characters in remarkable circumstances,” she said.
The filmmakers call Rivers an ideal subject, who never said no or tried to block their access on anything. The only problem, they say, was trying to keep up with her schedule and insatiable drive to perform. In the movie, Rivers, who is shown doing a play about her life in London, appearing with her daughter Melissa on “Celebrity Apprentice” and performing stand up at a club in New York where she works every week, is clearly one of the hardest-working women in show business. One scene in the movie shows her with a wall of file cabinets, filled with jokes from her 40-year career. They all have labels such as “No Self Worth,” “Cooking” and “Tony Danza.” Rivers, who has saved every joke she’s ever done, said she’s pleased the movie shows the process of work.
“The Red Cross or someone will call and say, ‘Can you just do 20 minutes? Just be yourself,’” she said. “People don’t know for me, 20 minutes is four weeks work.”
Rivers certainly has no fear of overscheduling; what strikes terror into her heart is an empty appointment book. The film looks at her determination to keep working as she gets older and what she has sacrificed to keep performing.
Sterns says she wanted to show those sacrifices and Rivers’ struggles in a business driven by youth and beauty, along with how she has continued to be groundbreaking throughout her life.
Not everyone saw the larger story when she and Sundberg looked for distributors in the U.S. and the U.K., she says.
“We got three responses,” Sterns said. “One was ‘I love Joan Rivers, but she’s not our demographic.’ Another was ‘I don’t think Joan Rivers is funny,’ and then there was, ‘I love Joan Rivers, but what are you going to bring to it? There’s nothing new there.’”
Since the filmmakers couldn’t find financing, they decided to use their own money. They kept production costs low and the crew worked for free.
“It was really a labor of love,” Sterns said.
The filmmakers got IFC to distribute Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, and they feel confident that people there believe in the movie as much as they do.
At festivals, the movie has gotten an enthusiastic reception, Rivers said. She thinks people can relate to the fear of aging and of work drying up. She says she is pleased the movie shows her relationship with her grandson and isn’t a fawning documentary.
In the film, Rivers shows no signs of mellowing, yelling at a man who heckles her for a joke about how Helen Keller would be the perfect kid, and talking about how her comedy is fueled by rage.
“I’m more furious than ever,” she said on her visit to San Francisco. “I’m furious about aging. I’m furious about what we’re doing to the planet. I’m furious about the government. I’m furious every time I see someone buy water in a plastic bottle.”
Rivers has no plans of stopping or slowing down her performing any time soon. She says that’s when she’s happiest.
“When my mother died, I couldn’t wait to get back on stage,” she said. “It was the only place I couldn’t feel the pain.”