Photo by C harles Miller, an IFC Films re lease
Arts & Entertainment
All About Joan
Rivers keeps on rolling,
with bark and bite intact.
Michael Fox
Special to the Jewish News
oan Rivers can be both alienat-
ing and endearing, often within
the span of two sentences. Love
her or hate her, ifs impossible not to respect
the unstoppable comedienne, red carpet
interviewer, reality show contestant and
QVC pitchwoman, to name just a few of her
endeavors over the course of five decades in
show business.
Rivers, who turned 77 this month, takes
her latest turn in the spotlight with Joan
Rivers — A Piece of Work, an exhaustingly
candid portrait by respected social-issue
documentary makers Ricki Stern and Annie
Sundberg (The Devil Came on Horseback).
The filmmakers followed the comic for the
entirety of her 76th year, a daunting proposi-
tion that Rivers agreed to — on her terms,
naturally
"I'd just seen two biographies that I
despised, that told you nothing, one about
a fashion magazine and the other about a
fashion designee she recalls in her Fairmont
Hotel suite atop San Francisco's Nob Hill. "I
don't want to say which two. So when Ricki
and Annie approached me, I said,`I'd love to
do it, but I don't want it to be talking heads
saying,`Oh, Joan Rivers is my friend: I gave
j
them full access."
Rivers sits with her back to the window,
ignoring the stunning view in order to
focus on her interviewer. As is clear from the
first few minutes of Joan Rivers — A Piece of
Work, which would close the San Francisco
International Film Festival that night, hence
Rivers' visit — the task at hand is always
her priority. The rest of the documentary
catalogs the energy and persistence required
to maintain a career in a youth-obsessed
culture.
"It's not just a day in the life of Joan
Rivers:' she declares. "Ifs the work and the
backstage and the business and what you
have to do to keep it going and fighting the
age thing and feat'
One doesn't associate fear, or self-pity,
with this archetypal tough cookie. She owns
a framed copy of a letter written by Helen
Keller, who serves as her point of reference
and, characteristically, also pops up in a joke
in her act.
"I don't have any role models:' Rivers says
with a short laugh. "Anyone that survived
a concentration camp — and was able to
come back and make a life. I had a neighbor,
when I first got married, who had been on
a train to Auschwitz with her mother. And
the mother pushed her out of the cattle car
and said, 'You'll be safe because the SS won't
admit they lost a little girl, and the Germans
..loan- Rivers in Joan Rivers - A Piece
of Work, dicected by Ricki Stern and
Annie Sandberg
won't shoot a little girl:And she never locked
her door in New York, and she said to me,
I've been through it all. She went on, got
married, had children. How do you live and
go on? Those are the people you have such
respect foe
Rivers has endured her own miseries, of
course, notably her husband's 1987 suicide
in the wake of her short-lived late-night talk
show on Fox. But she downplays her suffer-
ing then mines it for a joke.
"I wasn't watching my mother starve or
my father being beaten on the head',' she
says. "You think about ups and downs, ifs
nonsense: `Gee, I gained four pounds.' Gucci's
out of the shoes; ifs a bad day; they didn't
have my size."
This is vintage Rivers, pairing tragedy
with banality, the important with the trivial.
She fervently believes that her way of making
people laugh also gets them to think.
"I never get on a soapbox onstage,' she
declares. "But I do make a few points. I'm
glad to remind [audiences] about Mel
Gibson, glad to remind them about Hitler,
glad to remind them about Anne Frank.
But I'll do it in a way that she was a whiner,
'cause she had a very good apartment.
Which in New York is true. It would go for
$3,000 a month. She had an eat-in kitchen,
and they're complaining:'
For every Jewish listener or reader who
finds that offensive, she'll get an "amen" for
her unwavering stance on Israel.
"Ifs very easy to still hate Jews:' Rivers
asserts. "Nobody would raise a finger if Israel
went under. Not a finger. If Israel had the
earthquake instead of Haiti, I don't think
Brad Pitt would have been standing out there
screaming and crying with Angelina. You
can tell me I'm wrong. Lees hope we never
have to know. I think the Obama adminis-
tration's treatment of Israel is outrageous.
Outrageous. When we are the only sane
nation in that part of the world."
Never one to mince words, the comedi-
enne sets the record straight about her main
quibble with Joan Rivers—A Piece of Work.
"What they didn't get in the movie is I do
have friends',' she says with a husky laugh.
"You don't see me having dinner with some-
body, or going to the theater. It looks like, 'My
God! This woman walks alone:" ❑
Joan Rivers – A Piece of Work is
scheduled to open Friday, June 18,
at Landmark's Maple Art Theatre in
Bloomfield Township. (248) 263-2111.
FYI: For Arts related events that you wish to have considered for Out & About, please send the item, with a detailed description of the event, times, dates, place, ticket prices and publishable phone number, to:
Gail Zimmerman, JN Out &
About, The Jewish News, 29200 Northwestern Highway, Suite 110, Southfield, MI 48034; fax us at (248) 304-8885; or e-mail to gzimmerman®theJewishnews.com . Notice must be received at least three weeks before the scheduled event.
Photos are appreciated but cannot be returned. All events and dates listed in the Out & About column are subject to change.
Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News
Tots And Toys
The animated film
Toy Story 3 opens
Friday, June 18 (in
3D in some the-
aters). As the story
begins, the toys
are anxious now
Wallace Shawn
that Andy, their
human companion,
is grown up and going off to college.
The toys somehow end up in a room
full of unnamed tots who all want
to take one or more of them home.
Panic ensues as the toys try to stay
together.
Rex, the green toy dinosaur
44
June 17 • 2010
(voiced by Wallace
Shawn, 66), and
the often nasty,
wisecracking Mr.
Potato Head (voiced
by Don Rickles,
84) are back for
their
third movie.
Estelle Harris
Estelle Harris, 82
(Mrs. Costanza in
Seinfeld) is back for her second turn
as Mrs. Potato Head.
Kiwi Jew
The third season of the TNT original
series Leverage, stars Tim Hutton as
a former insurance agent who leads
a band of modern-day Robin Hoods,
bringing down the greedy and cor-
rupt.
Hutton is the
ex-husband of
actress Debra
Winger, 55; their
son, Noah Hutton,
now 23 and a
documentary film-
maker, was raised
Noah Hutton
in his mother's
faith.
Gina Bellman, 43, co-stars as
Sophie Devereaux, a Brit actress
and scam artist who employs her
many accents and one-on-one
charm to draw the team's target
into the con.
Bellman was born in New Zealand,
the daughter of English Jewish par-
ents of Russian and Polish Jewish
ancestry. The whole family moved
to England when
Gina was 11. Bellman
co-starred in a
number of hit UK
TV shows before
moving stateside for
Leverage.
In 2005, she had
Gina Bellman
a co-starring role in
the original stage
production of Two Thousand Years, a
play about a contemporary English
Jewish family written and directed
by Mike Leigh, 67, the prolific six-
time Oscar nominee. Leigh cast only
real-life Jewish actors as the family
members. ❑
Contact Nate Bloom at
middleoftheroadl@aol.com .