Review of Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010) by Greg A — 15 Mar 2011

This is an intermittently entertaining and often confusing documentary about veteran U.S. comedienne Joan Rivers, who was once very big and then fell afoul of Johnny Carson and the people at Fox and found herself discarded.

I had the impression from the advance publicity that she was still working because she was on the verge of bankrupcty and needed to find money for food every day. Wrong. She lives in a ludicrously gilded over-the-top gilded palace in New York with a staff and driver and a limo as well as access to private aircraft whenever she needs them.

So why does she work so hard? Why does she despair when she sees an empty appointment book? Perhaps it's her work ethic, which drives her to accept any job she can take, be it a slot on QVC's shopping channel or a small event buried deep in the American Midwest.

We never learn how much these gigs pay and whether she'd really go bankrupt if she chose to skip that event in Kentucky or Ohio or wherever. Perhaps she's escaping her past, which involves a husband who committed suicide and a daughter who has issues with the way she was brought up.

She talks frankly to the camera but the viewer can never really connect the dots to see what makes her tick. Does she want to outlive all her rivals? Perhaps. There are far too many mysteries unsolved at the end of this work.