Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 2:55 pm Post subject: Joan Rivers
Joan Rivers' expletives undeleted Joan Rivers' loose tongue on ITV's Loose Women got her into a bit of trouble, but doesn't it just prove that her talent has dried up?
William Cook
19 June 2008
guardian.co.uk
If you have any sort of life at all, you probably weren't watching Loose Women on Tuesday - but for the first time in living memory, you actually missed something worth seeing. Joan Rivers was turfed off ITV's tame lunchtime gossipfest for describing Russell Crowe as a "fucking shit".
It's hard not sympathise with Rivers: like a doctor trying to revive a dying man, she was surely driven to such desperate measures by the soporific nature of this show, in which a bunch of vaguely well-known women sit around and chat, and chat, and chat. Rivers gave everyone fair warning that she was about to say something controversial. She even told the production team to get ready to bleep it out.
There were only two problems. Firstly, Loose Women is broadcast live, rather than with a seven second delay, as Rivers had assumed. And secondly: although what she said was controversial, it wasn't actually remotely funny. Julian Clary's famous TV quip about fisting Norman Lamont was outrageous, but it was also a great gag. After the shock value wore off, Rivers' outburst now seems lame and empty. Once upon a time, she would have come up with something witty and incisive. And it makes you wonder, why do comics find it so hard to hang up their boots?
Time was, Rivers was a radical comedian. Inspired by Lenny Bruce, she cut her teeth as a club comic in strip clubs and Catskill Mountain resorts, and her debut on Johnny Carson's Tonight show in 1965 was a comedic tour de force. But that was over forty years ago, when the Beatles were still touring. Now she's in her mid-70s. Is it really any wonder if she's finally gone off the boil? Nobody expects septuagenarian rock stars to keep recording new albums. If they do a one-off gig, we're perfectly happy (and secretly relieved) if they stick to their greatest hits. Yet for some reason we expect comedians to carry on being funny. We seem to think that humour is the one talent that never fades.
Sadly, it isn't so. Bob Hope went on, and on, and on, until he was a shadow of his former self, while Richard Pryor's reputation was maintained by multiple sclerosis, which prevented him from gigging, and so he maintained his iconic stature. Would John Belushi be such a legend if he was still around? Would Sam Kinison? Would Bill Hicks? Tony Hancock's suicide was a personal tragedy, but it preserved the status of a comic who (aged just 44) had already run out of things to say.
Smarter comics quit while they're ahead. Alexei Sayle and Ben Elton have both migrated from stand-up to writing. Maybe it's time Rivers did the same. She has a good pedigree as a writer (her novel The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abromowitz was a bestseller) and I'd much rather read a book by her than sit through another musical by Ben Elton.
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I've usually got a lot of time for William Cook's reviews, but he's well off the mark here - and he'll still be barely-known to anyone outside comedy circles when he's her age...
THE PALACE of Versailles has nothing on Joan Rivers's sumptuous Manhattan penthouse. Indeed, as the elevator glides silently to the ground floor, I murmur to Wayne, the concierge, that I feel as if I've just explored the inside of an enormous Fabergé egg. Opulent does not begin to describe the elegant surroundings in which I meet the ribald stand-up comedian, who is also a successful businesswoman thanks to the jewellery she designs, and a determined charity fundraiser.
Her spectacular home was designed by the legendary banker John Pierpoint Morgan for one of his daughters. It was a derelict, pigeon-inhabited wreck when Rivers first saw it more than ten years ago, she tells me as we stand in her vast gilded reception room, which was once the ballroom. She has the top two floors of the house on this Upper East Side block, which includes eight apartments and which she bought when she got bored with decorating her Park Avenue apartment. It's quite a pad.
We are sitting in Rivers's flower-filled library which doubles as a parlour. She is perched on a pouffe whispering sweet nothings to her new puppy, Sam, while Max the pekinese she rescued from a shelter and who is wearing designer black incontinence pants since he's marking out his territory, being inordinately jealous of the new arrival, looks on furiously.
While we talk, her staff go about their business – Rivers has two PAs – and Kevin the butler glides around as if on castors, serving La Rivers milky iced tea, fetching spring water for me in a crystal goblet and fruit on cocktail sticks, all presented with a flourish on silver trays with crisply starched napkins. Even the M&Ms come in a gorgeous silver dish.
Rivers may have grown old disgracefully, but she certainly knows all about elegant living. "I love the gracious life," she says. She is, after all, a friend of Prince Charles and Camilla and was one of only four Americans to be invited to their wedding. Most summers she joins Prince Charles's painting school in the south of France, but she won't be there this year. She'll be in Edinburgh.
About to return to the Fringe for the first time since she took the city by storm in 2001 with her one-woman show, Broke and Alone, which went on to become a West End hit, she's staging the European premiere of her new autobiographical play, Work in Progress by A Life in Progress. After 19 performances at the Fringe the four-hander will transfer to the West End.
In Edinburgh, she'll also be doing four stand-up gigs and guesting a couple of times on the live talk show, Creation Nation, hosted by one of her protégés, New York actor Billy Eichner. The play, set in Rivers's dressing room at the Oscars, was written by her after she and her daughter Melissa, 38, were let go from their red carpet slot for a US TV channel a couple of years ago. Specifically, she started writing after suffering a cruel comment that cut her to the quick.
Hold on, someone was cruel to her? Hasn't she made millions out of being cruel to others? "Sure, I dish it out, but if you do that you have to take it, too. I was very cut up that evening in Hollywood by the mean-as-hell thing this sonofabitch said to me. It made me think about my life and adventures and how I'm now the hardest-working woman in the world, if you don't count the hooker on the corner," she says, scooping up a handful of M&Ms and handing them to me. "I can't wait to get back to Edinburgh and do some antiquing," she says, surveying her lavish Louis XIV furniture, leopard-print carpets and fabulous artworks, a glittering setting for a wise-cracking, glam broad.
She's had a recurring role in high-class soap Nip/Tuck, although she's just made a new TV series, Z Rock, about a rock n roll band, in which she plays their manager's aunt and there's another TV pilot on the stocks.
"Everyone should do Botox," she declares. But isn't it scary? A kind of poisonous injection? "Botulism is everywhere – in the air we breathe. I always say a little botulism never hurt anyone," she replies dismissively with a wave of a perfectly manicured hand on which there is not so much as a freckle or a liver spot.
Incredibly, this perfectly groomed, chemically enhanced blonde, with the artfully windblown Meg Ryan-style bob, was 75 last month. In black-and-white heels, black trousers and a chic, crisp white linen jacket, she doesn't look it. Actually, she doesn't look any age. On TV and in photographs she may seem artificial and over made-up, but up close she's rather lovely, with porcelain skin, bright eyes and a flawless face that has been sculpted by the surgeon's knife, but which nonetheless remains as mobile as her mind.
Currently, she's working on her next book, about plastic surgery. Despite being called Men Are Stupid and Like Big Boobs she says it takes a serious look at the process. "I'm writing a practical guide to it, about all the things that can go wrong. You must never forget that when you go under the knife it's a major operation. Take a good look around as you go under, you may not come round. So I look at the downsides and the upsides. But you feel soo-oo-oo good afterwards. I certainly do! And anyway, who the hell gets up in the morning thinking, 'Today, I want to look and feel ugly?' "
She's had three facelifts, a neck lift and several tummy tucks, but when she laughs and cries – she does both as we talk about her long life and troubled times – her face does move and she has no problems arching an immaculate eyebrow. In person, she's charming and thoughtful. Minus the scorching one-liners, she speaks eloquently and emotionally about the many betrayals she's suffered over the years. Her husband Edgar Rosenberg's suicide, for instance, may be a rich source of jokes, as is her predeliction for "procedures" and cosmetic surgery – appropriately enough, she heard of his death while having liposuction – but when she speaks privately about him she does so with profound sadness, displaying an unexpected vulnerability.
They were married for 22 "most happy" years. He looked after her career, a sort of Svengali. "But he became the star's husband, which is tough for a guy and something I talk about in the show. I mean, look at Prince Philip, that man must be made of steel. But Ed changed, we all change, of course. He underwent open-heart surgery and it completely altered his personality. He became very depressed, on all sorts of drugs. But suicide's stupid. I can't forgive him. It made me so angry. Suicide wrecks families. "Melissa was only 16 and she refused to speak to me for a while. She blamed me at first. And it's left her unable to trust men. Suicides leave behind an intolerable burden of guilt."
Her eyes fill up again when she talks about the late Orin Lehman, a New York banker and former Commissioner for Parks, "the love of my life," with whom she shared a nine-year long relationship until he cheated on her, "with a couple of Eurotrash girls". She dumped him, but it broke her heart, despite the fact he called her every day for a year begging her to take him back, even though he was with another woman. "I refused to speak to him. I was really stupid and silly about it. I regret that now he's dead," she sighs.
Meanwhile, her business manager sold her name and absconded with all the profits from her costume jewellery business, which was turning over more than 25m a year. "You wake up at 65-years-old and realise you owe 38m. At that age you can't turn tricks. I had to work hard to pay off the shareholders. It was terrible. But I've a great lawyer and he got me through it, thank God," she says. She flogs her jewellery designs on the American shopping channel QVC and has branched into beauty and skincare.
She says she just picked herself up, dusted herself down and "paid, paid, paid, paid ... and paid some more". "Humour has saved my life," she continues. "I was this fat, plain child but I could always make myself and other people laugh. It's hereditary, it's in the DNA. My father was a very funny man, so is my sister, she's a lawyer, very witty, very smart. And I'm funny. My adorable seven-year-old grandson Cooper, Melissa's son, is hysterically funny.
"When I was at high school, no one ever asked me and my friend Joanie to dance. I would make her laugh by pretending that it was because we both had polio. How we laughed! Laughter's the best medicine there is. My father – a doctor – used to say that when you laugh all your internal organs tickle each other. Have fun with your liver, that's what I say."
She's the happiest and most contented that she's been for years. She and Melissa will be back on the red carpet next year for AOL and they are going to be on opposing teams in the US celebrity version of The Apprentice. She says: "I have my health, my career's great, my family's great, I have a million friends and this lovely home," she says, gesturing at the glitter and glitz all around us. "And there's a Greek billionaire who is still around to date on occasions.
"But honestly, I don't like growing old. Old age sucks. There's nothing to recommend it. However, I always try to remember something my wonderful mother once said to me, 'Growing old is terrible – you just have to get through it with dignity'. So I'm trying hard, and often failing, to be dignified about it.
"Sure, I get lonely sometimes. When you've played a 3,000-seat gig and you go back to your hotel room by yourself, that's no fun. Sundays are hard – they are the days you want to have someone to do nothing with, someone to make a sandwich for. But, hey, when I slip into the stretch limo they always send for me, I often pinch myself and think, 'This isn't bad'. I've come a long way, baby.
"All I wish for is for Melissa to be settled. She went through a terrible divorce and now she's gun-shy of men. I so want her to be happy. But, you know, I'm always smiling," she says. After all, laughter lines can always be blasted with Botox and she's decided to spend, spend, spend. "Why not? I'm in my old age and I've stopped saving. You wake up and you're gone. Buy that handbag, buy those shoes, buy that painting."
LATER that evening it's almost as if Joan Molinsky – she's the daughter of Russian immigrants – has morphed into Barbie in pink sequins, but Barbie with the mouth of a very rude Bratz doll. Rivers is in full flow doing her stand-up schitck for two charities at the Cutting Room, the New York bar co-owned by Mr Big in Sex & the City, actor Chris Noth. She begins by saying she's so old that nowadays she gets a pedicure and a mammogram at the same time since her breasts have sagged somewhere around her toes.
She's not so old as her last date, though. He took her to meet his parents – "in the cemetery". He was so old, when he farted, "dust came out". "I'm just a little, old Jewish lady," she screams at the crowd, pointing to the hole in the stool they have provided for her to sit on on stage. "They obviously know how old I am." Then she yells: "What a s***ty venue!"
The Cutting Room is in fact a music venue of some note, frequented by Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sheryl Crow, and Stills and Nash. Chelsea Clinton comes here. Or rather "Celery" as Rivers has nicknamed her. "Why don't her parents buy her a chin?" she asks to howls of laughter. Russell Crowe, whom Rivers can't abide, is also a regular.
Famously, she was physically removed last month from the live ITV Loose Women chat show when she launched into a rant against the Gladiator Oscar-winner, whom she called "a f***ing piece of s***". She tells me that he's "so arrogant, why would he want to go to bed with anyone but himself". Then she tells me the background to her dislike of him but asks me not to print the details. Well, I tell her, if he were chocolate he would obviously eat himself. Rivers roars with laughter at this unoriginal remark, slaps her thigh and says: "Oh, that's a good one. I've not heard that before; I'm gonna use it."
She may be in her eighth decade but she positively shimmers with energy. Aggressively haranguing her audience, she doesn't so much overstep the mark as seem blissfully unaware that the mark even exists. Lesbians, immigrants, fat people, the "f***ing filthy Chinese", Jennifer ("potato nose") Aniston, 9/11 widows, Brangelina and brood, Anne Frank ("if she'd had her nose fixed, she'd have sold more books"), Hillary Clinton et al receive a tongue lashing.
When we meet afterwards in her grotty basement dressing-room, she's still glowing. "Honey, I had such a good time with you this afternoon," she says warmly. "You're such a smart woman." Well, I tell her, it takes one to know one. However, I don't tell her that the gift she gave me of a long necklace of sparkly black-and-white beads from the Joan Rivers Classics Collection snapped while I was going home on the Fifth Avenue bus. When she gets to Edinburgh, perhaps I'll ask her for the name of the Queen's jeweller who always re-strings Rivers's pearls. But then again, perhaps her pearls of wisdom are worth far more. sm
Joan Rivers: Work in Progress By a Life in Progress is at the Udderbelly's Pasture, Bristo Square, August 7-25. Tickets cost £15-£25, tel: 0131-226 0000.
Laugh me a Rivers...
Ian O'Doherty
September 12 2008
indpendent.ie
It's getting harder to be a comedian these days. The repressive cloak of political correctness, which only reinforces HL Mencken's prescient line that "it is better to be right than correct" has become so pervasive that many comedy clubs in America now have a list of banned words that comedians are forbidden to use. Meanwhile even the audiences themselves have become more proscriptive, as both Johnny Vegas and Doug Stanhope have found out recently (Stanhope was disgracefully canned from the Kilkenny Cat Laughs festival simply because some audience members were offended by his off-colour humour).
But amidst the barren desert of cookie cutter comedians, who are more interested in being liked by the audience than they are in challenging perceptions, Joan Rivers stands like a heroic, surgically modified oasis of common sense and straight talking. While she is coy about her age ("you want the year I was born? Check it out for yourself"), it is widely believed that she is well into her 70s. But while she may be the oldest working female comedian, there's no doubt that she is still the best. Fearless in the face of criticism from lesser lights, Rivers has made a career out of pricking people's pomposity and taking them down a peg or two. But she insists she's not a mean-spirited person.
Talking to the Irish Independent, she says: "I can't stand hypocrisy and I can't stand people who have achieved nothing in this world yet think they're God's gift. And we live in a society now where it seems that anyone can become a celebrity and once they do, they start to believe their own hype. And that's where I come in."
Rivers has been intensely critical of the culture of the insta-celeb, where achievement is valued less than notoriety and talent is often sacrificed on the altar of tabloid magazines. She memorably denounced Monica Lewinsky, saying that "she spent more time under that desk than Buddy the dog (the Clinton family dog) and what does she get? She gets paid to front a campaign for WeightWatchers. So now you the lesson to give your daughters; forget about getting an education or working hard or any of that. Just b**w the President and you're set for life."
Her famously waspish comments as a presenter on the red carpet at the Emmys have riled more than one celebrity but she remains defiant: "Oh come on! These people spend hours getting their hair ready, their make-up ready and they have all these flunkies telling them how gorgeous they are. 'And that's just the men. If they can't handle a little straight-talking then they shouldn't turn up."
But it's not just celebrities who can't handle her particular brand of truth telling -- she was replaced by network bosses, apparently fed up with complaints from stars about being made to look ridiculous by Rivers and her co-host, daughter Melissa. In her place now is the far less offensive Lisa Rinna. Rivers recently courted more controversy when she appeared on ITV's Loose Women and, wrongly believing there was a time delay on the live show, said: "Get ready to bleep this. Russell Crowe is a fucking piece of shit." Cue hysterical middle-aged women prostrating themselves before the camera in their haste to apologise for their profane guest. The show's producers immediately cut to a commercial break so they could forcibly remove her from the set.
It was a classic piece of Puritanism that infuriated Rivers. In fact, although she apologised soon afterwards, it is clear the episode still rankles. "Who the fuckk are these people anyway? I don't know who any of them are. I've been in this business for longer than most of them have been alive and they treat me like this? Initially I did apologise but I regret doing that . Russell Crowe is a fucking piece of shit and if I have one genuine regret it's that I didn't also say it about Mel Gibson who is a piece of shit as well. You have a situation where people are shocked by what I say. But what the hell do they expect when they ask me on to their show? I should be nice and meek and not tell people who I feel? God, there are enough people like that in this business and I hate them."
Still, making people laugh for a living when most people have retired must be draining. She says the secret is: "Giving a shit. That's the trick. It doesn't matter how well you think you can hide it when the spark is gone, but people can see through a fake. I know one person -- and no, I'm not telling you -- who is coasting and it's just terrible to see, really terrible."
While the entertainment industry has always been a tough nut to crack, the options open to women are even more restricted. Yet, despite Christo pherHitchen's assertion that women simply cannot be funny, many of the top comedians these days are female. Sarah Silverman, Kathy Griffin , Wanda Sykes and Chelsea Handler have all proved themselves over the last few years to be easily as outrageous as their male counterparts. More importantly, they're also funnier.
And, in the case of Sarah Silverman, we see someone who has clearly studied Rivers. "I absolutely love Sarah Silverman," she says. "Oh, she is brilliant. She's so brave, she really goes to places other comics wouldn't dare to go. I think she is absolutely brilliant." As a female Jewish comedian with a filthy mouth and an even dirtier mind, Silverman could be accused of being a Rivers clone -- something Rivers is having none of. "Look, you can say that before Sarah there was me, but I'm just following in the footsteps of Phyllis Diller. That's the way the business works, we should all be supportive of each other."
Interestingly, both Diller and Silverman appeared in the scatological documentary The Aristocrats, which sees dozens of comics trying to out-gross each other with the same joke. Rivers' absence was notable but was not, as suspected, deliberate. "They tried to get through to me lots of times," she sighs, "but my assistant didn't get the whole thing, and just asked me if I wanted to appear on television telling a dirty joke. It just didn't seem so appealing." Presumably the assistant was sacked? "Oh God no, she was only new, we all make mistake. She's still with me. I make her suffer..."
Joan Rivers is appearing in Vicar St on Monday Generation game: 'You could say that before the brilliant Sarah Silverman (below) there was me. But I'm just following in the footsteps of Phyllis Diller,' says a generous Joan
In her own words
"Mel Gibson's bumper sticker is 'My other car is a gas chamber."
"The one thing women don't want to find in their stockings on Christmas morning is their husband."
"I don't exercise. If God had wanted me to bend over he'd out diamonds on the floor."
"My best birth control is just to leave the lights on."
"I knew that I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio."
"Don't ever tell your kids you had an easy birth, they won't respect you. For years I'd wake up my daughter and say Melissa, you ripped me to shreds. Now go back to sleep."
"My mother could make anyone feel guilty. She used to get letters of apology from people she didn't even know."
"I told my mother-in-law that my house was her house, and she said, 'Get the hell off my property.'"
"My obstetrician was so dumb that when I gave birth he forgot to cut the cord. For a year that kid followed me everywhere. It was like having a dog on a leash."
"There is not one female comic who was beautiful as a little girl."
"It's so long since I've had sex I've forgotten who ties up who."
"I wish I had a twin, so I could know what I'd look like without plastic surgery."
"I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again."
"I blame my mother for my poor sex life. All she told me was that the man goes on top and woman underneath. For three years my husband and I slept in bunk beds."
Joan Rivers: interview On a whirlwind shopping trip with Time Out Comedy editor Tim Arthur, caustic comedian Joan Rivers looks back over her long career Tim Arthur. Photography Rob Greig
May 19 2009
timeout.com
Joan Rivers has a couple of hours free between her afternoon segment selling her hugely successful line of jewellery on QVC and her early-evening shift. She likes to check out what the young people are wearing over here whenever she’s in town. So we head to Topshop on Oxford Street for a chat and a shop. This diminutive septuagenarian hunts through the racks like a woman possessed, throwing endless glittering necklaces and shiny bracelets into her personal assistant’s basket.
‘Don’t just watch me. Find something for you daughter and fiancée,’ she demands in that familiar rasping New York drawl. She advises me on what to buy for whom and shakes her head at my poorer choices. We chat as we choose.
Do you think comedians have the right to talk about whatever they like?
‘Yes. I put everything I think is funny in the act, and I think a lot of really sick things are funny. Bill Cosby once said to me that if only one per cent of the world’s population thinks you’re funny, you’ll fill stadiums for the rest of your life, so don’t worry about the other ninety-nine per cent. I always think about that when I do a Helen Keller joke or a really bad taste Anne Frank one.’
You knew the legendary shock comic Lenny Bruce. How much of an influence did he have on you?
‘He blew me away. He was an amazing comedian, actually talking about important things. There was such humanity about him. Once, when I was in a terrible act called “Jim, Jake and Joan”, Lenny came to see it. We bombed so hard that night that
I seriously thought about quitting comedy. But he sent me a note saying: “You’re right, they’re wrong.” I kept the note in my bra for six months.’
You started out in the early ’60s working the clubs in Greenwich Village. What was that like?
‘Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, all of us were down there together. Bob Dylan was running around with a stupid scarf and never wore a coat, Simon and Garfunkel were wandering around with their dumb album “Sound of Silence” but no one would listen to the tapes. It was an amazing time. There was a great honour between us. We all watched each other’s acts. Monday night we were at the Duplex, Tuesday night we were at the Bitter End… everybody knew everybody. But I was the only girl. I was the little college girl in a black dress who was playing strip joints!’
Your big break came on the ‘Tonight Show with Johnny Carson’…
‘I had been rejected by Carson seven or eight times over a year and a half. One night this other comic went on and bombed, and Bill Cosby, who was already a big star by that time, said: “You may as well put Joan Rivers on, she can’t be any worse than that guy.” So I got my chance, did my set and after it Carson said, on air: “You’re going to be a star,” and that was it, the next day my life changed.’
Why do you think you’ve been so successful for so long?
‘The thing is, I’m happiest when I’m on stage. Laurence Olivier once said to me: “I look out at the stage and it’s all mine. I own it.” When I walk on to a stage, it’s like that as well. Also there’s no memory lane in my act. If you’re a certain age and are coming to see my show for a bit of nostalgia, don’t. I’m still competitive. I still want to be the best. Put me up against Sarah Silverman and I could take her. ’
So what things are annoying you at the moment?
‘Jeez, where to start! I’m sick of Jennifer Aniston right now. Enough with the whining, get over it. I hate old people, I hate children. I think any celebrity that adopts a child from a third world country is a fool. The list goes on.’
You’ve had a pop at lots of celebrities over the years. Have any of them taken it personally?
‘Some have, but I’m not here to make friends. The ones that I like are the ones that get it. Like Cher, she was furious when I took her out of my act. When I was doing Elizabeth Taylor jokes, she sent me a message saying: “Tell Joan I don’t mind.” That’s a classy lady.’
You’re also very hard on yourself on stage.
‘I think you really have to not like yourself to be a good comedian. If you think you are great, why do you need to be funny?’
You’ve talked a lot about getting older in showbusiness. How has it affected you?
‘Comediennes are the lucky ones, because if you’re funny, you can be 125 years old and they will still accept you. It’s absolutely about what you are doing up there on stage in that moment. However, anyone that says looks don’t count is lying. Of course they do. Even babies go to the attractive face. It’s the way humans work.’
We head for the checkout having left no item in the entire shop unscrutinised. ‘Now where are those gifts I’m buying for your kid and girlfriend?’ she asks me. I protest, in vain. ‘Don’t be silly, see them as a wedding present.’ Now that really is one classy, funny and kind lady.
Joan Rivers – Unplugged and Uncensored is on at the Udderbelly, Southbank Centre, Wed May 27-Fri May 29.
cheers Ash - that's a good long interview. Obviously she's utterly wrong about Palestine, but maybe she can get a plastic surgeon to give her brain a lift!
Joan Rivers bringing her edgy stand-up comedy to Pavilion Jay Kirschenmann
argusleader.com
October 29, 2009 CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO INTERVIEW
Recently "roasted" on TV's Comedy Central, comedian and television personality Joan Rivers says she expected teasing about her age and her plastic surgery. She was right. Even her daughter, Melissa Rivers, took a few shots: "I had a terrible, terrible nightmare last night. I was at my mother's funeral. The worst part was I was 75."
Joan Rivers was born June 8, 1933, in Brooklyn, N.Y. The 5-foot 2-inch comedian brings her stand-up comedy to the Washington Pavilion's Great Hall on Nov. 5. "You were my great-great-great grandmother's favorite comedian," comedian Jeffrey Ross said during the TV roast. "Who knows? Maybe next year, we'll roast the younger Rivers. Of course, I'm talking about the Amazon and the Euphrates."
Rivers laughs it off, and she got in plenty of her own barbs aimed at the cast of offenders. "Oh, you have to be able to laugh at yourself," Rivers recently said by phone. "I knew they were going to say 'age,' I knew they were going to say 'cosmetic surgery' and 'QVC' - and that's fine, 'cause I got back at them."
'Celebrity Apprentice' Rivers recently won Donald Trump's reality TV show competition "The Celebrity Apprentice." The ratings were boosted with a feud between Rivers and poker champion Annie Duke.
The conflict wasn't scripted, she says. "My darling, that is so reality. And that's what reality TV should be," Rivers says. She's bored with some reality shows that appear to have situations and conflicts provided for the contestants. I'm going to go back on the fist episode this season," she says. "I think what happened ... is that our show was the perfect storm. Personalities were all just right to hate each other."
Rivers still performs her own brand of hard-edged stand-up comedy, in her trademark craggy voice. She keeps her chops by performing at colleges. "I love when I play colleges - that, to me, is so great because it shows that you're relevant and you're still on the pulse, and what you're saying is still funny for 2009," Rivers says.
She sells out performance halls, too, but also likes to test new material at small clubs. "Tonight, I'm going back to a little club. Every Wednesday night that I don't perform, I work a little place called The Westbank in New York, on 42nd Street," she says. "It only holds 100 people, and I just love doing it there."
Her clips on YouTube get lots of favorable comments. Her timing still is excellent, with the punchline often added quietly at the end of a statement, as with this line: "Yeah, I cremated my mother-in-law - I should have waited until she was dead." "I love the Internet," she says. "I want to do more performing on the Internet. I don't quite know how to get into it yet, but we'll figure it out."
Rivers recently recorded six episodes of a new TV show called "How'd You Get So Rich?" She hosts inspiring interviews with successful people on the TV Land network this fall. The shows, featuring rags-to-riches stories, now are being sold to overseas TV networks. "It's inspiring because everyone made it on their own," she says. "Nobody came out of a rich family, nobody was given anything, and it's terrific to see you can still do it in the 2000s."
Rivers, too, is self made. Catch her in her 19th year selling Joan Rivers-branded skin care, jewelry and cosmetics on television's QVC channel. She has mixed her own brand of comedy with reality for 50 years, from her start writing for the Candid Camera show in the '60s and continuing with many talk shows using her trademarked "Can we talk?" catch phrase.
"Comedy is much rougher and much wilder today ... maybe because our living is much rougher and wilder," she says. "My God, we're living under a threat constantly - war, missiles and crazy people running around with bombs." She says her Sioux Falls show will play off of current pop culture and the news. "You'll see my latest, whatever the latest is when I get there," she says.
Sarah Palin jibe no joke to Fox News as Joan Rivers interview is cancelled Joan Rivers told TMZ Palin was 'stupid and a threat' and blamed her for Arizona shootings
Chris McGreal
guardian.co.uk,
20 January 2011
Fox News has cancelled an interview with the comedian Joan Rivers after she described Sarah Palin as "stupid and a threat" and blamed her for the recent attack on an Arizona congresswoman that left six people dead. The move will reinforce the growing perception that Fox News sees its role as not only to promote Palin but shield her from criticism after the politician – who is also a Fox presenter – was accused of contributing to the extreme political rhetoric that provided the backdrop to the shootings in Tucson.
Rivers made her comments in an interview with TMZ in which she was asked whether Palin should be US president. "I think Sarah Palin is an amazing woman. I think she represents everything strong a woman can be, and I think she should go someplace – to another planet – to show them, and get out of our face," she said.
Rivers was then asked whether Palin should be blamed for the attack in Tucson. "They're right to blame Sarah for the shootings. Go look at her website. This woman is encouraging sandbaggers to reload ... this woman is just stupid and a threat," she said.
The comedian said that shortly after the TMZ interview, her agent received a call cancelling her appearance on Fox and Friends. "We got called," Rivers told CNN. "So now we call it Fox and Former Friends. They said to our PR lady it was because of what we said about Miss Palin." Rivers also tweeted about the incident, saying: "Outcome: DON'T PISS OFF SARAH PALIN. She's apparently 'very powerful', and is obviously still smarting from the end of her reality show."
Fox disputed Rivers' account, claiming that "the volume of news topics" meant there was no room for her on the show. The topics included a segment on National Penguin Awareness Day, and an assessment of the Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler's performance as a judge on American Idol.
Fox said Rivers should have been rescheduled but was mistakenly cancelled.
Joan Rivers and her signature style of comedy Her brand of unflinching and unapologetic comedy pulls no punches and her audiences love her for it.
Sarah Linn
sanluisobispo.com
19th Jan 2012
Talking to groundbreaking comedian Joan Rivers, you learn to avoid words like “icon,” “legend” and “legacy.” Rivers, 78, lives very much in the now. People say, ‘When were you the happiest?’ and I always say, ‘The present,’ ” Rivers explained in her trademark rasp. “I don’t say, ‘I have to be relevant.’ It just happens.”
Known for her workaholic nature, rapid-fire delivery and self-deprecating sense of humor, the woman who famously asked “Can we talk?” has more than 750,000 followers on Twitter and about 90,000 Facebook fans. “I have great respect for my audiences,” Rivers said. “I watch other comedians (and) they’re talking down to them: ‘Hey, guys, did this ever happen to you?’ I always think of my audiences as smart.”
Showbiz dreams
Born Joan Alexandra Molinsky in Brooklyn, New York, Rivers always dreamed of becoming an actress. (She remembers seeing “Carousel” and “West Side Story” on Broadway.) However, her parents didn’t support her show-business aspirations.
“If I had said I wanted to be a physicist or a doctor, they would have said ‘Go, go, go,’ ” recalled Rivers, who studied English literature and anthropology at New York City’s Barnard College. But an actress? “That was a word for ‘hooker,’ ” the comedian joked.
Undeterred, she began performing at Greenwich Village comedy clubs in the early 1960s, adopting “Joan Rivers” as her stage name. Her big break came in 1965 when she appeared on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.” Rivers would appear on the show 60 times over the next two decades, frequently as a guest host, before her friendship with Carson turned into a very public feud.
Their relationship soured in 1986 when “The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers” premiered on Fox. (Rivers later won an Emmy Award for her daytime talk show, “The Joan Rivers Show.”) “When I went off to do my own show, he cut me off and tried to ruin me,” Rivers said of Carson. “That’s when I realized he was a very competitive man…a mean man and a very vindictive man.”
Despite their falling out, she still considers the legendary host “the best straight man ever.” “You could take (David) Letterman and (Jay) Leno and put them all into the whole package, and still not get Johnny,” Rivers said.
Fearless and frank
Over the years, Rivers has built a reputation as a fearless, unflinchingly frank comic. “Nothing is off-limits to me,” said Rivers, who flaunts her willingness to crack jokes about sex, aging and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. She’s even remarkably open about her multiple plastic surgeries. Rivers credits Lenny Bruce, the caustic comic who famously battled obscenity charges in the 1960s, as her main inspiration. “Of all of (the comedians) of the 20th century, he’s the one who broke all the boundaries,” she said.
Rivers’ own boundary-breaking career has encompassed stints as an author, celebrity spokesperson, radio host, movie director and playwright. Her myriad acting credits include movies ( “Shrek 2,” “The Smurfs”), TV shows ( “Arthur,” “The Simpsons,” “Spaceballs: The Animated Series”) and her own plays ( “Fun City,” “Sally Marr… and Her Escorts,” “Broke and Alone” and “Joan Rivers: A Work in Progress by a Life in Progress”).
Rivers has also carved out a career as a television personality, thanks in part to her numerous red-carpet appearances with daughter Melissa. “Melissa and I started the red carpet, literally,” Rivers said, beginning with their E! Entertainment Television coverage of the Golden Globe Awards in 1994. “Somebody said we made walking into a building an event.”
Now, following their joint appearances on “Celebrity Family Feud” and “Celebrity Apprentice,” Joan and Melissa Rivers are starring on the WeTV reality series “Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best?” The show’s second season premieres Tuesday. Joan Rivers can also be seen on the E! show “Fashion Police,” trading catty comments with style expert George Kotsiopoulos, reality star Kelly Osbourne and “E! News” anchor Giuliana Rancic. The popular program switches to an hourlong format this season.
“ ‘Fashion Police’ is so fun to do because it’s so irreverent,” said Joan, who has hawked her own line of accessories, apparel and jewelry on QVC since 1990. “Fashion is very similar to show business. It’s very theatrical.”
Comedy is acting
That theatricality undoubtedly appeals to Rivers, who still cherishes her status as an actress. “Every comedian is a wonderful actor,” she said, using Don Rickles’s “brilliant” performance in “Casino” as one example. “When we come out and we make things look like we said them for the first time, that’s acting.”
Rivers has spent plenty of time in the spotlight as of late. She was the subject of a Comedy Central Roast in 2009 and a documentary, “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work,” in 2010. (That’s not the first time she’s been under such scrutiny, either. She and her daughter play themselves in the 1994 docudrama “Tears and Laughter: The Joan and Melissa Rivers Story.”)
As the veteran comedian approaches her 80s, it’s clear she has no intention of taking it easy. “It’s not like I would like to get away from here and do needlepoint or raise mice,” Rivers said. “I love being able to make a living and doing what I do.”
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