Admittedly, Joan Rivers is an acquired taste. For some, you can never have enough. For others, a little goes a long, long way. Still more folks run like heck whenever they see her.
I'm proudly in the first category. And that was reaffirmed all over again last week when I caught her act at the Catalina Bar and Jazz Club on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.
Both Joan lovers and haters would have to agree on one thing. The woman is tenacious. In effect, she has re-invented and re-energized her show business career on three different occasions. And that's not easy to do when you move closer to the age of eighty. Now, in 2010, Joan is enjoying a new resurgence that is almost inexplicable.
I got hooked on her first go-round back in the early 80s. Oh, sure, she had been kicking around since the mid 60s. But, she really started to kick into high gear around the time she became the permanent guest host on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Back then, I saw her four or five times. In smaller venues like a tiny little comedy club in Century City. In big houses like the old Westbury Music Fair. Regardless of the size of the place, Joan never disappointed me. I remember one half-hour set at Westbury. She was on such a roll that I literally could not stop laughing once. Clearly, this might have been the funniest 30 minutes I have ever spent on earth.
Joan's "no holds barred" approach to comedy is a perfect fit for me, who clearly despises the pomposity of celebrity and the tendency toward politically correct humor. Joan will skewer anybody and say all the things we always think, but are too "sensitive" to say out loud. She really doesn't give a shit. If it's funny, she'll say it.
The skirmish with Carson and the ill-advised move to a Fox talk show is well documented and regretably derailed Joan's career for a while. Allegedly, she was even blackballed from appearing on NBC. But, after a few years of darkness, Joan picked herself up and became the "official" red carpet host for a variety of Hollywood awards shows. I never watched this nonsense, but plenty of folks did and Joan was hotter than hot again.
It didn't last long. Pretty soon, Joan was an outsider again. Petrified of the empty white pages on her day planner and forced to work hayseed nightclubs in Wisconsin. Resorting to extensive plastic surgery that made her part of her own comedy routine. And subsisting financially on whatever dough she made selling faux jewelry on QVC.
But, as the Tonight Show title card used to say, there would still be "More to Come."
Whoever came up with the idea to film as a documentary one year in the life of Joan Rivers is a genius. And Joan's willingness to reveal herself in such a forum may have been her smartest career move yet. "Joan Rivers - A PIece of Work" may be one of the best movies to be released in 2010. Because, in showing us all the highs of her lengthy career, it also gives us multiple snapshots of the many lows. Her husband's suicide, her skirmishes with the Hollywood establishment, her forays into both mania and likely depression. Yet, despite it all, Joan persists to exist. And work as a comedienne. A role for which she has few equals.
So, the documentary brings Joan Rivers' name again to the forefront. There is one more day at the fair. One more night in the limelight. One more opportunity to make us all laugh.
She's getting prime bookings again. She's amazingly working an audience not once, but twice a night. And, just like last Thursday at the Catalina Bar and Jazz Club, Joan is doing it better than anybody.
If you cringe at jokes that take you beyond propriety, Joan Rivers is not for you. Do as my grandmother would do most of her life. Stay home. But if this type of humor is your speed, run and don't walk if you have a golden chance to see her one more time.
In the space of an hour, she managed to touch on everything that is in our worlds now. Angelina Jolie, Mel Gibson, Lindsay "hic" Lohan, Jennifer Aniston, Barbra Streisand, Nicole Kidman. That's just for starters. Joan can still get away with it all. One of the only comics who dares to offend and live to tell another joke. And who among us still doesn't like a good Helen Keller joke?
My favorite line of the evening? Talking about Anne Frank, Joan lambasted her for not having a better ending to her book. "What a letdown. The Nazis came up the..."
If you just groaned, you're no fan of Joan Rivers. And you may just not be a friend of mine.
Joan, I'm waiting for your next engagement. Bravo!
Dinner last night: Sausage and peppers sandwich at Maria's Italian Kitchen.
1 comment:
Joan's set was simply one of the best nights of comedy I've had in my life. A knockout performance. An artist at the height of her powers. Lenny Bruce was right when he told Joan at the start of her career when audiences weren't laughing: "They're wrong; you're right."
She doesn't take the stage. She seizes it and won't let go. She craves and demands attention like few people alive. She'll do and say anything to make you look. She has survived in a business that has crushed many. The lady won't back down.
Her puncturing the phony baloneys of Tinseltown is a dishy delight. Streisand? Take that! Brad Pitt? Take that. And my favorite: Saint Angelina Jolie. Her set was like fresh air blowing away the perfumed horseshit Hollywood pumps out day and night.
Before seeing her I had counted her out, over the hill. I was wrong.
Post a Comment