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Joan Rivers was funny. Fall-on-the-floor funny. And sharp. And quick. And, of course, truthful. If her humor took aim at others—and she equally turned it on herself—it dared to expose their absurdities in a brilliantly clarifying way.
I saw Joan in action in her metier...a dark, downstairs, cabaret space jammed with maybe a hundred or so others. It was intimate, an atmosphere that turns on her humor genes. And her tongue.
If you never saw Joan live, especially in the typically small settings where stand-up comics try out and polish their zingers, you missed something, because, among die-hard fans—and you had to be, to get a ticket, at least in New York—she was her most outrageous. This is not like playing to huge crowds in Las Vegas, where not every member of the audience was primed to "get" her.
Her onstage cavortings, for a solid hour of hilarity, were daunting. It was easy to forget she was 81. You have to understand: 81 and still standing, and still schlepping to the tiny out-of-the-way venues, often down a steep flight of stairs or two, that the "kids" would do, the kids who dreamed of becoming well-known stand-ups like her.
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She stood the whole time, criss-crossing the stage as her material demanded, bent over the footlights to engage in running gags with audience members she targeted. One, a guy from Australia who came to the show straight from the airport, relished being a target...you couldn't dream up a better welcome. All the ribbing totally spontaneous. And most of the words unprintable.
At one point, zipping around the stage, Joan caught her wig on the spindle of a chair. She and her hair parted company. More hilarity, especially barbs about aging.
I went to see Joan's performance with writer Abby Ellin, who was then finishing up a PT feature article (I titled it Groucho's Girls) on female stand-ups. No writer could do a piece on female stand-ups without Joan. Joan told Abby about the upcoming performance and, as the editor of the article, I was invited along. And backstage after the show.
Backstage—what a laugh! And it is a testament to Joan's extraordinary drive and professionalism. "Backstage" was a tiny, dingy passageway, separated from the audience space by a narrow doorway with a curtain, and leading maybe four feet away to a utility closet. It barely fit a simple chair. There Joan greeted us royally.
I found it painful to look at her—the plastic surgery had been obviously overdone—but not at all to talk to her. She was gracious despite being exhausted. She had flown in from LA the night before and was leaving again in the morning, a back-and-forth she did several times a week for her TV shows. And she had just been on for over an hour. You try it. At any age.
She didn't fly on private planes available at her whim. She flew like the rest of us, on the airline's schedule. But if you're going to be a stand-up, you have to present and polish new material before a live audience, and you need regular interaction with the audience to keep your wits and tongue sharp. If you're doing running gags with audience members, it's a cognitive high-wire act; you've got to keep a lot in memory to find something to jab at.
Truth be told, I had never liked Joan Rivers much before 2010. I felt too much of her humor was self-depecating and it just made me uncomfortable. Then I saw the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. And I came out of the movie theater loving her. I immediately wrote everyone I knew who was considering retirement and said "Don't! At least not until you see this film." And I say the same to any readers. Just see the film; you'll know what I mean.
Joan was not just funny. She was, of course, brilliant. But the documentary showed more of her life. The generosity. The kindnesses. The continual work. Not just the performing. But what it takes to do it—the act of writing and polishing her stuff. She was a trouper. She trudged through snow. She went to all the downstairs dumps where comics perform. She did it all. She never complained. She was doing what she felt she needed to do to stay on top...on top of aging, on top of performing. It took my breath away. I cry at the thought of her doing all this.
Joan didn't lean in. Or lean on. She trudged on, in make-up, in high heels, with or without a wig. And then she pulled out the sharpest knife and you couldn't stop laughing.
