A Piece of Work

It sometimes pays to be open minded. You would have had a difficult time convincing me that one of the most inspirational life stories I’ve heard lately came from a whacky, 77 year old Jewish lady that has had way too much plastic surgery. But it’s true.

I grouped ­­­­­­­­Joan Rivers with entertainers like Dean Martin, Rowan & Martin, Don Rickles, and the Smothers Brothers. I remember watching them all as a child, mostly with my grandmother on our little black and white TV. They were irreverent and edgy for their time, and often used race, gender, sexual innuendo and other heretofore off-limits topics. They paved the way for folks like George Carlin and Richard Pryor in the following generation, but now I view them as at least two generations out of date.

But, intrigued by her interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, I went to see “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.” I was fascinated by mixture of the emotional reaction that the film evoked—admiration and sadness. The film gives us an inside and candid look at Joan Rivers’s life and history by following her around behind the scenes as she continues to rebuild and reinvent herself at age 77. You can’t help but be inspired by this woman’s tenacity, resilience, and drive and this late stage in her life. At an age when most people are long retired (or even gone), old Joan is still hustling for gigs, doing tours, producing a musical, writing a book---anything to keep her career going forward. And one is never sure if she is doing this because she needs to (she apparently was not a very good financial planner), or whether she continues to hustle because she is an irrepressible workaholic and cannot stop. She is horrified by the notion that she is a has- been, and there are times in her act when you see that time has passed her by. Yet there are times when she still truly is funny. Despite the constant rejection, the humiliation of having to perform in out of backwater places rather than New York or Vegas, she persists and you get a real feel for the tremendous and genuine internal strength of this woman.

There is also a thread of sadness that runs through the film. You know that time has, in fact, passed her by. Her best years are behind her and you also see that, as in most careers, one bad slip can have lasting and permanent consequences. After rising to stardom on the coattails of her mentor, Johnny Carson, she accepted an offer for her own show to compete with him. He never forgave her and never spoke to her after that. Her show was ultimately a flop and she ended up being blackballed by NBC as and as a result nearly went bankrupt. The career and financial reversals were too much for her husband, who took his own life. Her life was permanently changed in every way by the decision to leave Carson.

Later, she was let down by another man—her manager, who she was forced to fire because of his chronic undependability after years and years of service. So, here Joan continues to fight the fight on, largely alone in the world, except for her daughter. One senses the deep sadness and loneliness of it all as she nears the twilight of her life with few people to share it with. Yet, she soldiers on.

I truly enjoyed the film and enjoyed what it said about her and about life. It did drag in a few parts—the editing was quite poor. But it captured the essence of a driven woman, who, despite her flaws, was marvelously talented, energetic, and extremely hard working. Above all, I found her ability to deal with what life threw at her, and her ability to use humor to deflect some of life’s toughest stuff quite inspiring.

The final message in the film for all of us is that as a society, we will be required to work longer. Sixty five (an arbitrary age) can no longer be sustained as the “normal” retirement age by our entitlement programs, pension programs and, since the financial panic decimated our savings and the equity in our homes, our own savings. The reality is that most of us will need to work longer. And, while some may see the pathos in Joan Rivers still out hawking her schtick at her age, I also see someone who is very much alive, still productive, still taking on challenges, still doing the things she loves doing. And that is the upside for the bulk of us boomers that will be working into our late 60’s and 70’s.