Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work - directed by Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg - US - 2010

Opens Friday, June 25 at Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave.

I am such a fan of standup comedy that I sometimes find docs about comedians (The Comedians of Comedy, Let America Laugh, Comedian) wonderful simply because their subjects make me laugh. But there is obviously a difference between a comedian's concert film -- like Eddie Murphy Raw -- and a true documentary about a standup comic -- like Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. To distinguish the former from the latter can sometimes be a tricky bucket of syrup (to paraphrase Patton Oswalt, today's greatest standup) since it's impossible to investigate a standup without showing their act, yet most straight concert films also include bits of backstage interviews that try to pass for investigation. In any case, the syrup must be sifted, the real docs must be separated from the concerts: A concert film is only intended to be funny, a real documentary about comedians should, ideally, be revealing.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work sets its sights squarely on revealing the person behind the legendary comedienne that Joan Rivers embodies.  The film is lucky that she is a gifted comic. Throughout the course of her 75th year, Rivers is shown over and over proving her ability to out-joke and out-think comedians half her age. It isn't hard for directors Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg to mine humor from her by cutting to footage of her act -- whether slumming at comedy clubs in New York, shilling for Indian casino nightclubs or pouring her cynical heart out to audiences in Edinburgh, Scotland -- Rivers is still as sharp and nasty as her reputation (suggesting we refer to Michelle Obama as "Blackie-O" is something 99% of todays comics wouldn't have the balls to do).

Stern and Sundberg move farther towards the psychology of their comedienne, a trailblazing female iconoclast turned puffed-up showbiz fringe-dweller, than any comedy doc that comes to mind. Shown taking medium-paying jobs while maintaining a palatial Manhattan apartment, Rivers gets to vent, cry and improv, often in the same shot. Yet she never shines through as a human being, at least not past weeping over her showbiz disappointments. Her daughter, Melissa, comes closer in one line to defining Rivers than all of the stock clips and teary footage that surrounds it: "All standups are innately insecure.  Who would stand on a stage -- by themselves -- and say, 'Laugh. Laugh at me, laugh with me, I don't care. Just laugh' ... Comedians are all very damaged." Who would understand this better than the comedian's daughter? Despite this poignancy and the chance it offered to dig into Rivers, A Piece of Work is only bit of comedy surrounded by a few tears.