March 29, 2024

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

Showing: Sunday, December 19 – 11:30 AM
Title: Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
Year: 2010
Country: USA
Genre:
Director: ,

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An up-close and slightly queasy personal approach to the indomitable, motor-mouthed 77-year-old comedian. Ms. Rivers brandishes her deeply held hurts, fears, prejudices, and bad taste, making you howl with laughter or freeze up with horror. The filmmakers follow their frenetic, hard-working subject from airplanes to hotel lobbies, dressing rooms to stage. A sympathetic, yet cool-eyed look at this single-minded, driven performer.

“If you’re looking for an incisive portrait of self-generated stardom, you won’t do better than this.” – Joe Neumaier, The New York Daily News

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is one of the smarter, more unexpectedly touching documentaries of the year, and I recommend it to you whether you love Rivers or loathe the very thought of her.” – Ty Burr, Boston Globe

“Joan Rivers – where have you been all my life? That, at least, is what I thought after watching (twice) the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. . . . Convulsively funny. . . . When she’s not making you howl with laughter (or freeze up in horror), she brandishes her deeply held hurts, fears, prejudices, poor judgment and bad taste as if they were stigmata.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“She’s a teller of hilarious gutbucket truths as surely as Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor ever were. Yet while they were consumed by their demons, Rivers is just the opposite.” – Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly