A recent documentary on her life, A Piece of Work, highlighted her drive to stay relevant and youthful — working at a pace that would tire comics half her age. Its opening featured close-up shots of her face without makeup, revealing the nips and tucks of the countless plastic surgeries she joked about onstage.
The film also showed how tough she could be, taking on a heckler during a performance who objected to a joke that included a reference to deaf icon Helen Keller.
“Comedy is to make everybody laugh at everything and deal with things, you idiot,” she shouted from the stage.
Louis CK On Rivers In 2011 ‘Fresh Air’ Interview
“She’s just so good, and she tries so hard.”
And the controversies kept coming. Rivers was criticized for calling Michelle Obama transgender and saying Palestinian civilians deserved to die in the Gaza conflict.
But the fuss didn’t stop her from working. In her 80s, Rivers still juggled concert performances, a TV show on fashion, an Internet show and promotion for her 12th book, Diary of a Mad Diva.
True to form, she had been talking up the book in New York the day before she stopped breathing during a minor procedure in a clinic Aug. 28. She was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital, where doctors placed her in a medically induced coma, and she breathed with assistance from machines.
In a statement announcing her mother’s death, Melissa Rivers said she died peacefully “surrounded by family and close friends.”
“My mother’s greatest joy in life was to make people laugh,” the statement continued. “Although that is difficult to do right now, I know her final wish would be that we return to laughing soon.”
Joan Rivers’ attitude about show business was summed up in an appearance on comic Louis C.K.’s FX show Louie, where she gave him a pep talk after a tough show.
“Think it’s been easy?” she said. “I have gone up, I’ve gone down; I’ve been bankrupt, I’ve been broke. But you do it. And you do it because … because we love it more than anything else.” (AP)
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