Joan Rivers, Dead at 81

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Joan Rivers is perhaps not quite as beloved as Robin Williams, since she was a bit more politically incorrect and abrasive and didn't make movies (or at least not very successful movies), but she was a character.

Comments

[telemann.livejournal.com]

She was in movies, and even produced one herself, Rabbit Test, about the world's first pregnant man (with Billy Crystal as the lead)



She was also Dot Matrix in Mel Brooks movie Space Balls (a parody of Star Wars) which also had John Candy, and Rick Moranis and Bill Pullman.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Yes, I just caught that in the New York Times. In truth, I was not that great a fan, but I didn't see anyone else posting here, and I went for it. :p

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

A pregnant man? LOL.

[hurleyman.livejournal.com]

omg i never knew that about spaceballs!!

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

The rest of her joined her face. At least the morticians will have it easy.

(You know she woulda made those jokes sooner than I did.)

This was a good movie:

Joan Rivers: A Piece of work (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1568150/)

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Heh, yes, I think she believed more in being first than in being worked up about this 'too soon' business.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

She was something else on Celebrity Apprentice, with her daughter Melissa. When her daughter was fired from the show, Joan went off on Annie Duke (a poker circuit celebrity).

[madam-shapo.livejournal.com]

Who will do Fashion Police now? That was the only crude show I could watch.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

The fashion police are corrupt. You know you love the fashion criminals.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

If you haven't already, you must see her performance in Louie, Louie CK's show.

I did not see that coming.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

she was a bit more politically incorrect and abrasive

You mean, she was actively and aggressively racist, homophobic, transphobic, and generally stupid?

She got worse in the last decade, but she got *really* fucking bad.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

[telemann.livejournal.com]

You mean, she was actively and aggressively homophobic

Not really.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

As for gay issues, I take it that she was a mixed bag. Here's a pro-piece:

For so many gays, like me, it’s fair to say we thought Joan Rivers was just too funny to die. Well, we were wrong. But we also knew that we were special in the comedienne’s heart, as she famously and repeatedly praised us. “My gay fans have been wonderful from day one,” Rivers told The Advocate earlier this year, adding: “I remember when I was working at the Duplex in Greenwich Village in New York at the beginning of my career and the only ones who would laugh at my jokes were the gay guys. I think if I had started out in straight clubs and bars I never would’ve gotten anywhere.”

The icon continued: “Even today when I’m on tour I always know if I get eight gay men in the front row it’s going to be a great show. Maybe it’s just me and I know they’re going to laugh at what I’d laugh at, but when my gays are in the audience it’s always a good time.”

Why the adoration? For some like news editor Karen Ocamb at Frontiers magazine, it was Rivers’s pioneering leadership in fighting AIDS. “Please also know that she was out front helping people with AIDS at the very beginning of the AIDS crisis, when so many others turned away in fear,” she posted on Facebook after learning of Rivers’ death. -- ONTD (http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/90853520.html)

But there is also discussion there countering that. I take it, for instance, she was not for gay marriage.

[moonshaz.livejournal.com]

You mean, she was actively and aggressively racist, homophobic, transphobic, and generally stupid?

I don't know about racist or stupid, but she was extremely popular in the gay community, so maybe appearances (of homophobia) can be deceiving?

Why the gays loved Joan Rivers (Hint: She loved us back) (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/09/04/why-the-gays-loved-joan-rivers-hint-she-loved-us-back/)

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for this. I thought I was the only person in the world who was glad she finally bit it. Better her than my 93-year-old mother, who nearly died yesterday but didn't, thank goodness.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

[thoughtasiwas.livejournal.com]

That's great, I'm sure it would crack her up.

I remember she had a joke along the lines of wanting her body left to Tupperware, so they could recycle the plastic.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you posted it. I remember seeing it.
I can get a little misty-eye myself.

[moonshaz.livejournal.com]

LOVE the " wing lift" cartoon! Here are a few more about Joan's adventures in the afterlife:





And my favorite:

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Those are wonderful!

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Joan Rivers, feminist icon—that’s already the headline of a Time magazine obituary posted yesterday, and the sentiment has been echoed throughout my social media feeds since the famed comedienne died Thursday afternoon at the age of 81. It’s a claim I would have found absurd 15 years ago, when, as a Hollywood-obsessed kid with basic cable and a dial-up connection, I spent hours watching Joan Rivers viciously skewer celebrities on my basement TV, giving a masterclass in how to wield snark as a weapon against the beautiful and successful. Watching her needle starlets on the red carpet, I had no idea she had ever done stand-up or even identified as a comedian. To me—and, I think, most of my generation—Rivers was best known as a pop culture joke, a proto-reality TV celebrity and a plastic-surgery cautionary tale.

The release of 2010’s Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, the fascinating and sympathetic documentary by Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern, was my first exposure to the “other” Joan Rivers: the young stand-up comic playing shows alongside Bill Cosby and Lenny Bruce; the first permanent guest-host for Johnny Carson and the first woman to host a late-night show; the tireless professional who survived her husband’s suicide by getting back to work. Rivers joked about abortion on 1960s stages. She ended a bit about casting couches with the line, “I want you to know—my name is Joan Rivers and I put out.” Jack Lemmon was so offended he walked out and told her the joke was disgusting—“It’s not right. A woman shouldn’t talk about that,” he said. But Rivers never cared what women should or shouldn’t do. She was brassy and brazen and shamelessly rude. To paraphrase Amy Poehler, by way of my colleague Rebecca Traister: She didn’t fucking care if you liked it.

-- Esther Breger at New Republic (http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119330/joan-rivers-death-was-she-feminist-comedian)

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/05/arts/television/joan-rivers-dies.html

"Correction: September 4, 2014
An earlier version of a label that appeared with this obituary on the home page of NYTimes.com misstated the year of Ms. Rivers’s death. It was 2014, of course, not 1914.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]