Joan Rivers
 

quotes from the deathpool thread

pmsl. Joan Rivers completely passed me by. Watched the whole Graham Norton show -she's hilarious. damn.

(also, the show made me a little "home"sick :()

I used to like her. She was sharp but veryfunny. I particularly liked her self-deprecating humour - because as nasty as she sometimes was to others, she was vicious about herself. I remembr a skit she did about aging, many years ago. About the way everything shifts downwards - now she looks down and thinks, twelve toes!

In later years she started to irritate me sometimes. She could still be funny, but a lot of the time when she was being nasty about people it was just nasty and not very funny. Easy targets like Adele, because y'know - fat. Not said in a funny or clever way - just that she's fat.

*shrugs*

But I don't believe the later stuff negates the humour of the earlier stuff.

Incidentally: I'm curious about why that show in particular made you feel 'home'sick?

She was #6 on my list of standup comics. Partly because she was great, and then never rested... kept on going, kept on doing it, working out jokes her whole life. I excuse her the red carpet meanness era... she also always did whatever she had to do to get work. There is a part to this standup where you do an enormous amount of work and then make it all seem effortless. She was driven.

the whole thing. The show was so very British

I never really found her funny in the early days, but then we have a strange sense of humour over here. We seem to warm more to what I would term complicated situations comedy - you know like Faulty Towers, One foot in the grave and Only fools and horses - this captures our attention and laughter over straight one-liner style of comedy. That said, I really warmed to her in the Graham Norton show. If she has been delivering stuff of that quality these past few years then I wish I had taken more notice of her.

I remember they showed here, only last year I think it was, the edition of Celebrity Apprentice that she won. I don't think that and her antics in it did her any favours, especially as it was revealed soon after that she was about to be broadcasting a series that was sponsored/financed by Trump - definitely a good, old conflicting interest situation there, then! This aside it's hard to criticise someone who kept going so long and did so so successfully. A cry of 'follow that' could well find itself bouncing off the walls of an empty room devoid of any worthy takers.

After watching the Graham Norton clip, I ended up on a Johnny Carson appearance she made in 1986. The crazy thing was, I could have picked her voice out in any situation, no doubt whatsoever that it was her... But the face was pre-surgeries, and not recognizable to me in the slightest. If it weren't for the voice I wouldn't have believed it was her. And she was in her late 40s even then; they showed some glamour shot from her 20s and she could have been anyone.

1974 and it's hard to believe. This is so edgy for 1974, for a woman. when you look at the audience you realize, this is like damn near filthy for these people. And comedy is so culture-bound that can it still be funny after 40 years?

Yah. It's a slow burn thing, she works up to it, bit by bit getting louder until by the end she's all dramatic, in the audience, she's on her knees, she's screaming at them "This is what they like!" about shallow men, at a mainstream TV audience. For 1974 it's revolutionary.

It's performance art, imho.

I always liked her. Such energy. Thanks for the clips.

One of the parts I lol'd at was about the second wife not putting up with a lousy ring: what's this? what is it, a joke? what, it tells the weather? are you nuts with this thing?

So Joan Rivers. Funny lady.

hmmmm just started watching her stand-up show on Netflix out of boredom/work avoidance.

not so heeelarious. seems like she was one of those people who was only funny spontaneously, with others to bounce off.