Joan Rivers is one of us. When the hardest working woman in show business takes off the rare weekend, she heads to her house in Litchfield County, which was recently featured in The New York Times. Instead of slowing down at age 76, she is busy performing, working on her new TV show and selling her jewelry on QVC. With her local connections, it seems quite fitting that the new documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is the opening night film at the Mahaiwe for the fifth annual Berkshire International Film Festival, which runs June 3 - 6 in Great Barrington and Pittsfield. (It is also scheduled to play at the Bantam Cinema in Litchfield County over the July 4th weekend.) One of Rivers' best friends is Salisbury resident Pete Hathaway (whose Enterprise New Life halfway house was featured in Rural Intelligence in February), and he interviewed Rivers exclusively for RI last week.
Pete Hathaway [right with Rivers in the 1990s]: We first met in 1984 when you bought a very important piece of Louis XV furniture from the collection of Mr. and Mrs Charles Wrightsman at Sotheby’s. How did you become such a connoisseur of 18th Century European decorative arts? Joan Rivers: I have always loved that period, and have read up on the subject as much as I could. European decorative arts hit their height in the 18th Century. For the world, they were the tops . . . they did such beautiful things. PH: Your apartment in New York City is incredible. You have said that you asked your decorator for “Marie Antoinette meets Jean Harlow." What did you instruct the decorator for your Connecticut country house? JR: I told him to look at every M.G.M movie that had a country house, like Christmas in Connecticut. Then I told him I want absolutely everything—but crisscross curtains! I wanted a place where my dogs would feel comfortable on the furniture. For God’s sake…it’s THE COUNTRY. PH: We have been friends for well over 20 years, and people would never believe what a devoted friend you are even though you are a workaholic. How do you make time for everything and everybody? JR: I don’t make much time for them. My friends are very limited. Some people think my dinner parties are very boring—I see the same old faces over and over again, but I love my friends and we have a lot of fun.
PH: In 1988 you took over the role of Kate in Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound. Wasn’t that terrifying? JR: NO! The one place I feel very comfortable is on stage with other actors around me. Alone on the stage, if you’re bombing, you’re alone! With other actors there for support, you can turn up-stage and cross your eyes at each other, and think It’s not my fault they don’t like the play . . . it’s him or her . . . or the writer.PH: Do you have city friends and country friends? JR: Yes and it’s very silly. After all, we’re all up here from the city, and yet there are people that I enjoy in the country that I never see in the city. Most of my city friends are idiots and go to the Hamptons. PH: Your one woman show played to rave reviews not only in Los Angeles but in London and Edinburgh as well. How do explain your tremendous success in the UK? JR: Everyone forgets that my husband, Edgar, was English. He was educated at Rugby and Cambridge . . . and he found me funny. I have a great allegiance to the British. PH: I know that The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are good friends of yours. How do you feel being little Joan Molinsky from Larchmont hanging out with the future King of England? JR: Every minute that I’m with them I stop and pinch myself. They’re an incredible couple and both have amazing senses of humor. PH: Did you chat up The Queen at their wedding? JR: I had the pleasure—and I mean PLEASURE—to have the chance to talk with her. She has the same humor as Charles—plus she’s tiny like me! PH: Why did you allow a documentary Joan Rivers; a Piece of Work to be made about you? JR: I thought that it would be terrific to see a year in the life of a comedian. However, I did expect it to focus more on the work we comedians do . . . and less on me. PH: Did anything surprise you about yourself from seeing the film? JR: Yes, that I’m right handed. Who knew?! PH: Does your tremendous work ethic come from your rather financially tenuous upbringing? JR: Not at all. It comes because I LOVE my work. It’s not my job—it’s my life! Why would I retire? What would I do? Be funny while antiquing in Sheffield? PH: If you could meet with and speak to any dead person, who would it be? JR: Teddy Roosevelt. Oh absolutely! He was elegant, a gentleman, a free thinker, from a good family and went against principles, an adventurer. He could rough-ride into my bedroom anytime! His daughter Alice would have been a problem, but Teddy would have given me free reign and an open check book to redecorate his hideous house on Long Island, Sagamore Hill.
PH: You really broke the glass ceiling for women comedians; do you think of yourself as a feminist? JR: ABSOLUTELY NOT! I was brought up by very intelligent parents who raised me to believe that I could do anything that I wanted to do—except be an actress or a comedian! If I had ever stopped to think that as a woman I couldn’t succeed . . . it would have stopped me dead in my tracks. PH: Do you feel that you have helped pave the way for women like Ellen Degeneres and Joy Behar, who have become much more than stand up comedians? JR: [Laughing] Who cares?! PH: Do they owe you? JR: YES! And keep those checks coming, girls. I need a new well in the country. PH: Did anyone pave the way for you?
JR: Maybe Lenny Bruce. He was incredible . . . he just talked He was so unusual as he didn’t do the same old Bob Hope schtick of dumb jokes. Bruce made us laugh about subjects that were relevant. He was talking about Jackie Kennedy for God’s sake. Nobody dared do that! PH: Many credit you and your daughter Melissa and your “Red Carpet” interviews with improving Hollywood’s style and dress sense. Do you take credit for this? JR: TOTALLY . . . TOTALLY! The stylists union should be sending us a commission. Although I miss the days of Kim Bassinger wearing that self-designed one armed number . . . Mira Sorvino looking like Tinker Bell and Demi Moore in the bicycle shorts. Ah, the good old days of Hollywood—what were they thinking?! PH: You won on Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice. Do you think that age and treachery trumps youth? JR: Treachery and smarts. That, and of course they were scared if I lost that I would drop dead on camera. PH: On your new reality TV show, How’d You Get So Rich?, you interview all sorts of people who have made a hell of a lot of money. Have you found any potential candidates/dateable men for you? JR: [Laughing] It’s on WEDNESDAY’S, 10:00 PM ON TV-LAND!!! One man last season really liked me…we met a couple of times but it didn’t pan out. This season there is a man with an amazing house. I’d love to be his ex-wife, to have gotten the property in my divorce settlement. PH: Diamonds, emeralds, rubies or sapphires? JR: Diamonds, they go with everything. Then in descending order; sapphires, emeralds, and lastly….rubies, and although they don’t look well on blondes….I’ll take ‘em. PH: In your 2008 book on plastic surgery Men Are Stupid . . . And They Like Big Boobs: A Woman’s Guide to Beauty Through Plastic Surgery. Were you uncomfortable going into the discussion about nips and tucks on women’s ‘nether-regions’? JR: No I wasn’t at all comfortable. But it’s a fact of life and as my book is a serious book about plastic surgery, we had to discuss every aspect of the business. PH: What advice would you like to give to your grandson Copper? JR: Go for EVERYTHING in life! Turn NOTHING down! Be an adventurer. I have no regrets in life . . . only the things that I didn’t do. PH: If you could say anything to your parent’s right now, what would it be? JR: I miss you desperately. PH: Thank you very much, Joan. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work at the Berkshire International Film FestivalThursday, June 3 at 7:30 p.m.Opening night tickets: $20 The Mahaiwe Great Barrington, MA
