Joan Rivers: a piece of work

Documentary-makers Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg earned awards for The Trials of Daryll Hunt in 2006 and The Devil Came on Horseback the following year. They co-wrote both films too. In 2008, they gained no awards for directing The End of America, two other women writers' adaptation of Naomi Wolf's volume of anti-fascist political warnings. In 2010, they did their own thing again, condensing hours of interviews and location work into a study of the life and working methods of veteran stand-up comedienne Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work at the age of 75.

So far, its editor, Penelope Falk, has won the film's only award, and the movie has reportedly been declared ineligible for Oscar nomination. That of course would tie in with the comic's clear feeling that she never gets the appreciation she deserves from the entertainment industry.

The documentary shows her to be a workaholic Jewish princess royal, setting forth from her palatial New York apartment on a relentless schedule of live performances, professional challenges, money-making ventures and constant need to be her world's focus of attention. She's collected a strong supportive team, what she calls a minor industry, and the saddest aspect of the movie is her admission towards the end that she has to part company with her increasingly absent manager (and sole surviving old showbiz friend) after more than 30 years. Her relationship with her daughter (single child and fellow comic) is also depicted well, without sentimentality.

For a year the producer-directors popped in and out of her schedule, from the American hinterland to the Edinburgh Festival, from Comedy Television's roast to the first night in London of the play she wrote for herself. The known key events in her biography are covered crisply, with well chosen clips from her past to illustrate how she and her trademark crudity survived four decades of live performances.

In the final clip under the end credits, Rivers jokes with an interviewer that the documentary would be a greater commercial success if she'd died during the making of it. One knows that she intends to be the subject of another profile feature when she's close to her 100th birthday.