Joan Rivers Mixes Barbs with Life Lessons

To the extent that anything or anyone can be new after more than a half century in the public eye, a new Joan Rivers is making the rounds.

The new Rivers -- more reflective, more grateful and more candid about the highs and lows of her career -- mixed platitudes about life with her trademark acerbic humor to the delight of a virtually sold-out crowd at CSUN's Valley Performing Arts Center, Tuesday evening.

Perhaps, at 77, Rivers feels a need to show she has greater depth and substance than can be gleaned from her insult humor, her catty comments on the red carpet and her seemingly endless pitches for her line of jewelry on QVC.

 A new documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, successfully probes the woman  behind the comedy. Tuesday night's lecture, My Life in Show Business: 135 Years and Counting, mixes her trademark outrageous barbs with clichés about achieving success, many of which can be boiled down to the old adage about what to do when life hands you lemons.

On occasion, the older-but-wiser Rivers butts up against the battle-hardened comedian, and neither is willing to give ground. For example,  in her lecture, Rivers counsels the importance of seizing the moment. She vividly recalls when Johnny Carson, then the king of late night TV, introduced her to America and proclaimed she would be a star. She called him one of the greatest straight men in show business.

Not 30 minutes later, though, in response to questions submitted by the audience before the lecture, she called Carson one of the greatest liars. Rivers said she called him twice before starting her own late night talk show on Fox in competition with his.  "He hung up on me both times," she said. Then, she added, Carson repeatedly said  she never had the courtesy to call.

The Carson controversy preceded a time of personal tragedy that included the suicide of her husband, Edgar, and her belief that she was blackballed from late night TV as well as Las Vegas. But, she said, in show business, "it's never over."

She took over for Linda Lavin in the stage production of "Broadway Bound." She got her own daytime talk show. She sold a boatload of jewelry on QVC and she pioneered red carpet trash talk.

"You must push yourself out the door," she  said. "No one's going to ring your bell. You must go through every door that opens. You must go through every window that opens."

Her red carpet specials came as a result of her willingness to try everything, she said. Rivers had a ready response for critics who groaned when she asked stars "Who are you wearing?" "You're not going to ask these morons what they think about China."

Keep yourself out there, she advised. Do charity work. Work at maintaining friendships. Enjoy the present. Don't let things upset you. Figure out the rules and then use them to your advantage. And keep your sense of humor. "If I were at Auschwitz, I know I would say, 'Do you smell gas or is it me?'"

For those more interested in insults, Rivers did not disappoint. Princess Diana, Kirk Douglas' stroke-slurred speech, Anne Hathaway, Oprah Winfrey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Angelina Jolie, previous CSUN lecturer Arianna Huffington and senior citizens as a group took turns as targets during the lecture and the Q-and-A that followed.

My personal favorite was Rivers' comparison of the Kardashian sisters to a poster for the ascent of man.

Life lessons are nice but few things better are more satisfying than the guilty pleasure from a hard-hitting insult.