God to Joan Rivers: Whose face are you wearing?

[FindingNamo]

You know I sure don't.

[Jay Lerner-Z]

"It was in the moment," Joan explained at the time. "I like her very much. It's like the Katy Perry song, 'I Kissed a Girl.' I don't know if I liked it or I didn't like it. I woke up this morning with an incredible urge to play golf."

[FindingNamo]

If Joan repressed lesbianism for 80 years it could actually be the missing puzzle piece that helps me make sense of her work.

[PalJoey]

More wonderful reminiscences: Kevin Sessums's reminiscence introducing Richard Kramer's:

Here's Kevin's:

===

Kevin Sessums

Richard Kramer's lovely reminiscence of Joan Rivers at a performance of Dreamgirls.
But first my own small reminiscence.

I have been thinking of my downstairs neighbor back in New York since all this happened - Henry Edwards - who is so very close to Joan and helps her write her act. Henry and I would often talk about theatre when we'd run into each other in the lobby until we began to just talk about life. He'd keep me in stitches most times. Such a funny man. It makes me sad to think of Henry so sad right now. I hope he's writing jokes through all this, even maybe the a kind of gallows humor that Joan will be in stitches herself about when I am hopeful she finally hears some of them. Henry spends almost every holiday with Joan. He is more than her colleague; he is like family to her. I know she is like family to him. Henry - like Joan herself - is the kind of person who is also just part of the New York conversation. I only met Joan once with him - at the intermission of "A Streetcar Named Desire" down at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in a production starring Cate Blanchett as Blanche DuBois. All we did was talk about Cate that day since it was one of the most remarkable performances I'd ever witnessed. Talking about an Australian actress's take on Tennessee Williams while standing in Brooklyn with Joan Rivers is the kind of divine dissonance that only New York can offer; Joan herself has always been a part of that kind of divine New York dissonance and has even helped define it.

But if you are a regular theatergoer in New York, chances are you often see Joan there. She loves the theater and I think she maybe secretly thinks of herself as an actress first and foremost who only fell into comedy. Indeed, I saw her in Neil Simon's Broadway Bound on Broadway when she took over the role of Kate from Linda Lavin. Those were big shoes to feel but Joan not only filled them brilliantly but also with a kind of fearlessness and bravery. I stood for her that night I saw her as Kate but I didn't shout bravo.

Let me shout it now: Bravo! Bravo! I hope she's calling on that bravery, that fearlessness now.

And now, here's Richard Kramer's own reminiscence below:

[PalJoey]

Richard Kramer

If you are born in New York, and you spend at least a little of your life there, you know that the city is a conversation that never stops. If anyone was ever a New Yorker, it’s Joan Molinsky Rosenberg Rivers, and the New York conversation is and has been her particular genius. I met her once. She talked to me as if she knew me from the elevator, in her building, that we’d seen and smiled at each other since Lindsay was Mayor. It was at the intermission of a preview of the original production of DREAMGIRLS, in 1981 (the picture is the result of Googling JOAN RIVERS, 1981). She was alone, I was alone; she had the POST, and I did, too, because it was a time when you could have the POST, and it didn’t say something terrible about you.

At the end of the first act, which was something else, she turned to me, smiled, took my wrist, as if we could go on with the conversation we were having when the lights until we were interrupted by the start of the show. “You know what this show is?” she asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. “This show is for every gay Jewish boy who ever wished he was a Supreme.” She was right, of course, and I laughed. Then she refined it. “Diana,” she said. “Not the others. The others were always dreck.”

Here’s to you, Joan. Thinking of you. You're a Dreamgirl, too; may the conversation continue.

[PalJoey]

Armistead Maupin just reposted Joan's holiday wishes, with this sweet remembrance:


===


Armistead Maupin

I interviewed Joan Rivers for Interview Magazine back in the early eighties. She was already known for being heavily airbrushed in her press photos, so I asked if I could bring along the artist Don Bachardy to draw her. There were stacks of fat biographies next to her bed at the Riviera in Vegas, and she was hugely impressed when she realized that was sitting for Christopher Isherwood's longtime partner. When Don showed her the finished product, Joan nodded and said "I look like my aunt." Don grinned demurely and said: "Then I must have succeeded." I found her to be a woman of great intelligence and warmth -- and not just because she fixed me up with her handsome ginger hairdresser that night. (His name, by the way, was not Mr. Phyllis). There's a definite family resemblance in this lovely clip from 1966. She looks like her daughter Melissa. Count me among the people who are rooting for this pioneer to stick around a good while longer.

[CarlosAlberto]

I hope she pulls through. She's in my prayers.

[SNAFU]

Do we know if pulling the plug is even an option at this point? Has there been a report of how bringing her out of the coma went?

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Rivers belongs where she can ramble.

[sabrelady]

There has been no reports at all from the hospital- about anything- i presume at the family's request.

I has my suspicions about "when" this process began only cos it's not really something u do on a long weekend. I expect more info will be available after Tuesday.

[FindingNamo]

[SNAFU]

That made me giggle!

[Jane2]

This thread is reading more like a battle every day. It's become pretty tasteless, I think.

[PalJoey]

Over the past few decades, I've always admired the work Linda Ellerbee did as a pioneering woman in late-night news, so I was delighted to see that she made this comment underneath Armistead's re-post of the holiday message.

===

Linda Ellerbee

I join you, Armistead, in your affection and respect for Joan Rivers. I have known her for years. Her sense of humor is that of the survivor and as a mother, she was always a tiger. May she live and prosper.

[PalJoey]

Armistead's re-post was re-posted 39 times. The video itself has been viewed over 1,000 times since I put it up last night.


EDIT: 54 times, and over YouTube 2,000 viewings.

[FindingNamo]

It's being passed around like Heidi Abramowitz during Fleet Week!

[PalJoey]

Jim Caruso re-posted it and Donna McKechnie liked it.

[FindingNamo]

Has Adele weighed in?

[PalJoey]

On another friend's page a 50-something lesbian activist commented:

===

When I was in college she came and screened her film Rabbit Test on campus. She was asked about her support of gay rights. A few months prior she had been the first celebrity to sign her name to a petition in support of ending discrimination. That was 1978. No questioning her alliance.

[FindingNamo]

Many people seem to consider Joan Rivers a very important figure in the gay rights movement.

[PalJoey]

Funny, isn't it?

[FindingNamo]

Joan was at the March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights in 1987. Where was that Harvey Milk?

[PalJoey]

I didn't know that Joan was the Grand Marshal for the National Gay Rodeo in 1982.











First Hand Events Magazine

[FindingNamo]

Poor Melissa. That's hurtful.

[PalJoey]

Joan at Las Vegas Pride 2012. She said it was the largest gathering of gay men she'd ever seen--"apart from John Travolta's hotel room."

[PalJoey]

Kathy Griffin and Margaret Cho helped her unveil her rainbow wings.