Rivers, Remembered, Kicks Off Comedy Festival

In some ways, you couldn’t think of a better way to open the Kennedy Center’s District of Comedy Festival, which is slated to be a yearly thing, than with “Celebrating Joan: A Tribute to Joan Rivers.”

Not because it was polished or slick, which it wasn’t, or because it was heartfelt, and boundlessly (as without boundaries) crude in a mostly funny and good way, but because as a night of American comedy and comedians, and because of Rivers herself, it was a mind-boggling event.

Rivers, who died in 2014 from complications of a routine operation at the age of 81, was a little mind-boggling herself. She was a lot of things as a performer, and a person, who had legions of fans. People loved her irascible, no-subject-is-sacrosanct style (and she had her distracters, who didn’t like her style). But in so many ways, from her beginnings, she embodied the progress of American comedy over the last several decades.

The people on stage for the tribute — hosted by her daughter, who has become a keeper of the Rivers flame — were a rangy bunch who either knew Rivers at some point in her wildly divergent career path or were inspired by her as members of a young generation of a female comics. They also included Dick Cavett, the venerable talk show host, quasi-intellectual and comedian who began his career with hers, rising from doing sketches in a small place in front of almost no one.

It was the kind of thing where you could find people in the audience who probably hadn’t ever heard of Dick Cavett, or heard of Rachel Bloom and Aubrey Bloom, new young and rising female actresses and comics who are already veteran standup comedians and can say the f-word both as demurely as a nun and with pronounced emphasis.

It should be noted that the night was not for the faint of heart (or maybe even long-serving Kennedy Center ushers). There hasn’t been this much explicit joking around and kvetching at the Center since the first Mark Twain Awards, when the likes of Robin Williams, Chris Rock and others cavorted like four-letter princes in honor of Richard Pryor. Of course, when you see the likes of Bob Saget, Louie Anderson and the lady herself (in video clips) on the menu, you shouldn’t be surprised at the absence of sacred cows.

Still, nobody descends or levitates into tastelessness better than Gilbert Gottfried, whose voice — scratchy as a severely damaged shellac record of Enrico Caruso — is often used for cartoon or digitally created characters like the duck in the Aflac insurance commercials, and he takes on a physical stance of seeming permanently in pain. In an infuriatingly funny schtick, he talked about how lucky he was to be able to appear right after the horrible killing of 49 people in a gay nightclub. No written word can do his appearance justice; it was, in some strange way, very funny, but you became deeply ashamed at laughing out loud.

Of course, Rivers herself had managed to outrage many people, including a heckler (seen in a video) whom she destroyed by claiming nothing was off-limits for humor, including the Holocaust.

Rivers was a pioneer — as a female comedian, as a standup, as a host, working with her daughter, in television shows, in just about any way you can imagine in show business. She could say anything, because, first and foremost, her biggest comedic target and revelation was herself: her body, which she ridiculed, her sex life, which she ridiculed, her husband, her daughter. After all that, no one was safe.

There were some odd people on hand. For instance, Kelly Osbourne, the offspring of a rock-and-roll couple, who considered Rivers her grandmother and who brought a wiggly little Pomerian dog onstage. The dog grew restless and eventually just walked offstage.

Much of what was said was unprintable (not in Rolling Stone, but here), and it didn’t much matter in the end. “I miss her every day,” Melissa Rivers said, which is as it should be. The world ought to miss her too. It was plain to see — through triumph, trouble and travail — that Rivers was tremblingly fearless, and those inspired by her got some of that from her.

It was also plain to see, this being a comedy festival, that the lady was very, very funny.

Seeing her in a grainy video, I laughed my arm off.