Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast
Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/9/04
Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#1
Posted: 8/11/09 at 4:29pm
Via Michael Musto's blog:
We've had a couple of days to recover from Comedy Central's roast of veteran funny lady Joan Rivers, and now that the wonderfully putrid air has cleared, we can look back and remember the choicest bits of appallingly hilarious indecorum (not all of them aimed at Rivers, by the way.)
Among the most memorable:
Kathy Griffin: "Tonight's going to be gayer than that kid from American Idol this year--Ryan Seacrest!"
Greg Giraldo: "What's with the surgery, Kathy? You've been stitched up thousands of times, but you're still sad to look at. You're like the AIDS quilt."
Giraldo to Mario Cantone: "You're the only guy who takes a stepladder to a glory hole."
Jeffrey Ross, referring to Griffin: "When did Howdy Doody f**k Pippi Longstocking? Kathy, I wouldn't f**k you with Chastity Bono's new dick!"
Jeffrey Ross re Robin Quivers: "Face it, without the Howard Stern show, the only thing you'd be saying into a microphone would be, 'Welcome to Popeye's. May I take your order?' "
Jeffrey Ross to Joan Rivers: "Kanye's mother had a better surgeon. Look at her. She's a cougar. Freddie Cougar!"
There were also cracks about Cantone's T-cell count and about how, when a director told Cantone "Take five," his boyfriend shoved a fist up his ass. I also thought every word out of Whitney Cummings's mouth was pricelessly funny. (I wonder if she's who they got when Lisa Lampanelli declined to do it. If so, it paid off big time.)
Joan--who's long elevated self-deprecation to an art form--must hav
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#2
Posted: 8/11/09 at 4:33pmI found a lot of it cringeworthy. And Whitney Cummings is vile.
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#2
Posted: 8/11/09 at 4:44pm
Gilbert Godfried had the best set out of them all. (Save for Joan herself)
Whitney really went for broke and I loved it! The only one I thought was a BIT much was the T-Cell joke.
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#3
Posted: 8/11/09 at 4:56pm"Next I'm going to bring up something that rarely comes up in Hollywood pitch meetings: Tom Arnold!" - Kathy Griffin
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#4
Posted: 8/11/09 at 5:10pm.
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#5
Posted: 8/11/09 at 5:11pm
(Referring to Carl Reiner sitting between Tom Arnold and Kathy Griffin)
"Maybe tonight we should call you Van, since you're sitting between a Dick and a Dyke."
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#6
Posted: 8/11/09 at 5:24pm
I was also surprised at how many jokes boiled down to a "you're gay!" punchline.
I dunno. Some of it was funny, but overall I just found it kind of ugly.
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#7
Posted: 8/11/09 at 7:20pmOkay- I've been a fan of Joan's for years but I was very disappointed in this roast. It just wasn't all that funny to me. Personally, I thought some of it was just vulgar- not funny.
Joined: 12/31/69
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#8
Posted: 8/11/09 at 7:29pmThat's exactly how I think of Joan: Just vulgar, not funny.
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#9
Posted: 8/11/09 at 9:49pm
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re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#10
Posted: 8/11/09 at 9:59pmA roast isn't mainly about being funny. It's about insulting them worse than they insulted you.
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#11
Posted: 8/11/09 at 10:09pm
See, I flinched about at the t-cells joke, not because it was about AIDS, but because I'd never heard that Mario Cantone was HIV positive, so it just read as a gay=AIDS joke.
Vagina jokes don't bother me as a rule, but most of the vagina jokes weren't funny.
And straight men swallowing each other's semen. On what planet is that funny?
There was a real homophobic undertone to the whole thing. And it just so downright mean-spirited. Even Kathy Griffin I found to be much more mean-spirited than she is in her regular act.
Brad Garret looked kind of foxy, though, didn't he?
But really, this thing was kind of gross the more I think about it. I will admit I thought the leprechaun joke was funny, but seeing those clips of Joan when she looked like a person made me sad.
Updated On: 8/11/09 at 10:09 PM
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#12
Posted: 8/11/09 at 10:15pm
Roast was great. The jokes are supposed to sting. Get a life, people. I thought the dais was a bit less than stellar considering that Lily Tomlin and Robin Williams were supposed to come and then canceled.
Mario is so unfunny. His routine was tired and old. Bette Davis and Judy jokes? Come on.
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#13
Posted: 8/11/09 at 10:20pm
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re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#14
Posted: 8/11/09 at 10:21pm.
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#15
Posted: 8/11/09 at 10:22pmYeah I know that roasts are supposed to be insulting but they're also supposed to be funny! I didn't really laugh out loud! Sorry. I just thought Joan deserved better!
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#17
Posted: 8/11/09 at 10:24pm
Updated On: 8/12/09 at 10:24 PM
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#18
Posted: 8/11/09 at 11:09pm
"The jokes are supposed to sting. Get a life, people."
Yep, being as horrible as humanly possible has always been the M.O. of the Friar's Club roasts. And they used to be behind closed doors where it was just an old boys club of "guys being guys." But times have changed. They aren't invitation only events anymore. And it's not the frigging Frank Sinatra generation anymore. Except for Joan, those guys are all dead.
Viewers have every right to comment on the content of shows that are on, and to point out the jokes they took issue with and why. That doesn't mean they don't have a life. That signals they do have one, interior as well.
So I see making fun of Kanye's mother's accidental death due to surgery was fair game. Were there lots of hilarious jokes about Edgar offing himself to get away from his shrieking harridan of a wife? Let's face it, Kanye's mom's death was an accident but Edgar CHOSE that.
Soulless, horrible, awful Joan.
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#19
Posted: 8/11/09 at 11:22pm
Not to mention that in Frank Sinatra generation, weren't the ones doing the roasting actually the peers and/or friends of the roastee? These things are always populated with people who seem to only exist on Comedy Central, like Greg Girardo.
I keep forgetting that Carl Reiner was there, psyching himself up to say the C word. Ugh.
Broadway Legend Joined: 10/6/04
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#20
Posted: 8/11/09 at 11:26pmi like when they roasted Michael on The Office.. haha
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#21
Posted: 8/11/09 at 11:27pm
Yes, that's what they were like. And you know, people made comments about the fact that Ted Danson appeared in blackface at then-girlfriend Whoopie Goldberg's roast and everybody said "Aw, now, that's what these roasts are! Deliberately offensive! Lighten up! (pun intended)"
When the roasts were behind closed doors that argument almost worked. But when you bring them out in the larger culture, people are free to examine them in the CONTEXTS of the larger culture.
So, did people mock Joan for having a husband who killed himself to get away from her or was THAT off limits?
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#22
Posted: 8/11/09 at 11:31pmI don't remember anything being said specifically about him killing himself, though they say Carl Reiner would see him soon, and they made a joke about a nice Jewish girl should marry a doctor, not support a doctor. Or something like that. To the best of my recollection, there were no jokes about Edgar's suicide.
re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#23
Posted: 8/11/09 at 11:51pm
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re: Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast#24
Posted: 8/11/09 at 11:52pm
Updated On: 8/12/09 at 11:52 PM
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