Only a handful of times will you see movie promotions that feature a non-acting director among the publicity. It's one thing for Woody Allen to be on posters for Annie Hall, since he's the lead actor; it's another to have a trailer show Sylvester Stallone behind the scenes directing Stayin' Alive, the ill-conceived sequel to Saturday Night Fever.
But in 1978, Joan Rivers, who died yesterday, was all over the publicity of her directorial debut, loosely based on a French farce, Rabbit Test, starring Billy Crystal. One of the main reasons for her presence surely was ego -- not just hers, but the fact that it was a very much a family affair: her husband, Edgar Rosenberg, was the producer. But there had been so few women who got a chance to direct a film in Hollywood (you can find a few during the heyday of the studio system, since so many films were made, and star Ida Lupino, as an independent producer in the fifties, directed about a dozen films), and Rivers getting this chance -- which she created herself -- was a Big Deal.
Unfortunately, the film was hammered by the critics. Roger Ebert acknowledged that the film tried to be funny: "That's what makes the movie quietly amazing: That so many different gags could not be funny." The Times' Janet Maslin wrote that "[w]hen one does laugh, it's in spite of the movie, rather than because of it. And these were the more polite reviews. Despite the bad reviews, the film managed to make money, but Rivers never directed another film again, and it would be another decade or so before women got more and more opportunities to direct. While Rivers was a major breakthrough artist in standup comedy, still capable of outraging audiences into her eighties, her talents as a director never got beyond this one effort.
I remember well the pub for the film; she was all over the place promoting it, thanks to her onetime patron saint Carson. And Billy Crystal was known to audiences, as a comedian and also for his role as Jody on Soap, the first openly gay male character on a network primetime show. It was not the kind of movie my parents would have let me see; the topic was sex after all, even though it was probably tame even by the standards of 1978. In some ways, I'd wish I had seen it then; it would have put many of the gags found in Airplane! (1980) in a different context.
As a comedian who honed her craft not only in nightclubs but on television, Rivers writes jokes and gags, not really a plot. (Presumably that's what co-scriptwriter and longtime friend Jay Redack was there for.) The quick moments and zingers -- both verbal and visual -- never add up to a coherent film, but then again, neither did the best films of the Marx Brothers. But I'll give a quick synopsis anyway: Lionel Carpenter is a loser, a Momma's Boy who teaches citizenship at night school while pursuing an advanced degree in botany. His army cousin (a hilarious, tasteless Alex "Moe Green" Rocco) helps him to get laid -- with a crazy USO volunteer, who attacks him in a closet and fucks him on top of an arcade bowling machine. The woman, like the gags she's a part of, is never seen again; we cut to six weeks later, and Lionel is not feeling well. Gaining the sympathy of one of his students -- on whose skirt he threw up -- Lionel walks the young woman, Segoynia, home to meet her bizarre family, who seem every kind of Eastern European immigrant stereotype going back to... well, the Marxes again. (One brother has a hat like Chico.) When old grandma reads the tea leaves, she declares Lionel to be pregnant. Hilarity then ensues.
Well, not necessarily: Lionel becomes a media darling, honored by the President, but then suddenly, when the Indian Prime Minister realizes that men getting pregnant could mean an even more overpopulated world, she suggests to other world leaders that something must be done. The President himself offers Lionel a hundred grand to "stop" having the baby. (This is five years after Roe v. Wade. More on that dynamic later.) The world turns on Lionel, who goes into hiding, but eventually having the baby... on Christmas day.
Rivers found a lot of work for many of her old friends and heroes. By 1978, she'd been a very popular "square" on The Hollywood Squares game show, and several of her chums appear: Paul Lynde plays the OB/GYN, George Gobel the President, and Fanny Flagg his wife. Squares hostPeter Marshall himself appears as himself, crying that because of Lionel's pregnancy, over five hundred questions the show has asked have been wrong, and that the show is going to have to be canceled! The great Imogene Coca, co-star with Sid Ceasar for so many years in the fifties, plays Segoynia's mother. The most hilarious performance is by Doris Roberts as Lionel's mother, a Jewish version of the Marie Barone she'd play decades later on Everybody Loves Raymond.
To criticize the film for not adding up seems silly, since it really isn't about that. Come on: the Carpenters are nominally goyish -- we seem them going to a baptism and celebrating Easter -- but clearly Mrs C. is another variation on Sophie Portnoy. (One funny bit comes outside the church, where Charlotte Rae, a family friend, asks the reverend, played by Tom Poston, if she can come in even though she's Jewish -- she thanks him, and then, touching his cross, says, you know we didn't have anything to do with that.) Rivers works with these incongruities and comes to an interesting subtle double standard at work: an unmarried man gets pregnant, and he becomes a media star. Think about that.
And then, when everyone turns against him, the President wants him to "stop" having the baby. The term "abortion" is not used. How he should "stop" is not discussed. He's just not supposed to have it. And before all the media attention is poured onto Lionel, he is never even given a chance to consider the possibility (let alone "choice") of terminating the pregnancy: he's too much of a "freak" to have any say in the matter. Much like the circumstances of women who give birth to quints (and higher) and find themselves surrounded by media, Lionel becomes swept away (though I don't remember Mrs. Fisher ever going on a worldwide tour).
The world tour satirizes the ways mass media turn nobodies into heroes, but one liners fall flat; the visit to Africa is just plain horrible. In its attempt to turn racist stereotypes on their heads, the scene just reproduces them. It's embarrassing, plain and simple. (The same could be said of the Peace Corps scene from Airplane!, though, yet that film was a blockbuster smash and is still considered a classic, y the likes of, well, everyone, including me..)
The Christmas birth of the baby carries the more obvious analogy for the film: "divinely" conceived, the child is to be the "newborn king," according to Segoynia, which is why her crazy family agrees to stand guard and protect Lionel. Eventually, Segoynia and Lionel fall in love, so that she becomes Joseph to Lionel's Mary. In case you missed it, let me remind you that Lionel's last name refers to Joseph's profession: carpenter. (Unless you think that Rives and Redack came up with the name by listening to some Lite-FM station.) Yes, the Carpenters celebrate Easter -- which is when the film begins, a celebration of Christ's death and resurrection -- but they are as Jewish as Mel Brooks' 2000-year old man. The joke at the end -- a declaration that "it's a girl!" -- falls terribly flat, which is too bad, but again, this film is not about plot.
Rabbit Test never became a cult classic, and is unlikely to, even as a copy of the film garners a few extra hits on YouTube. There are many jokes that miss (though many that hit), and the aggressive, one-liner style of Rivers' standup cannot sustain a narrative like this. You watch it because Roberts is really funny, because Rocco is great, and because frankly I grin big every time I see Imogene on a screen, knowing I'm going to laugh any second. The film stands as a daring effort within its context, but Rivers stayed with her standup work, and enjoyed a lot more ups (and a few downs, like the sudden drop in the ratings of her own late night talk show, which some say contributed to her husband Rosenberg's suicide) in the second half of her celebrity. Her significance should not be overlooked: Phyllis Diller may have opened the door, but Joan Rivers smashed it wide.
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