Expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed This is the mantra of the pessimist and the persecuted alike the preemptive strike of those who tend to paint the picture a little blacker than it is the orneriest creature ever to darken Hollywood’s door lived by the heartwarming motto “Fuck them over before they fuck you over first.” long enough to know that she does not exactly share this view of the world even if she likes to muck around in it from time to time she considers it a flaw in her late husband’s character one that set in motion the chain reaction that almost destroyed her career: In the mid-eighties Rivers was one of the most successful comedians in the world She was the highest-paid entertainer on the Vegas Strip and Johnny Carson’s permanent guest host on the Tonight Show until she was lured away to Fox to host her own late-night talk show was a toxic presence on the set of her show fighting bitterly with Barry Diller and Rupert Murdoch over everything from office furniture to money Joan and Edgar were fired after only seven months for leaving; she was effectively banned from late night hardly ever invited to appear on Letterman Her marriage fell apart and then Edgar swallowed a bottle of pills just a year after Edgar had killed himself She was moving back to New York after fourteen years in Los Angeles and taking over Linda Lavin’s role in Broadway Bound a gig that she says pulled her life out of its nosedive It wouldn’t be the last time she found redemption through her work It has been served to us by Kevin and Debbie who have been living with her for twenty years in their own quarters in her grand apartment (“Marie Antoinette would have lived here,” Rivers likes to say The Joan Rivers diet: You can eat anything you want before 3 p.m she puts a small pile of Altoids on the table next to her plate which she eats one after another while barely touching her food We are talking about the peculiar turn of events her life has taken recently how she is suddenly squarely at the center of the culture again—something that has escaped her since her Fox debacle Much of it has to do with a new documentary about her life that it is “one of the most truthful documentaries about show business I’ve seen Also maybe the funniest.” The film comes at the end of a remarkable year for Rivers one that began when she won The Celebrity Apprentice (after one of the uglier reality-TV showdowns) and two-bit poker players to emerge—somehow—as the sympathetic character It’s unfamiliar territory for Rivers: to be the one people root for But then this: “People who have seen the film come up to me and say ‘I never liked you until now.’ TV interviewers say ‘Even if you have always hated Joan Rivers … you are going to love her and be mesmerized by this film.’ They spit right in my face and then spend the next ten minutes wiping it dry.” That is when she shows me the pillow she has embroidered that sits on a leather couch in her study: DON’T EXPECT PRAISE WITHOUT ENVY UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD If Joan Rivers has a hard time taking a compliment she has an even tougher time handing one out “I will only praise someone who can’t take anything away from me,” she says with a mordant laugh “People ask me all the time: ‘What do you think about Sarah Silverman?’ ” She switches into a comically polite-insincere voice Even at this late stage in her 40-year career Rivers is nowhere near ready to cede the stage to a younger generation (As her former manager Billy Sammeth says in the film “Right now they see her as a plastic-surgery freak who’s past her sell-by date … But God help the next queen of comedy Never will.”) I am reminded of an e-mail she sent me a couple of years ago when she was at yet another low point in her career I asked her what she thought of Kathy Griffin “I am her friend but also furious,” she wrote My club dates have simply vanished and gone to her I love her!’ I fucking want to strangle them The fucking New Yorker did this big piece on the genius of Rickles who is brilliant but who hasn’t changed a line in fifteen years I am totally ‘old hat’ and ignored while in reality I could still wipe the floor with both Kathy and Sarah Rivers made her first trip to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City Directed by Ricki Stern with Annie Sundberg whose previous two documentaries were about wrongful convictions and Darfur (go figure) the film is essentially a year in the life of Rivers if not the hardest-working person in show business then certainly its most unrelenting practitioner Ricki Stern is the daughter of her friends Marjorie and Michael Stern a couple Rivers met five years ago “at a stuffy dinner party” in Connecticut “Marjorie was the only person who laughed out loud when someone said Demi Moore was talented,” jokes Rivers Rivers wears a slight variation of the same all-black outfit every day Among the green and crunchy in their polar fleece and turquoise jewelry Though she calls herself an independent and voted for Obama Thinks we should just bomb the shit out of Iran Detests whining and victimhood and laziness Sundance is a tribal gathering of the too earnest and the no fun—artistes in hypocritically expensive jeans she sits down for an interview with the film critic Peter Travers and he asks her about her first trip to the festival Are you going to be serious while you’re here “When I meet Bob Redford I will be serious,” she says She travels around town in a black Escalade bursting with entourage: two assistants hair-and-makeup man Martyn and his boyfriend Digby Rivers slaying the group with metronomic consistency constantly streaming one-liners: sometimes shocking As we are heading into a restaurant on Main Street for lunch one day she is swarmed by a group of very young people with pierced lips and pink hair as a young film-industry guy tells me one night at a party is considered cool to people too young to know her as anything but the outrageous red-carpet lady the strangest-looking chick in the group yells I called Rivers to ask about the documentary and I got hit with her don’t-expect-anything-and-you-won’t-be-disappointed voodoo “They don’t wear makeup.” Do you like the movie “They forgot to show that I actually enjoy my life.” it is finally sinking in that the movie is good and after a long wait in a makeshift greenroom there is a silly press conference and photo op that she should have made a documentary about her life selling jewelry on QVC called Semi-Precious Rivers seems nervous on her way in to the theater It is the first time she is seeing the film on a big screen in front of an audience with whom she has been friends for several years “Outer-inner circle.”) HRH sends her a Christmas gift every year “I took a picture under my Christmas tree with the teacups and wrote ‘How could you send me two teacups when I’m alone?’ Another time I wrote ‘I’m enjoying tea with my best friend!’ and I sent a picture of me in a cemetery He never says to me when I see him”—doing his accent perfectly—“ ‘Ohhhh funny funny funny!’ So this year I thought I’m just going to write him a nice thank-you note And the other day our mutual friend calls and says “I can’t wait to see Joan’s note this year!” ’ ” a steady stream of fans and well-wishers stop to chat A woman in the aisle in front of us turns around and asks I have many friends in the business they don’t bother with anymore who are asked to step aside on the red carpet “Hillary comes off as furious and rightfully so McCain is an egocentric fool.” The other she is reading is George Carlin’s Last Words and then the selling out for any shitty award.” She is funny in the way that your funniest friend is: aware of everything “Who do you hate?” is one of her conversation starters and it always works because there is always someone to hate “How can I help out Kitty Kelley,” she says My recent favorite example also highlights the rarefied world in which Rivers sometimes travels Not long ago she was invited to dinner at Lily Safra’s home at 820 Fifth Avenue Safra owns the most expensive residence in the world the $500 million Villa Leopolda in the south of France the dozens of Fabergé clocks in Safra’s house “Doesn’t it just make you feel poor?” To which Rivers replied name me one other person in this room who is playing Cleveland this weekend.” One of the most consistently subversive things about Rivers is her level of commitment to a spur-of-the-moment prank I have seen her pull off dozens of them over the years she crawled on her hands and knees into a waiting room full of socialites and models and screwing up her face to resemble a stroke victim she played a practical joke on Marjorie Stern and some unsuspecting diners at Sarabeth’s: “It’s like three weeks into the Bernie Madoff thing,” says Rivers and there are two tables to pass before you get to our table And one was like six Jewish ladies and the other was two Jewish couples Madoff doesn’t want people to know it’s her.’ I said it loud enough for the other tables to overhear it.” Marjorie And I look over at Joan to see what the problem is and she says Sit here!’ At which point the entire place is stunned speechless When I remind her that there are six Jewish ladies who now think she is friends with Ruth Madoff and when I answered the phone a bit too quickly she said she called and asked me if I wanted to meet her for lunch at Windows on the Ground She pushes as far as she can as soon as she can In the film there is a scene where Rivers is playing some lousy casino in Wisconsin and she does a bit about Helen Keller and a man stands and bellows “It’s not very funny if you have a deaf son!” Rivers lets him have it Comedy is to make everybody laugh at everything And don’t start telling me that I shouldn’t be saying it One of the great misconceptions about Rivers is that she is mean-spirited and heartless—that there is nothing more to her than her comedy or her red-carpet patter To the celebrities who are on the receiving end of some of her sharpest material she can seem cruel but as a civilian she is surprisingly sensitive she is brought to tears a half-dozen times A journalist interviewing her on camera asks if she could sing a few bars of the song that’s been in her head lately a few lines from “Send in the Clowns” (“Isn’t it rich / Isn’t it queer … ”) And ‘Send in the Clowns’ is a song that says you need that because it’s all … ” She chokes up again and then says One day at Sundance while we are waiting for a screening to end Rivers is approached by an older gentleman “I just have to interrupt.” Rivers looks up at him and cautiously smiles “I want to thank you for bringing me joy in 1960 in Korea.” Her body language changes in an instant “I was a gay soldier in peacetime Korea who was starved for Broadway,” he continues “and you were performing with the USO troop.” He pauses to watch the memory dawn on Rivers’s face “And Jeanne … Jeanne Beauvais,” says Rivers “The opera singer … How do you remember the names?” “I was way up above the 38th Parallel in Camp Kaiser “That was my first traveling job that paid,” says Rivers Light comedy,” says the man to Rivers’s entourage “We were on the DMZ line between North and South Korea Patience Cleveland was pregnant and was trying to have an abortion We got these two crazy marines to ride us over bumpy terrain in Korea went to a Chinese restaurant on West 46th Street and went down into the basement and got an abortion.” Rivers pauses for a nanosecond—wait for it—and finds the line What strikes me as this scene unfolds is just how long Rivers has been this radically modern presence One of the best things about the documentary is that it reminds you with great archival footage of Rivers’s early TV performances that she is the mother of a certain brand of transgressive female comedy Would there be a Sandra Bernhard or a Roseanne or a Rosie O’Donnell or a Kathy Griffin or a Sarah Silverman I am every woman’s outrage about where they put us,” she says to me one day All that anger and madness comes out onstage.” “She died in my mid-to-late forties,” she says My friend Alice told me at her funeral that my mother once said to her And she did it all herself!’ It still makes me cry Both of my parents got to see me host Carson That’s all anyone wants: to have their parents see they’re going to be all right in life.” Some of the more visceral scenes in the documentary are between Joan and Melissa that gives you a glimpse into the dynamic: classic yenta behavior on Joan’s part; stuck in a sullen teenage gear on Melissa’s part Someone who knows both women well said to me recently “The greatest thing about Joan is her bravado her ability to just laugh at everything and push through But her greatest weakness is that moment when she can’t push through and she really takes something in She can become unreasonable and vindictive when she feels that Melissa has been wronged When Melissa has an enemy it has to be Joan’s enemy But Joan carries it to the level of a crusade.” I ask Melissa if she thinks her mother is still reacting out of guilt over that terrible time in their lives “I think she does have a lot of unresolved guilt.” But “as an adult I have such a clearer perspective and acceptance of who my mother is and why she does what she does.” She also concedes that she has plenty of baggage of her own ‘You have to take care of your mother.’ I take that very I feel like she is my responsibility.” She pauses for a moment I feel like we have a really good relationship And it’s very normal in abnormal circumstances.” Melissa was worried at first about the documentary “Melissa is a very private person,” Joan says … Okay!” When Ricki Stern showed Rivers a rough cut Most of her complaints were about what was not in the film: Where’s the red carpet “And then there were certain things that you really shouldn’t put in “I talked about Edgar one night and it was very late and I was saying what I say very often which is that I walk past his picture and give him the finger But Melissa seems to be coming around: “The first time I saw the film it was very difficult to watch She is showing parts of herself that I see and I understand and I was worried that other people wouldn’t understand the family begins filming a reality show for WE called Mother Knows Best Rivers has rented out her house in Connecticut for the season and is moving in with Melissa and her 9-year-old son He recently told me that he knew that I was famous “I don’t know if it’s going to wreck our lives I think it’s going to be very hard on us because I don’t want it to be one of these stupid reality shows with real mother-daughter conflict and real problems.” Like what “I want her to get married to the boyfriend and they don’t want to get married I am not comfortable with somebody coming down the stairs in his jockey shorts who is not married to her.” completely supportive of gay rights and everyone should be able to do whatever they want and yet she can’t believe that I don’t want to get married again!” There will be plenty of grist for argument “Everything she does in the house gets me crazy,” says Rivers of her daughter The way that Rivers lives is very old-fashioned and extremely formal with her live-in butler and stiff dinner parties with finger bowls “It comes from the way my mother was raised,” she says “She came from very rich Russians who had servants but my mother remembered that from childhood or tried to.” I tell her that people are surprised when they see the film by how grandly she lives—this foulmouthed comic in her gilded palace ‘You are standing on mud.’ So the formality the rigidness of sitting down to a beautiful table But that’s because I’ve just come from hearing someone say ‘If you’ve always hated Joan Rivers … !’ I want things to look pretty Rivers sent me an e-mail while she was out in L.A “Just bought Melissa three hundred dollars’ worth of new place mats “That is a perfect example of what our relationship is like,” says Melissa But my mother had the car stop on the way from the airport to my house And showed up with all sorts of new place mats and napkins All this talk of proper homemaking reminds me of something Rivers said to me years ago She was talking about the scene in one of her favorite movies when Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine realize that their relationship is not what they thought it was “even in a pretty house.” When I mention this to her now she says “Sure did on Ambazac Way”—where they lived in L.A “Age is so frustrating,” she says to me in her study in New York ‘Give me ten more good years and I’ll call it a day.’ Age is the one thing that is absolutely coming at you I have my checkups and the doctors always say ‘I can’t get over it!’ But I am pedaling as fast as I can People always ask Rivers why she doesn’t just retire “But they don’t get that I love it,” she says “ ‘We’re going to the Kentucky Derby and then taking cooking lessons in Venice and then we are going on so-and-so’s boat and then perhaps five fun days with a group to the Galápagos!’ And you go When I ask her how she fell in with that crowd Guest and through her I met Jerry Zipkin and I had no idea that if Jerry and C.Z And it’s all very glamorous at the beginning ‘Did you ever have an affair?’ And she stared at me like I was crazy someone had just bought an apartment and I said ‘That is really none of your business.’ And I thought Then we are not friends and I don’t want to spend any more time with you I was friendly with one couple who I no longer see at all ‘We’re such good friends.’ And then I found out that their daughter had a complete nervous breakdown then what are we wasting our time here at Elaine’s or Mortimer’s or Swifty’s I don’t want to sit in Swifty’s and not say anything about anything Blaine Trump is one of the few people I am friends with out of that period if we are sitting down and it’s after 6 p.m. Because we’ve all lied to each other all day long in business and we’ve all had these lunches and we’ve all ass-kissed to the point where I carry Chapstick If I am going to sit down and eat with you just tell me the truth and let me say to you One of the saddest times in Rivers’s life since I have known her was when her best friend Tommy Corcoran died a few years ago Rivers spoke to him three times a day and he walked Melissa down the aisle at her wedding When I ask her about the challenges of getting old she says It’s the thinning out of people with whom you have a history But I look at my living room at night and I see Tommy and the good times and that just really upsets me To go into your apartment and nobody cares that you came off the plane very late And suddenly you develop tremendous attachments to your dogs I’ve got to rush home to the dogs!’ They’ll be just fine without me.” There is a long silence as she looks up to keep the tears from ruining her makeup “And the other thing with age is that you have no tolerance Rivers insists that I move out of my fleabag hotel and into a giant suite that is connected to her giant suite at the Stein Eriksen Lodge “and I will only use it to put on hair and makeup.” And so we become roommates for a couple of days and she closes the door between our suites “My day starts when I get home and it’s finally over,” she says I want two and a half hours with no one talking Rivers comes in wearing her nightgown and no makeup and she and Martyn begin the lengthy beautification routine as Rivers is sitting in a chair getting made up for some event “It’s very scary when you see yourself totally without any makeup … Oh I get up in the morning and the first thing I do is I get into makeup ever told me I’m beautiful.” The insecurity is touching and perhaps a clue as to why she has availed herself of so much plastic surgery over the years Rivers has had three big relationships since Edgar That lasted four years.” Then there was Bernard I was standing there in the pouring rain at Lincoln Center and he said to me ‘You are so spoiled.’ I remember saying to him we would be on the subway and I wouldn’t be saying a word What are we proving here?’ Bernard carried the ketchup back and forth to the Hamptons who served as New York State’s parks commissioner He was a World War II hero who was injured in the Battle of the Bulge and had the use of only one leg and walked with metal braces Blech.’ Melissa never got what I liked about him I ask her if she still hopes to meet someone And my terms are: Pay every bill I have and you’ve got to understand that I love my life and I love the theater There is one man in particular she’s interested in He’s taking me to the dog show.” She laughs “He’s a man in his seventies and he’s going to meet a very beautiful young woman in her fifties who will move in so fast and she will show him a picture of her twat and it’s finished.” after a packed screening at the festival (“Listen to them laugh,” Rivers had said backstage Rivers comes into my room and her mood has changed Melissa calls me up beyond happy” about the good reviews for her new book about lessons learned on the red carpet who I have had dinner with three or four times and really clicked with He asked me to save the week of February 14 because he’s coming in ‘Coming with a lady I’ve met that I know you will love as much as I do Can’t wait to spend the week with you!’ My God There’s no such thing as ‘everything is going great.’ ” Rivers and her entourage are going to dinner at an Italian restaurant to celebrate her assistant Jocelyn’s birthday so Jocelyn decides we ought to take the shuttle bus into town “The diva is going out in style,” she says to her boss but we all feel it’s the safest way.” We arrive at the restaurant and Rivers immediately begins to kvetch and worry about where we are going to be seated But as soon as we settle at the table—a big round corner table with a beautiful view of the snow falling on the side of the mountain—her mood lifts She ignores her mints and actually eats her dinner She also knocks back a couple of glasses of red wine and before long is on a serious roll telling funny stories and teasing the waitress (“You are never going to meet a man with that butch haircut”) As we await the arrival of the birthday cake Rivers launches into a story about a night in the early nineties when she performed at a big star-studded televised Comedy Central event at Radio City Music Hall What I remember most about that night is how great she looked how nervous she was in the limo as she ran her lines and how she roared through her set and the audience went nuts I have never once heard her brag about a performance “I walked in there and killed.” The disappointing part was what happened next They wanted to put me up there with the Greats and the Has-Beens Don’t you put me out there with Phyllis Diller and Milton Berle I was so angry that I wouldn’t stay for the finale “But that night was a big night in my life.” And then she says and each one has their own little show and I don’t I wouldn’t be where I am but for yoooou.’ ” She takes a big gulp of her wine Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York As bars and restaurants reopened for dine-in service in June hundreds of front-of-the-house workers bore the brunt of a new workplace resigned amid accusations of creating a toxic workplace culture Williams was the architect of hundreds of buildings that shaped LA He worked with Pereira & Luckman on the Theme Building at LAX airport Donate by midnight tomorrow and your $100 becomes $200 for KCRW thanks to a $10,000 match by music legend Moby DOuble dollars Get the latest from KCRW in your inbox 3x a week By Rick BrettellSpecial Contributor and the location of the rock from which the Prophet Mohammed ascended into heaven Jerusalem lays equal claim to the imagination of Jews Woe to the museum that tries to bring these conflicting narratives together in an exhibition that presents the city including the works of art and literature that define it at a time of maximum conflict: the period 1000-1400 This is the age of what Christians call the Crusades and what Muslims call Jihad — both religious wars News RoundupsCatch up on the day's news you need to know GoogleFacebookBy signing up you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy Only the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York could even try And the exhibition created for this one-venue exhibition is one of the most important I have seen in a lifetime of visiting exhibitions Each religious tradition is equally respected and presented — indeed the only people who will feel left out of this exhibition are believers of one of Asia's great religions like Hinduism proponents of African or Indigenous American religious traditions The big three monotheistic religions of the west each have their home in "Jerusalem 1000 - 1400: Every People Under Heaven." I confess that I entered the exhibition with a real sense of skepticism — that so much material designed for one or other of these religions could be brought together coherently I gave myself a good hour to see it and came out the other end after three hours I write about it for The Dallas Morning News both because the exhibition will never come to Texas and because it contains several important loans from the Keir Collection of Islamic Art on long term loan to the Dallas Museum of Art and tolerance to the majority of people who live in North Texas and who follow one of the three religious traditions it elucidates It forces us to remember that all three religions share the Hebrew Bible which Christians call the Old Testament and the Quran refers to as the Suhuf Ibrahim (scrolls of Abraham) Never in my life have I seen an art museum become a kind of religious "Geneva" — a place where three different religious traditions are equally valued and a place where the tensions between them are made manifest in a way that promotes dialogue and understanding rather than more strife There is an entire section of the exhibition on Crusade and Jihad — a section in which Christian knights and kings battle with Islamic rulers and religious leaders perhaps the greatest Islamic military leader of the age is presented with the same respect that goes to Christian Knights like the anonymous one from the d'Aluye family whose tomb we see in the MET's courageous exhibition We see precious objects made for all three religious traditions — crosses and books in the Christian tradition — and extraordinary illuminated texts from Islam including scenes from the life and ascension of Mohammed himself that took place in the third holiest Muslin site after Mecca and Medina Those of us who remember all the scandals over the iconoclastic beliefs of many modern Muslims against representation of the prophet will see clearly that this tradition was not in force in the centuries after the Prophet's death There are, of course, no graven images from the Jewish traditions, but the plethora of beautiful texts more than make up for this absence. Perhaps the most precious work in the exhibition for a Jewish visitor is the plan of David's temple made by Maimonides and astronomer who has as important a role in Islamic as in Jewish science and who was the personal physician of Saladin To see Maimonides' handwriting and his attempts to recreate on paper a building that was already lost to the Jews brought tears to the eyes of many museum visitors I witnessed in my three hours The sheer ambition of this project together with its subtle installation with many modern photographs and plans Not since the extraordinary exhibition several years ago at the Kimbell Art Museum of early Christian art or the ambitious Art of the West exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art two generations ago have these issues been raised so powerfully — and so unapologetically — in an art museum in North Texas; and these were more limited in their subjects. Highlights? The level of quality in the exhibition is so high that this viewer became almost numbed by the plethora of precious objects — objects that in every sense transcend "art." The Islamic metalwork, glass, and manuscripts are simply awesome, and the Christian works are so spectacular that I simply couldn't believe that I was actually in their presence. The reliquary Cross of Jacques de Vitry from France, the ivory Psalter cover of Melisende, Queen of Jerusalem from the British Library, The Stavelot Triptych from the Morgan Library, and the Chasse of Ambazac from the Treasury ot Grandmont Limoges are alone worth the plane ticket to New York. But, the highlight of highlights must be seen to be believed — five like-new carved limestone capitals discovered in 1908 under the building site of the new Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth. They are so brilliant and so perfectly preserved that they seem to have come directly from the sculptor's workshop, and all current scholarship suggests that these capitals, which look so "French," were in fact made in Nazareth in what was surely an international workshop in the early 1170s. Looking at Islamic metalwork, Christian stone carving, and Jewish manuscripts, every viewer is filled with respect for three religions which, in many ways, built on the achievement of the earlier. In the MET, "art" is not neutral — it is charged with meaning and religious significance in such a way that we emerge with a sense that Jerusalem itself is at once Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. It belongs not to one of these religions, but to all three — equally. Thank you for reading. We welcome your thoughts on this topic. Comments are moderated for adherence to our Community Guidelines Please read the guidelines before participating Rivers provided endless entertainment with her hilarious antics and received a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album To say she was funny is a massive understatement And keeping Joan Rivers’ memory alive is her daughter Melissa would often appear alongside her mother on the red carpet and the two starred together in the YouTube channel A post shared by Meet my Mom with Jenna Carley (@meetmymompod) on Apr 23 RELATED: How Joan Rivers Changed My Life She’s the only daughter of the late comedian but her mother’s death wasn’t the first time she suffered a huge tragedy her father’s passing early in her life left a huge impact Edgar Rosenberg married Joan Rivers in 1965 He was a British film and television producer and got his start as an assistant to Emanuel Sacks He went on to work for a public relations firm and became the co-founder of Telsun Foundation a production company associated with the UN He developed television films to promote the UN he was the producer on The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers their relationship was a “total sham.” Rivers said he treated her poorly during their marriage and she admitted to having several affairs Rosenberg committed suicide by overdosing on prescription pills four days after Rivers asked him for a separation which Rivers thought was triggered by taking medication after a heart attack RELATED: How Did Lisa Sheridan Die? New Details About The Tragic Death Of The Actress At 44 Though both of Melissa’s parents have passed away she recently opened up about her father’s suicide and how it affected her She discussed his passing with ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr Jennifer Ashton in the podcast "Life After Suicide." In a preview of the interview obtained by the Daily Mail I used to call it like this free-floating sort of anger.” RARE PHOTO (1979): Joan Rivers, Husband Edgar Rosenberg & Melissa Rivers in their garden at Ambazac Way! pic.twitter.com/EssfeAAjyc — John Sparks ツ (@IAmJohnSparks) September 6, 2014 Rivers also noted that she felt ostracized in the wake of his passing you feel like you have a big giant stamp on you According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, roughly 47,000 people committed suicide in 2017. And in a newsletter for Harvard Health Publishing many family members and friends of those who committed suicide find it hard to seek help for their trauma and grief The aftermath of a suicide can lead to trauma the world can hopefully see the impact that suicide has on families RELATED: Remembering Joan Rivers: Her 20 Best Quotes About Love & Sex Samantha Maffucci is an editor for YourTango who focuses on writing trending news and entertainment pieces © 2025 by Tango Publishing Corporation All Rights Reserved