16 surprisingly endearing things about Joan Rivers in A Piece of Work

• Seth Keal/IFC Films
• CAN WE STILL TALK? Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

The release of the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work provides a counterpoint to the current adulation of Betty White. In her late 80s, White projects a sweet persona that's made her a national treasure. The new film follows a year in the life of 75 year-old Joan Rivers, whose abrasive, confrontational persona proves consistent with her desperation to reclaim the spotlight. Rivers may be one of the complex characters in any film to be released this year. In one characteristic contradiction, she makes profane, uproarious insults through-out her stand-up act — then wonders why audiences don't embrace her. But A Piece of Work provides plenty of reasons to like her, at least for the course of the film.

1. For the very first shots, she allows herself to be photographed without make-up — a ballsy choice, given that the notorious results of her plastic surgery at times make her look like one of the marionettes from Team America: World Police.

2. She has a work ethic that would probably kill a performer half her age and will apparently go anywhere. An early sequence follows her down a squalid staircase, through a shabby backstage area to the stage of a tiny club, where she reveals to her audience that her stool has been repaired with duct tape.

3. She’s terrified of having an empty calendar, but can joke about all the white space on her day planner: “Okay, let me get my sunglasses.”

4. She keeps jokes in voluminous index cards, like an old school library, and takes one from the drawer marked “Cooking/Tony Danza:” “Why should a woman cook? So her husband can say ‘My wife makes a delicious cake’ to some hooker?”