Q 13

PLAYBOY: The sense of fun has gone out of a lot of areas of life. Sports, for instance. Everything is salary. Has that gotten out of control?

Joan Rivers: I don't care, because I hate sports. When I was single, I had to participate. I mean, picture this Jew in tennis shoes. I used to go sailing. You understand, I was going out with a guy from Harvard. I used to get hit in the head with the boom. I had concussions every spring. Try to sail and hide your thighs at the same time. Try to sail in high heels. It isn't easy to run on the deck, with Spring-O-Lators.

But somebody was saying to me how disgusting it is with the salaries in Las Vegas. If you can bring them in, and they want to give you that, you're a fool not to take it. I'm all for big salaries. I'm also for big payoffs under the table. I'm looking to become a tool of the Mob. I'm looking for some big mafioso to say, "Get your hands off her. She's Sinatra's woman." I'm waiting for that. That has never happened. Those are my fantasies--"Leave her alone. She's Bob Mitchum's gal." I met Robert Mitchum at a party. I just stood and laughed into his stomach--he's so big.

Q 14

PLAYBOY: Having lived on both coasts, what are the differences between New York women and Los Angeles women?

Joan Rivers: New York women are, by far, brighter, snappier, better dressers and doing more with their lives and are unafraid. California women are much more beautiful, nobody is over 11 and they're all frightened to get old. I have friends who exercise under their desks. In California, there's always the successful guy with the great-looking blonde on his arm and she lives only to stay "the great-looking blonde." In New York, you may have a great-looking woman, but she's also an art historian working for the Metropolitan Museum. In California, the women are much more "men's women," much more athletic, and they all look like Rod Stewart with hair bows. They're all thinner out here, too. Very depressing. Except it's cheaper when you give a dinner party in California.

Q 15

PLAYBOY: Why is that?

Joan Rivers: In California, you don't have to serve anything. Just six Quaaludes and everybody's happy. In New York, they're looking for fine French food.

Q 16

PLAYBOY: How do the Eastern rich differ from the Western rich?

Joan Rivers: The Eastern rich know how to spend it. The Eastern rich are not frightened to have French furniture or own an old master. They're not frightened to go to Europe. I mean, that's what the fun of money is: to go and buy clothes over there at the showings. Eastern lifestyle is much more formal. The only time you see anybody in California in a tuxedo is when they're burying him. Here, the rich don't spend their money the way I like to spend it. Let me put it this way: If I see one more piece of country French furniture or Lucite, I shall throw up. I have a very formal living room because it's nice to have a formal living room as we sit in our warm comfortable den. It's nice to have a formal side to your life, too. These people out here are a little frightened of that. I bring finger bowls out at parties, and people out here get very nervous when they see that. They think entertaining means a bathing suit and a bowl of chili.

Q 17

PLAYBOY: How do you keep creatively sharp living in Los Angeles?

Joan Rivers: We read everything in sight. The only extravagance we have, besides putting a bid in for Buckingham Palace, is we go into a bookstore and buy anything we want. That really keeps you very up to date. You have to be up to date; otherwise, you're dead in my business.

I also read the National Enquirer, because when I go onstage, that's what they want to know about: that Princess Caroline is a tramp. And poor Grace Kelly, no wonder they say she boozes--her daughter is sleeping around Monaco--and Caroline Kennedy is a bore. Second-generation kids are pugh. A lot of it has to do with the parents' not being there when they should have been. I mean the mothers more than the fathers.

Q 18

PLAYBOY: Besides being a comedienne, you've also directed a movie. What did you learn from your experience with Rabbit Test?

Joan Rivers: It got lousy reviews on the whole. PLAYBOY loved it, Denver loved it, Chicago loved it. I can tell you who loved it: Gene Shalit should only die. His mustache should pull him down into the pool. I remember Gene Shalit when he was a flack, hanging out at the Upstairs at the Downstairs, saying, "Think I'm funny?" He was a big, fat boy. He knew I'd mortgaged my home to finance Rabbit Test and he said on television twice "I hope she loses the house over this." I know he's a really funny guy and can be a lot funnier than me, but his special came in last place. That's the way it goes. I hope he reads his reviews.

Think I get a little defensive? It doesn't sound like much now, but we put up $492,000. When we paid off the note, the bank did a photo reduction of the signed document and pasted it on bottle of wine and gave it to us, which was very sweet.

Q 19

PLAYBOY: Now that we're out of the "me" decade, what is going to happen to the gay culture that was flourishing at the end of the Seventies?

Joan Rivers: First of all, I am so pro-gay, I owe my career to the gays. They found me first. But the Seventies got too liberal at the end. On the other hand, the born-again religious fanatics are very terrifying. It's scary, you know, when God only listens to certain people.

The women made their point in the Seventies. Let's all relax, Unfortunately it's gone so far. I don't want to watch The Phil Donahue Show and see elderly gays telling me there's an alternative lifestyle for my child. This is not an alternative lifestyle. This is a lifestyle that will happen because of something the child has no control over. But it is not a choice. I think of myself as a fat Queen Victoria now, and yet I was the first straight person to put my name in the ad against Anita Bryant.

Don't you love how she swung around, that bitch, when she suddenly found a rich guy who doesn't feel the way she does? A lot of conviction there. But she lost the commercials. Weren't they smart, how they did that? Just very quietly, they cased her out.

Enjoy yourself. You go through life once, do anything you want--but quietly. I'm so bored with guilt. If you really see an animal you like, why not? But don't tell me about it and don't ask me to double-date with you and your chimp and don't say to my daughter, "Have you tried a great Dane?" Keep it to yourself and don't try to convert anybody.

Q 20

PLAYBOY: What comes between you and your Calvins?

Joan Rivers: Longies and body wrapping. If my Calvins could talk, they would yawn.