‘Can We Talk?’ Joan River Memorial Was a Star Studded Event

Joan Rivers’s directions for her own funeral service were printed in the program the ushers handed out on Sunday (Sept 7, 2014) at Temple Emanu-El on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. “I want my funeral to be a big showbiz affair with lights, cameras, action,” the paragraph-long directive said. “I want paparazzi and I want publicists making a scene! I want it to be Hollywood all the way. I don’t want some rabbi rambling on.” 

It was a star studded even…check out who was there. Joan Rivers did not get every wish that was listed in the program (and in her 2012 book, “I Hate Everyone ... Starting With Me,” from which her directions were copied). She said she wanted Meryl Streep “crying, in five different accents.”

Rivers passed away at Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC after going into cardiac arrest on Aug. 28 at an outpatient surgery clinic. Her body was cremated.