Revealing Joan Rivers psychology

If you want to watch "The Girl Most Likely To," it's on YouTube. The story was written by Joan Rivers and she gets credit as co-writer of the screenplay. It's her story about her own life.

It's really a fascinating look into her psyche and motivations. It's about an ugly girl who hates the people who snubbed her. Then, when she gets to be beautiful, she goes back and kills them all. It's a classic revenge fantasy.

Clearly, Joan Rivers is channeling her own feelings about herself. She always felt unattractive and said many times that she hated her own body and appearance. What one sees in the movie is a catalogue of the slights she must have felt during her early life. Being isolated because of her looks. Being dumped and humiliated by men. Being ignored by good-looking people. Being invisible and lonely. It's really very sad and the movie is redolent of her own self-hatred.

She must have wondered, "How would my life have been different if I had been beautiful?" She imagines that men would pay attention to her, that she would be popular, and that she would not be so utterly alone. This also helps to explain her obsession with plastic surgery. She was trying, not simply to stop her aging, but to turn herself into the woman she wanted to be. She wanted to be happy with her own appearance and was willing to do whatever it took to feel better about herself. In the movie, Miriam is transformed by plastic surgery; that's what she hoped to accomplish for herself.

There are lines throughout that seem lifted from her comedy routines: "I was a beautiful person who had been kidnapped by an ugly body." "When the boys played doctor with me, I was the receptionist." "The advantage of looking like me is that I never had to worry about getting old and losing my looks."

Over the years, she came to hate her oppressors and the result is this movie. How could she get back at them? What would she do? She was filled with resentment and had fantasies of killing them all. But even this rage is filtered through comedy.

That was her gift. She could translate this hurt and turn it into humor.