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Joan Rivers Mortgaged Her Home to Make a Movie About Billy Crystal Getting Pregnant

The stand-up pioneer never directed another film as long as she lived

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Joan Rivers made her directorial debut with the 1978 comedy Rabbit Test. The stand-up pioneer was so passionate about the project that she raised the funds herself after being turned away by several film studios. To get the movie made, Rivers went so far as to remortgage her home. She convinced her father to do the same, in addition to hosting dinners with potential investors and taking out loans against her future earnings. Rivers also went all-out for the film’s various screenings, giving away rabbit fur coats to the people in attendance.

What kind of story could Rivers have possibly been so enthusiastic over, you ask? Well, the movie features Billy Crystal in his film debut as Lionel Carpenter, a night school teacher who falls ill after a one-night stand. As it turns out, Lionel was somehow impregnated by the woman he slept with, making him the first pregnant man in history. This leads to a variety of gags about his situation and the ways people react to it, with the Army even pursuing Lionel at one point because of the public’s fear that male pregnancies will lead to a population explosion.  

Despite doing pretty well at the box office, Rabbit Test didn’t go over well with critics. In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert wrote, “I sat in the midst of an audience that broke its silence only to yawn, take orders for popcorn, and (in the case of audience members under five) break into tears.” Janet Maslin of The New York Times felt similarly, writing, “Miss Rivers makes almost nothing of the role-reversal possibilities her premise suggests, and Mr. Crystal manages to convey neither astonishment nor acceptance of the impossible. He just becomes pregnant and has a baby, and that’s the end of that. It’s a lot easier to entertain the notion of a pregnant man than it is to understand why anyone would choose to end an alleged comedy with such a lead balloon.”

The negative response might have had something to do with Rivers not discussing the film much after its release. When asked about Rabbit Test in 2010, Rivers told MovieWeb, “We were just too early. It was my first time directing. I had a very bad cinematographer. And I wasn’t a very good director. I saw it a few years ago. I laughed six times.” She went on to say, “I was never asked to direct anything else. No major film studio ever came to me and said, ‘Joan, here is a movie we want you to direct!’ Never.” 

The film has yet to see a DVD or Blu-ray release, and remains noticeably absent from streaming services. 

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