Joan Rivers: People are always shocked when they see me at a party.
Lawrence Lessig: A lot of them just want to make money.
Rivers: Constantly. Do you want a sandwich?
Lessig: Yes.
***
Rivers: Somebody’s going to have to make a compromise here.
Lessig: You own a house, you can't say, “no, you can't put a sidewalk in front of my house” —that's an easement that's forced on you by the law.
Rivers: We close ranks. This is the time to screw around.
Lessig: That's an argument which ordinary people laugh at. It sounds almost trivial.
Rivers: Go fuck yourself, I’ve had more good times than you’ll ever know, so don’t you dare patronize me.
***
Lessig: Exactly. But still, I think they deserve that type of protection. It’s a bit more complicated.
Rivers: I was sitting in this big empty house in Bel Air, with a phone with five extensions which we no longer needed. I had the gun in my lap, and the dog sat on the gun. You don’t forget this, honey-bunny.
Lessig: So they launch a holy war, Jack Valenti calls it a terrorist war, against these new technologies.
Rivers: I understand it, and feel terribly sorry for him, but I wonder if I’d be sitting here today talking to you if he had not killed himself, if we wouldn’t have ended up just a very bitter couple in a house on the hill somewhere.
Lessig: I thought that was pretty radical at the time.
Rivers: Fame is so wonderful.