The Queen of Comedy: The Beauty of Phyllis Diller DETAILS "Goodnight, We Love You" Directed by Gregg Barson

"I wonder why she sent me a used book?" director Gregg Barson wonders. "Isn't she a millionaire?"

He looks at the book, "Just Tell Me When to Cry," written by Richard Fleischer, director of more than 50 films. Inside the book, he reads an inscription from Fleischer to comedian Phyllis Diller: "To Phyllis with great admiration to a very talented lady."

Then he looks below the autograph to find another note: "To Gregg, Love Phyllis Diller 2004." Diller also writes: "Dear Gregg, this man won six Oscars. Notice, he started out with a documentary, just like you."

At the world premiere of his first documentary, "Goodnight, We Love You," about Phyllis Diller, Gregg Barson won the Audience Choice Award for Best Documentary at the 2004 San Diego Film Festival.

This time, the note from Phyllis Diller following the premiere read:

"Dear Gregg and Julie, You have created a masterpiece. Your many hours of devoted work pays off. Love, Phyllis Diller."

"A masterpiece?" Barson thinks. "I was just hoping she liked it. She wouldn't say anything that wasn't true."

The last scene of the film shows Diller walking off stage slowly to her dressing room and literally shutting the door on the post-vaudevillian era when she was the Queen of Comedy.

"That's it, there's my ending," Barson says. "When that door slams, it's not the first time but that's the last time. She's not dead, she's not gone, she's just closing the door on standup."

Barson, 44, struck gold in Phyllis Diller, he says. His movie about her last night of standup in 2002 is not the typical documentary. The film brings deep-belly laughs, the kind that start all the way inside you. All you have to do is look at Phyllis Diller adorning the typical colorful costume -- special boots to accentuate her toothpick legs, her expressive expressions, and, of course, that big wig.

"I truly feel I'm the inventor of punk," Diller says from her Los Angeles home. "The costumes were on purpose, just this side of chic. They were very exaggerated."

She's a showgirl, a woman funny to the core -- especially that laugh someone in the film describes as the sound a car makes when the battery is going dead. If you've never heard it, imagine explosive bursts of "Ha ... Ha." You can't miss it.

"It's my real laugh," she says, "and there's nothing I can do about it. It's a belly laugh."

Now 87, Diller won't be viewing the two screenings of the film at the Isis on Wednesday and Friday. Diller retired from standup comedy after 47 years in the business on May 5, 2002, in Las Vegas. She is the matriarch of comedy, the first female standup comedian, the first to walk step for step with the iconoclastic kings of comedy -- Bob Hope and Johnny Carson. She is an artist, a pianist, a mother and entertainer. Phyllis Diller is the Queen of Comedy, but she built her career on self-effacing, self-deprecating, self-immolating humor.

I was 30 years old and my mother was still trying to get an abortion.

"When I was young, I didn't feel pretty," she says. "I always got the comedy role in the school play, the ugly girl. I protected myself with self-deprecation ... and you get a laugh while doing it - it became a way of life."

Don't let the word Madonna bother you - the day I grab my crotch, it'll mean it's falling off, and at my age it could. You know you're old when ... someone compliments you on your alligator shoes and you're barefoot ... and your favorite drink is Metamucil.

She began her career in 1955 at the age of 37, after having five children. Her husband urged her to try comedy seeing the response she received during Parent Teacher Association (PTA) skits. Her big break came in March 1955 at San Francisco's Purple Onion club. Her career took off from there. She was on "The Tonight Show" with Jack Paar and it was the "pivotal point" of her career, she says, when Bob Hope saw her perform in a Washington, D.C., club. He became her mentor and longtime friend.

"Everything I did was different," she says. "It was a different angle, it was from the woman's angle. Women were really accepting of me because I was really on their side -- on the funny side. I gave the downtrodden housewife a voice in a very funny way."

I do dinner in three stages - serve the food, clear the table and bury the dead.

She even made a point to bring up hush-hush issues facing women like her own experience with plastic surgery.

When I die God won't know me. There are no two parts of my body that are the same age - if I have one more facelift, it will be cesarean.

"I didn't see any reason to hide it," she says of the surgery, "but their reason for keeping surgery a secret is that they wanted to be thought of as younger than they really were. I just wanted to look better, to get rid of the old face."

She only had one facelift at 55 calling it the "whole big thing" with "nose, eyes, chin."

"For the first time in my life," she says, "I was pretty. I never had another face lift -- only touchups."

Debts of Gratitude

"I think that every woman in comedy now owes her a big debt of gratitude," Barson says. "At that time it was just an old boys club, it was tough being the first."

As a kid, Diller intrigued Barson.

"She happened to be so unique," he says, "and she always caught my eye as a kid, she'd stop me dead in my tracks and I was like: 'This woman is out of control.' She was so unique back then."

Barson, coming from a career in marketing and advertising, working for Warner Bros. and Carsey-Werner LLC, always had a love of film after picking up his first 8 mm at age 9.

"I decided I could do this for myself," he says. "I just had to find a topic that I loved. Luckily I tapped into Phyllis ... I hate to use the term documentary. When I think documentary I don't think wall-to-wall laughter. I wanted to make it more befitting to her."

He and his wife Julie Ashton created Mansfield Avenue Productions and pitched the idea to Diller.

She told Barson: "'Let's do it, Greggy.'"

In the film Barson takes the audience through Diller's last night of standup comedy; he films a reunion of her old secretaries called the "Dust Biters"; and he takes viewers on a tour of her house - through her massive home closet with wigs, shoes, costumes and blouses.

"I love fashion," she says. "Even as a child I was crazy about fashion."

Barson gathered friends and comedians like Bonnie Hunt, Don Rickles and Lily Tomlin to comment on the Queen of Comedy for his film.

"It was really easy," he says about getting them to comment. "I just said her name. Once you say 'Phyllis Diller' they laugh and open up, and all they want to do is talk."

Though Barson filmed Diller driving her Excalibur, enjoying the Dust Biter reunion, her amazing closet - capturing anecdotes about Diller pranking her son Perry at lunchtime -- and even her 10-year span playing piano in symphonies, his favorite part was filming the rehearsal for the last dance.

"I think my favorite part probably is her rehearsing," he says. "I thought, "What do you mean you rehearse your standup act? You've been doing it for 47 years.' It was unexpected, it just shows the perfectionist ... it just shows that there is so much work that goes into it and that it's really art."

"I'm having a ball," Phyllis Diller says. "Because it's my attitude, to have a fun life and spread cheer, that's my motto. I try to avoid the bores, stay with the fun people."

She is now concentrating on her art. She is trying to keep up with the demand for her artwork.

"That's my big new thrush," she says, meaning "push." "It's a lot of fun, and it's more sedentary."

Her biography, "Like a Lampshade in a Horror House," is coming out Feb. 17., and Gregg Barson is not done filming. He hopes to find a buyer for the world rights to the documentary and is already thinking about his next project.

"He's just one of the dearest young men," Diller says about Barson. "He's just a dedicated filmmaker and some day he might be one of the biggies. It was fun working with him. He just covered all the bases."

Barson looks back and recalls his favorite part of working with Diller.

"Just getting to hang out with her," he says, "just to be around her, just to be in her presence, to be able to call her a friend. That's amazing to me."

By Vanessa Pierce Aspen Daily News Staff Writer