Exclusive | NY Comedy Festival founder talks Joan Rivers tribute and Bruce Springsteens appearance with wife Patti Scialfa

With the help of some red-hot comics, the late great Joan Rivers is still asking “Can we talk?” a decade after she died. A Nov.7 tribute show at the Apollo Theater, brutally titled “Dead Funny,” is the opening-night event of the upcoming New York Comedy Festival, and will feature the barbs of Nikki Glaser, Michelle Buteau and many more.Festival founder Caroline Hirsch told The Post over lunch at Michael’s that the fete was the brainchild of Joan’s daughter Melissa Rivers.“We were going to take all of Joan’s cards,” Hirsch said of her original plan to use Rivers’ expansive library of written jokes. “She wrote everything on index cards, right? And she had a big cabinet of them, which she gave to the National Comedy Center [in Jamestown, NY].

But we weren’t going to do a show with that.”Melissa, who stalked the red carpet with her mom for years, approached Hirsch with a better idea: Get Joan’s foul-mouthed friends, admirers and 1,500 fans together for a night of inappropriate laughs. “It’s a lot of comedians who Joan was really close with,” Hirsch said.The lineup includes Sandra Bernhard, Patton Oswald, Matteo Lane, Jeff Ross, Randy Rainbow and, in a clever nod to Joan’s enduring impact, Rachel Brosnahan from “The Marvelous Mrs.Maisel.”“You have to remember we have two TV shows that have won a number of Emmys that were really about Joan,” Hirsch said.

“You have ‘The Marvelous Mrs.Maisel’ and then ‘Hacks’.

It’s all Joan.”And, of course, part of honoring the bold and brash stand-up is speaking fearlessly.“I remember watching her, when I was a kid, on Johnny Carson.And I can’t believe what comes out of this lady’s mouth.

No filter,” said Hirsch, whose Caroline’s comedy club was a fixture in Times Square for 41 years.“That’s what comedians do.There was no filter on Joan — ever, ever.”Who else in the Festival is Hirsch — and her keen eye for comedians — excited for?“Zarna Garg,” she ...