Margaret Cho’s in full bloom

by Shannon Wentworth
for the Gay.com Network
 

The smelliest fertilizer makes the sweetest flowers. At least the adage holds true for Margaret Cho, a woman well acquainted with the bowels of Hollywood. From the moment ABC picked up All American Girl, billed as the “Asian” Cosby Show, Cho was knee deep in manure. Now with a hit one-woman show, an upcoming movie and a book in the works, the brazen, self-proclaimed “fag hag” has truly blossomed. I’m the One that I Want is a feminist, comedic tour de force. It traces Cho’s metamorphosis from an up-and-coming star to a weight-obsessed sitcom actress to an alcoholic has-been proffered up by her management for sex with a seedy producer and finally into a self-realized woman in love with herself and in charge of her career. During a two-night stand at the Washington, D.C.’s Warner Theatre, Cho played to sold-out crowds, comprised primarily of gay men and lesbians, during the Millennium March weekend. Both gay men and lesbians adore Cho, but for vastly different reasons. Gay men love her fag-hag’s-eye view of their lives as well as her characterizations of their oral sex prowess, tips for improving abdominal muscles and, of course, the finger—a bit of comedy genius too graphic to share. “Thank God for gay men,” Cho says. “If it weren’t for gay men, I’d never talk to men at all.” There are some drawbacks to having a huge gay male following, she says. A fan once sent her a huge basket of Vidal Sassoon hair care products for “dry, damaged hair.” Lesbians are drawn to her frankness in dealing with the looksism pervasive in American culture and share her fear of the words: “Hi, my name is Gwen. I’m here to waaarsh your vagina.” “Why does she say ‘waaarsh’ like that?” Cho wonders. “It sounds like there’s scrubbing involved…maybe some Comet…like she’s going to beat my vagina against a rock.” But there really is something for everyone, except maybe heterosexual men who incur much of Cho’s wrath during the two-hour show. Cho’s impressions of her mother, particularly her mother’s struggle with Cho’s sexual identity, are uproariously funny. The show isn’t all light as Cho weaves in the sad tale of her fallen sitcom, All American Girl, and the sadder tale of her descent into alcoholism. She manages to add humor to her nightmarish journey without diminishing its significance. In 1994, ABC created a sitcom based on Cho’s stand-up comedy. It went downhill from there, beginning with the wreck of the brand-new stretch limousine sent to pick up Cho after she signed. A 23-year-old woman with a reasonably healthy body image, Cho wore her then-signature half-shirt and mini skirt to her screen test. She thought the test went well; the producer disagreed. She was ordered never to wear such an outfit in public again and told her face was too big for prime time. Worried they’d have to letterbox her head, Cho began a weight-loss odyssey that would quickly destroy her health and take over her life. A personal trainer and dietitian were hired. After two weeks of working out four hours a day, six days a week, she’d lost 30 pounds and shrunk her head to TV size. The intense dieting left Cho exhausted, feeling like she’d lost an equal amount of brain matter, in addition to her creative voice on All American Girl, which she says quickly turned into Saved by the Gong. While the tabloids served up fare like the “Chow like Cho diet,” Cho became a fen-phen junkie until a massive kidney failure left her urinating blood and an ambulance ride away from “Hi, my name is Gwen….” The studio then cut her back to five four-hour workouts a week. Then came an unexpected attack: The head of a national Korean organization said Cho was a “dangerous role model” and not “Asian” enough. Her middle-of-the-night call to curse him out didn’t win her any points, either. To combat the criticism, the studio hired an “Asian consultant” to follow Cho around. “People didn’t get the concept of Asian-American,” Cho said, recounting how one interviewer asked her to tell the audience in her “native language” that the show was switching to an ABC affiliate. Cho looked into the camera and said in English: “They’re changing to an ABC affiliate.” As Cho acquiesced to the studio’s demands to become more “Asian,” critics complained that the show was too “Asian,” which led to a flushing of all the Asian actors save Cho and the woman who played grandma. “We’d stare at each other like: One of us is going down,” she recalls. The show was canceled shortly thereafter. Her time slot was filled by The Drew Carey Show, starring the not-so-svelte Drew Carey and Kathy Kinney as Mimi, his queen-sized cohort. To add further insult, the The Drew Carey Show uses much of the furniture from All American Girl. Showing great poise and wisdom, Cho recounts her struggles with failure, alcoholism, body image and sluttiness. Waking up in a puddle of urine of unknown origin, Cho says, brought her to her senses and sobriety. One of sobriety’s drawbacks, she says, is the loss of her favorite drunken pick-up line, “Hi, um, stick it in!” It doesn’t work as well at Starbucks, she laments. Rather than risk a loss of creative control, Cho spent her own money to film her hometown performance of I’m the One that I Want at San Francisco’s Warfield Theatre. The movie hits theaters this summer. With I’m the One that I Want, Cho’s not just bouncing back, she’s biting back.