| Margaret Cho loves
being bestowed with the title “Ultimate Fag Hag.”
“It sounds like a really good wrestling name,” the comedian said. “I love it! Now I’ll have totake on Stone Cold Steve Austin—and I’ll kick his ass.” Cho, who will perform her acclaimed one-woman show “I’m the One That I Want” at 8 p.m. Dec. 18 at the Merriam Theater, 250 S. Broad St., is unabashedly proud of her many close friendships with gay men, the inclusion of a healthy dose of gay-related comedy in her act, and the fact that at age 30 she is already a top gay icon. “I love gay men,” Cho explained. “I have always had a connection with them, and they’ve always supported me in my comedy. I started doing gay clubs when I was 16 years old, performing in between drag queens. It’s wonderful to launch this full-scale tour where I’m going out and seeing really big audiences that are sort of filled with old friends.” As anyone who’s seen Cho’s stand-up comedy specials on Comedy Central or Home Box Office can tell you, the zaftig (“isn’t that German for big, fat pig?” Cho asks during one of her televised gigs) comedian grew up in the 1970s in the very gay Polk Street area of San Francisco. Her parents, both Korean immigrants, ran a small bookstore in the neighborhood, which catered to a gay, hippie, Chinese and drag queen clientele. Much of Cho’s comedy to date deals with the hilarious interactions between herself, her parents, their bookstore and San Francisco’s gay community. Cho’s mom, in particular, has always been a bottomless well of material for the comedian. Her mother pops up throughout “I’m the One That I Want,” ranging from chastising the comedian’s experiences in broken English -- “How could you do such a thing? You were not born tomorrow!”—to frantic messages left on Cho’s answering machine questioning her daughter’s sexual orientation. “Maaaaawgret ... Are you gay?” Cho asks during the show in an imitation of her mother. “Are you gay? Pick up the phone. If you don’t pick up the phone, that means you’re gay. Only gays screen calls.” (For the record, Cho doesn’t identify as straight or gay. In her comedy, she simply calls herself “slutty. Where’s my parade?”) While Cho thoroughly mines her mother for laughs, she does so in a way that doesn’t sink to insult or disrespect. In fact, the comedian’s mother eats up the attention, Cho said. “She’s really into it. She came to see me in San Francisco a few weeks ago, and was in line to get will-call tickets, going up to everyone else in line saying, “Do you know me? I’m so famous,’ “ Cho said in her best impersonation of her mother’s heavily accented voice. “She loves the audiences so much she wants to shake hands with everyone there. My whole family is really into it. They’re such hams. I couldn’t ask for a better support network.” Another font of material for Cho’s one-woman performance is her horrific experience working on the ill-fated 1994-95 ABC sitcom “All-American Girl.” The show’s producers put so much pressure on Cho to lose weight in pre-production (even slipping her a note saying they were concerned about the “fullness” of her face) that the comedian shed 30 pounds in just two weeks, landing in an emergency room with kidney failure from the crash diet, she said. Asian TV viewers complained that Cho was selling out by not being ethnic enough; the show’s producers thought she was too ethnic. A Korean consultant was hired to reach a middle ground; her advice to Cho: “Use chopsticks.” Cho battled ongoing concerns about her weight by ingesting massive quantities of diet pills, caffeine and vitamins. “All-American Girl” struggled in the ratings, finally getting the ax at the end of its first season. Cho promptly plunged into a self-destructive spiral of depression, promiscuous sex, and alcohol and drug abuse that was so rampant she now refers to it as her attempt to turn her life into “The Rose.” Four years later, and sober since she and an ex-boyfriend awoke after a 1997 drinking binge in a puddle of urine -- “What kind of Motley Crüe ‘Behind the Scenes’ bullshit is this?” she asks in her show of that pivotal event—Cho is able to not only talk about her Hollywood experiences, but even to joke about them. “I’ve always used my life in my work,” she said. “And I’ve always dealt with pain through comedy. I really believe, for me, the best way to deal with pain is through humor. So, this show is a very natural progression for me. I get to alleviate some of my pain and share the way I was able to get out of it.” Surprisingly, discussing such deeply personal issues isn’t difficult for the comedian, who says sobriety and work have helped her put the battles with her personal Hollywood demons behind her. “When I first started
doing the show, I used to get really angry when I was reminded of
all the things I went through,” she explained. “But I’m glad I lived
through all the stuff I did, because now I can show people that there
is a way out. What I think the show is ultimately about is self-reliance
and self-love, and finding a way to bypass all the negative messages
that our society keeps feeding us about self-loathing and self-hatred
and dissatisfaction with ourselves and our bodies. It’s really about
fame, disillusionment, disappointment, and then, ultimately, survival.”
What: “I’m the One
That I Want,” a one-woman comedy show by Margaret Cho
|