By Leatrice Spevack
Special to The Star
April 13, 2000
 
 

CHARLES Baudelaire, the neurotic 19th-century French poet, once wrote, “I cultivated my hysteria with joy and terror.” Comic Margaret Cho, 150 years later, is doing something of the converse: cultivating her joys and terrors into hysteria - audience hysteria, that is - by spinning her struggles into a hit stand-up act.  I’m The One That I Want, Cho’s one-woman show hitting Pantages Theatre this Saturday, is a stand-up tour de force that trawls the depths of the despair she experienced after the cancellation of her hugely hyped but short-lived 1994-95 sitcom, All-American Girl.  Cho’s comedic compilation of grief - a self-mocking dialogue documenting her descent into drugs, drinking and debauchery - has done boffo business off Broadway and across the U.S. since September, taking New York magazine’s 1999 “Performance Award” and Entertainment Weekly’s “Best of 1999.”  All-American Girl, which was about a young Asian woman adapting to apple-pie America, promised to be Cho’s ticket to the big time, but it fast became a debacle.  The show, plagued with problems from the outset, degenerated into a comedy of errors with such mishaps as the hiring of a Korean consultant whose contribution was that Cho, a first-generation Korean American, use chopsticks.  Cho had her own problems. Feeling pressure from producers, who found her face “too full,” she undertook a crash diet, losing 30 pounds in two weeks, collapsing on the set and landing in the hospital with kidney failure.  None of this helped the ratings, which never lived up to expectations, and the network pulled the plug six months in, plunging Cho into a deep depression.  “I was anorexic for many years after the show - it was disgusting,” Cho says from her home in the Hollywood Hills.  “That, along with drinking and using drugs, nearly killed me. I was so hungry that I needed something.”  That “something” included sex - and plenty of it.  “I was slowly turning into The Rose (the Bette Midler film based on the life of Janis Joplin),” she said of this promiscuous period.  The pain of Cho’s failure was compounded by the fact that she was the daughter of Korean immigrants who had settled in San Francisco and whose hopes for her were of traditional, conservative success.  They had enrolled Cho in what she describes as a “a high-achieving magnet high school.” But she didn’t fit in and was expelled, “which was really devastating to my family. They had pretty much come to America so I could go to this school.”  At 16, “pretty much disowned” by her parents, she turned for solace to “this community of performers, people that I really identified with.” The stage was, she says, “the only place that I really felt safe. So I just stayed with it.”  The teenage Cho pounded the comedy pavement, working anywhere that offered a microphone and a spotlight. It was at San Francisco’s The Other Café - a laughter landmark famous for helping launch Bobcat Goldthwaite, Paula Poundstone and Robin Williams - where Cho honed her humour.  But it was winning a comedy contest in the early ‘90s that opened the door. The prize - opening a concert for sitcom superstar Jerry Seinfeld - was the stuff of dreams.  “Jerry Seinfeld told me that if I pursued my career that I would ultimately be very successful because I had a very unique voice. I really took that to heart. At the time he was really the king of comedy.”  A large part of that “unique voice” is derived from her heritage, especially with respect to the melting pot of American society.  On the dearth of Asians on TV, she remarks that Kung Fu, the ‘70s adventure starring David Carradine, should have been called “That Guy’s Not Chinese.”  Some of Cho’s best schtick comes courtesy of her mother, whose fractured English her daughter affectionately mocks: “How you did such a thing? You were not born tomorrow!”  Playing on her patrimony, Cho quips about her inability to be what society tags as, “the right kind of Korean role model. Because I do not play the violin. Because I do not (have sex) with Woody Allen.”  There is no denying that Cho is provocative. Yet as much as her patter is peppered with profanity, it is also smartly sophisticated.  I’m The One That I Want is Vanity Fair edited by Larry Flynt.  It is this combination of the urbane and the ribald that has attracted a legion of gay fans and has her following in the footsteps of other queer-culture darlings; Cher, Bette Midler (who started out playing bathhouses in NYC) and Sandra Bernhard.  “When I was a little girl,” she says, “I always wished that I’d be surrounded by gorgeous guys. Maybe I should have been more specific.”  Cho not only knows her audience - she delights in them. “If it were not for gay men, I would not talk to men at all.” She’ll happily chuck a night at Chippendales because; “I can get gay guys to dance in my apartment for nothing.”  Not surprising, this catering to the gay world has called into question Cho’s own sexual preference - a preference even Cho’s beleaguered mother seems confused about as she leaves messages on her daughter’s answering machine, “Are you gay? Are you gay? If you don’t pick up the phone that means you’re gay. Only gays screen calls.”  Cho’s response is simply, “Am I gay? Am I straight? I’m just slutty - so where’s MY parade?  “I just naturally had a lot of gay friends,” she explains more seriously. “I think it’s about being a minority voice, not being a part of the dominant culture and being really ticked about it. That’s who I am. I talk about what I know.”  Cho’s “talk” will continue to be heard, both on the silver screen and in print, with a film of her current show scheduled for release in September and an autobiography due for release in the fall of 2001.  As for her show, “it helps other people.” insists Cho. It’s clear to me that that’s what the show is for. It’s for opening up people’s minds. It really helps me - it’s very cathartic. Sometimes people want some relief and I’ve found a way to that relief and release.”