| The genius of Margaret Cho, like Lenny Bruce, Richard
Pryor and Robin Williams before her, is that she has turned the world into
her own personal psychotherapist. Cho gets paid for telling audiences what
mere mortals have to pay their shrinks to listen to. But, needless to say,
she’s much funnier than we are, and we can take some measure of comfort
in thinking she’s crazier, too.
That, of course, makes her shows and the concert films made of them - the deliriously funny “I’m the One That I Want” (2000), which was shot at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater, and now “Notorious C.H.O.,” which was filmed in Seattle - a species of exhibitionism, as well as stand-up comedy’s version of performance art. But it’s exhibitionism of a welcome sort, since it is cathartic for both the artist and her adoring audience. In opening scenes of Lorene Machado’s film, that adoring audience can be seen quoting unprintable lines made famous, if not notorious by the spottily distributed “I’m the One That I Want” (if you like Cho and haven’t seen this, rent it). Cho’s comedy is part confessional monologue (she often seems like a raunchier Spalding Gray), part declaration of sexual independence (is she gay or is she straight? Perhaps only her hairdresser knows for sure) and part ribald autobiography. “I’m the One That I Want” charted Cho’s mostly unpleasant experiences, including her battles with weight loss and gain, sex and drug dependency, as the star of an abortive television situation comedy that was supposed to be groundbreaking but turned out to be just the same old industry stereotyping. Be forewarned, most of Cho’s material is a deeper shade of blue, including a bit in which she describes how she lost her gag reflex. “Notorious C.H.O.” is not for the reserved or the faint of heart. Although Cho’s material remains often screamingly uproarious, “Notorious C.H.O.” falls a bit short of “I’m the One That I Want.” Cho’s recollections of her childhood and especially her mother (her parents are again in the audience), remain an important and hilarious part of her act. But nothing in this new film equals Cho’s impression of her mother sneaking a peek at the hard-core gay men’s magazines the family used to sell in its San Francisco convenience store. Among the more memorable bits in this film are Cho’s musings on such subjects as colon irrigation (“Medical procedure or entertainment?”), her dream of playing an extra on “M*A*S*H” and a trip she took to Scotland, where she claims there is more vomit than dog excrement in the streets and where the only gay bar in the country is named after the character Bette Midler played in “Beaches.” As this last joke suggests, much of “Notorious C.H.O.” amounts to preaching to the choir. But no preacher was as funny as this. |