She's Got Big Balls: Margaret Cho Gets Honest in I'm the One That I Want DVD

Scott Thill

"I always thought I was OK looking. I had no idea that I was this GIANT FACE TAKING OVER AMERICA!"
There are few contemporary stand-up performances that jump out of the line-up, with Chris Rock's Bring the Pain being the most recent example of the transformative power of being honest and honestly funny in public. Bring the Pain took Chris Rock from a SNL B-player locked in the basement to the hottest comic in the biz fielding calls even when he's on the john. Such is the power of being truthful and hilarious, critical and self-deprecating, biting and bitten -- it can truly make or break your career.

 

Let's get physical (comedy). Margaret Cho stalks the stage and talks shit about Karl Lagerfeld. Among others.

Margaret Cho's career looked simply smashed to pieces once her promising and unique stint on prime-time with the first Asian-American sitcom, All-American Girl, ended in rampant talk about her fluctuating weight and addiction to diet pills when the true weight of the controversy involved her symbolic representation of everything Asian-American in a white-washed mainstream media. Even Asian-Americans jumped on her ass about her so-called cultural misrepresentation, sending the already frazzled Cho into a downward spiral that was mirrored only by the swirling ignorance of the network and it's band-aid solutions of personal trainers and on-set Asian "experts" making sure chopsticks were well-placed in the kitchen scenes.

Which just makes her comeback -- this time in the DVD release of her essential stand-up film, I'm the One That I Want -- that much sweeter. After hitting rock bottom, Cho regrouped, got even, and hit the road wreaking her vengeance with aplomb, finding a sympathetic crowd utterly ignored or uninterested in anything remotely associated with mainstream media. And although the theatrical release of I'm the One That I Want might have missed your neck of the woods, it still managed to garner a million or so in ducats -- not bad for a one-day shoot of two concerts. So, in case you missed it the first time around, I'd recommend visiting your friendly neighborhood indie outlet -- and maybe even Crockbuster -- for a sobering dose of sadness and laughter.

All-American parents. Even Cho's mom and dad get skewered in I'm the One That I Want. And they're in the audience!

"I am fanning the flames of my faggotry."
The chief characteristic of Cho's DVD is bravery -- she simply has no fear taking on gays, straights, the media, networks, (Cauc)Asians, culture, sex, addiction and countless other components of popular American life. Karl Lagerfeld undergoes as much slamming as Cho's own parents, who happen to be in the audience during her routine. But each subject is spared the objectification that Cho herself experienced at ABC; she prefers instead to filter her criticisms through a humanistic acceptance that life is indeed full of complexities and intricacies that outdistance stereotypes and reductive pigeonholing. It is this tendency to avoid simplistic, binary thought that has endeared Cho to countless alternative communities, and her DVD offers the viewer a chance to see how gays and straights -- and all those in between -- of varying cultural backgrounds have embraced both her and her fiery rebuttal of the mainstream. The special features menu includes a tongue-in-cheek presentation called "Testimonials" in which the fans grab the spotlight to explain how Cho has given voice to their tenuous or ignored situations, most of them gays or lesbians who -- aside from the Ellen Degeneres flap or the various Xena: Warrior Princess subtexts -- have a hard time finding work in the media that reflects their concerns or tastes.

Which is one of the central ironies of Cho's routine in I'm the One That I Want because it is this crisis of representation that partially drove the sitcom into the ground. Some of Cho's worst critics were her own so-called "people," all of which raises the thorny issue of cultural authenticity that had already been somewhat skewered in the sitcom's self-conscious title. "I opened up my newspaper at home and they had printed a letter from a little Korean girl who wrote in saying, 'When I see Margaret Cho on television, I feel deep shame,'" Cho explains sadly. "I guess this was because they had never seen a Korean role model like me on TV before. You know, I didn't play violin. I didn't fuck Woody Allen."

Ouch.

You like me! You really like me! Cho finds acceptance on her hometown San Francisco stage.

"I was so tied up in the idea of acceptance."
The deep irony of Cho's situation is that the identity crises that partially failed her sitcom have been reincarnated as an audience seizing upon her honesty about race and sexuality as a conduit for their own frustrations and issues. And it couldn't have happened to a more talented person, because Cho has a relentless physical delivery to compliment her acute wit and brave truthtelling -- "And then the show was cancelled and replaced by Drew Carey, because he's so skinny."

She spares no one, especially herself, and the fact that she can admit to a room full of strangers -- although both parties may feel that they are more than that -- that she was a addicted to both alcohol and diet pills, that she gave head to way too many undeserving guys, that she was ready to end it all until she realized that her life was nothing but "fucked up Motley Crue Behind the Music bullshit," is nothing short of incredible.

Especially because you're so busy laughing that you forget to cry.

Scott Thill -- a media fanatic who finds the time to write on everything that does not include the words "boy band" -- is a gainfully employed dotcom editor currently finishing his first novel, The Dangerous Perhaps.