San Jose Mercury News
Choose Cho/She’s the one that you’ll want, too
Margaret Cho builds her comedy on her own life experiences.
Yoshi Kato, December 2001
The routine for her last tour was developed from the heartbreak she experienced with “All American Girl,” her short-lived, mid-‘90s sitcom on ABC. Her solo show “I’m the One That I Want” was a testament to the redemptive power of self-love and self-respect; it served as the basis for a book and an independent concert film (captured late in 1999 at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater).
Her current show, “The Notorious C.H.O.” – playing tonight at Flint Center in Cupertino – uses self-exploration as its theme and hip-hop as its leitmotif. The title pays homage to the late rapper Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. “The Notorious B.I.G.”
Cho says she uses a lot of rap music in the show, “and I’m a big fan of all of the ladies of rap. It’s kind of a shout-out to them,” says Cho, a 33-year-old Korean American, from a tour stop in Portland, Ore. “But it’s also a joke . . . because I think it’s funny to take on a hip-hop name.”
Though she pays tribute to the rap community, she doesn’t personally know any of its members. “I so travel in my own circle, in my own world, that I don’t hang out with other actors or musicians or comedians,” she says. “It’s not really my realm; so I’ve never met any” of the women in hip-hop. “But I do adore them.”
In her actor’s guise, Cho has played a fashion-show producer on HBO’s “Sex and the City” and a covert anti-terrorist agent in John Woo’s film “Face/Off.” She was as a guest on Prairie Dawn’s “Girl Talk” segment of “Sesame Street.” She was also a familiar sight at grocery checkouts around the country when pictured alongside Rosie O’Donnell on the cover of the talk show host’s Rosie – The Magazine.
“I think it’s weird, but it’s also great,” Cho says of being a pop-culture figure. “It’s exciting. You have these dreams, and then they start to come true, and then they become very practical elements of your life.”
A San Francisco native, Cho got her start in comedy at age 16, performing at the Rose & Thistle, a club housed above the bookstore run by her parents. She has been making people laugh professionally for more than half her life.
She admits that she seldom visited the South Bay while living in the Bay Area, but she insists it wasn’t out of any sense of chauvinism. “I didn’t drive; so I never really made it down there,” she says. “I didn’t even start driving, really, until I left for Los Angeles in the early ‘90s.
“But there used to be a couple of clubs down there. The Last Laugh – I played there once. Then I played a place called St. James Club, which was a gay bar in San Jose. That was actually one of my first gigs.”
On this tour, like Cho’s previous one, the venues are theaters and concert halls. Having graduated from the comedy-club circuit, she says she’s comfortable with the larger, more formal settings.
“A lot of this tour has been in concert halls, which is really nice, because there’s a really great feeling attached to those venues,” she says. “They’re usually so expansive and high . . . and the ground’s not sticky. There’s no weird vibe, no drug vibe, in the dressing room. It’s just a very clean atmosphere to work in, and the acoustics are really great.”
She adds that the concert halls “make me feel like Björk – which is wonderful. The tour that she just finished was all in concert halls, and I saw her at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It was so beautiful; I totally wept the whole time. I was so embarrassed, because it was so the Hollywood hipster show, with Beck and every independent movie-actor kid, and I was this old lady, crying in the balcony.
“But I love her, and she is one of my big influences, in terms of creating and performing and working. I think she creates her own world and allows you to come into it. I’m trying to do that, as well.”
Choose Cho/She’s the one that you’ll want, too
Margaret Cho builds her comedy on her own life experiences.
Yoshi Kato, December 2001
The routine for her last tour was developed from the heartbreak she experienced with “All American Girl,” her short-lived, mid-‘90s sitcom on ABC. Her solo show “I’m the One That I Want” was a testament to the redemptive power of self-love and self-respect; it served as the basis for a book and an independent concert film (captured late in 1999 at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater).
Her current show, “The Notorious C.H.O.” – playing tonight at Flint Center in Cupertino – uses self-exploration as its theme and hip-hop as its leitmotif. The title pays homage to the late rapper Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. “The Notorious B.I.G.”
Cho says she uses a lot of rap music in the show, “and I’m a big fan of all of the ladies of rap. It’s kind of a shout-out to them,” says Cho, a 33-year-old Korean American, from a tour stop in Portland, Ore. “But it’s also a joke . . . because I think it’s funny to take on a hip-hop name.”
Though she pays tribute to the rap community, she doesn’t personally know any of its members. “I so travel in my own circle, in my own world, that I don’t hang out with other actors or musicians or comedians,” she says. “It’s not really my realm; so I’ve never met any” of the women in hip-hop. “But I do adore them.”
In her actor’s guise, Cho has played a fashion-show producer on HBO’s “Sex and the City” and a covert anti-terrorist agent in John Woo’s film “Face/Off.” She was as a guest on Prairie Dawn’s “Girl Talk” segment of “Sesame Street.” She was also a familiar sight at grocery checkouts around the country when pictured alongside Rosie O’Donnell on the cover of the talk show host’s Rosie – The Magazine.
“I think it’s weird, but it’s also great,” Cho says of being a pop-culture figure. “It’s exciting. You have these dreams, and then they start to come true, and then they become very practical elements of your life.”
A San Francisco native, Cho got her start in comedy at age 16, performing at the Rose & Thistle, a club housed above the bookstore run by her parents. She has been making people laugh professionally for more than half her life.
She admits that she seldom visited the South Bay while living in the Bay Area, but she insists it wasn’t out of any sense of chauvinism. “I didn’t drive; so I never really made it down there,” she says. “I didn’t even start driving, really, until I left for Los Angeles in the early ‘90s.
“But there used to be a couple of clubs down there. The Last Laugh – I played there once. Then I played a place called St. James Club, which was a gay bar in San Jose. That was actually one of my first gigs.”
On this tour, like Cho’s previous one, the venues are theaters and concert halls. Having graduated from the comedy-club circuit, she says she’s comfortable with the larger, more formal settings.
“A lot of this tour has been in concert halls, which is really nice, because there’s a really great feeling attached to those venues,” she says. “They’re usually so expansive and high . . . and the ground’s not sticky. There’s no weird vibe, no drug vibe, in the dressing room. It’s just a very clean atmosphere to work in, and the acoustics are really great.”
She adds that the concert halls “make me feel like Björk – which is wonderful. The tour that she just finished was all in concert halls, and I saw her at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It was so beautiful; I totally wept the whole time. I was so embarrassed, because it was so the Hollywood hipster show, with Beck and every independent movie-actor kid, and I was this old lady, crying in the balcony.
“But I love her, and she is one of my big influences, in terms of creating and performing and working. I think she creates her own world and allows you to come into it. I’m trying to do that, as well.”