'Proud to be a fag hag'

Margaret Cho's comeback from drugs, a cancelled TV show and Hollywood's obsession with thin

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Nine in the morning is early by Los Angeles star standards, but when I asked Margaret Cho what she was doing up so early, she said that she "actually preferred to be a morning person."

The actress and comedian then sat down in her Hollywood Hills apartment and chatted with the Gay People's Chronicle about her latest film, life after her sitcom and sundry addictions, and why she is proud to be a fag hag.

She immediately started talking about her "best friend," a German Shepard mix named Ralph (pronounced Raif, as in actor Ralph Feinnes:)

"He is a big boy," she cooed, “and I did name him after seeing Ralph in The English Patient. Like Feinnes' character in that movie, Cho's dog was "injured, bed-ridden and had seen war" and so the name was perfect.

"I am his Juliet Binoche," she concluded, referring to the actress who plays Feinnes' savior in the movie.

Cho, too, has seen war and has been physically and emotionally battered, except that her battle ground was not some far off land in Africa and Europe, but rather the sound stage of her TV sitcom All American Girl.

Cho was the first Asian-American to have her own prime time TV show, but her experience with it was less than stellar. Deemed as "too Asian and too fat," Cho was pushed off the deep end and into a world of desperation, drug addiction and self-destruction.

Needless to say, the sitcom didn't last, but Cho is back, and with a vengeance.

In her new film, based on her one-woman show I'm the One That I Want, Cho chronicles her hilarious and often painful journey with sheer comedic genius. Cho's show and the fil are in the great comedic tradition of legends like Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and Whoopi Goldberg.

"Television is such a monochromatic world," Cho asserted, "and the trials and tribulations of that most terrible year of my life are chronicled in this film where I had to confront addiction, race, sexuality, harassment, fame and a Hollywood dream unrealized."

She jokes that her film is a combination of Behind the Music and The Joy Luck Club.

Cho had always dreamed of being on TV, but when she finally got there she was told

that she was too fat and perhaps even too Asian. She recounts all these events with brutal honesty and insightful humor in the film, and lays bare Hollywood's unholy obsession with all things white and anorexic.

Cho was set up with a trainer who worked her four hours a day, six days a week,

and a nutritionist who brought

her small portions of vegetables all day long. Her kidneys went into shock, she was bleeding in her urine and was well on her way to anorexia nervosa and a host of other unhealthy obsessions. All so she could play a thinner version of herself to fit the image of producers, executives and managers in the television industry.

If it wasn't bad enough that she was being so ill-treated by the industry, her own people in the Korean and Asian-American community also set off a backlash against her because she didn't fulfill their stereotypes of "the good Asian," "the Asian who plays violin," and "the Asian who doesn't talk about sex, addiction and being a fag hag in public."

Moreover, Cho had been set up as the great hope for the Asian-American community with her sitcom.

"I was so busy trying to lose weight that

I didn't have any time to be funny," she says. Her show was canceled and replaced by Drew Carey, "because he's so thin!"

In her film she jokes about the time her manager told her that executives found her too fat for the screen. "I didn't know I was this giant face taking over America," she said. "They thought my face couldn't fit on the screen."

"I was devastated, personally and professionally and I wanted to commit suicide but I was too scared," Cho confessed, "although I was killing myself with the alcohol, the drugs and my other addictions."

She was deemed clinically dead after one drug overdose. "But something in me didn't

want to die, something told me I had many things to live for, and when I realized the gravity of it all," Cho continued, she figured a way out of the deep, dark hell that she had descended into.

Cho is honest, admitting that she has always had a proclivity towards addictions.

"I've always been a party girl, but that huge disappointment sent me overboard," she said. Her salvation was through her "very supportive friends who had been down the same path."

Today Cho has another addiction, an intense and unbridled desire to help other people and causes.

At 31 she is "at a good age, and experience have given me awareness and enlightenment," she said.

"I am very proud to be a fag hag," Cho asserted, "and while I don't like those two words on their own, together they fit perfectly."

To Cho, a fag hag is a woman, usually straight, who cares deeply about and supports gay men.

"I am so proud to be a member of that group," she added. For her, Madonna is the "ultimate fag hag!" To Cho, being a fag hag is not a choice, but as inherent as being Asian. "It chooses you, you cannot deny it, and it is inescapable."

In her film Cho has a great segment on being a fag hag.

"I always wanted to be surrounded by beautiful, sexy guys who had incredible

TAUSSICPRODUCTIONS

October 20, 2000 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

Margaret Cho on a float in New York's Pride parade.

bodies," she announces, and then with a pause and her hallmark wink she adds, "I guess I should have been more specific!"

Cho admires gay men's bodies, and in one particularly rambunctious moment early in her film she argues that only gay men can have those fabulous, six-pack, washboard abs, because “you need to suck dick to get that type of muscle definition!" Then she adds with her dead-pan face, “All these straight guys in the audience are sticking their guts out!"

In our interview, Cho said, "While some people are raised by wolves, I was raised by drag queens."

"The had huge influences on me and my life and I lost my two closest ones, Adam and Jerome, in 1989 and 1991 respectively," she said sadly, "but I do believe that they are my guardian angels."

In the ilm, while lking about how certain people have certain smells that take them back to childhood, Cho dead-pans, "Mine was balls in pantyhose."

Cho is also very happy when she connects with gay Asians because "We can be such a homophobic community." She has become a beacon of hope to many gay Asians and gays in general. "One Asian guy walked out of my movie and told me that "This is the first time that I came out of anywhere being gay and Asian"." Cho's performance in the film brims with non-stop laughter, and she is as outrageous as she is real. She is not afraid to tackle any subject, and she does it with chutzpah and courage. Her imitations of her mother, done with irreverence and a deep love, are hilarious to the core. I have always thought that female comics are much better than their male counterparts, mainly because women dig deeper for truth. Cho is as real and as truthful as they

come.

Today Cho is working on a new stage show titled Notorious C.H.O., which she will be taking on a national tour of about 40 cities, with a corresponding record and book set to come out as well.

"I have very few illusions left," Cho says, "and I want to do political work." She promises that it will be a "very wild, very nasty, very gay and very political show."

In the film's final moments Cho proclaims: "Being ten pounds lighter is a fulltime job for me. Well, I am handing in my notice and I am out the door."

Cho is more at home with who she is, and her message to be one's self couldn't be louder or clearer to those brainwashed by the Hollywood hoi polloi and the mavens of Madison Avenue. And Cho promises that until some other "screaming Korean fag hag" comes up, she will be strutting her stuff.

I'm the One That I Want opens at the Drexel Theatre in Columbus on Friday, October 20.