I’m The One That I Want

Comedian Margaret Cho scrunches her rubber face into a full moon of disapproval as she mimics her mother’s broken English during an edited version of two November 1999 performances at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater. “You gay? Gays all over the world (pause), but not in Korea.” This is one of several answering-machine messages left by her testy parent that the 31-year-old Cho milks for laughs in a 96-minute confessional that covers such topics as gay bars, straight pornography, lesbian sex, the Ku Klux Klan, alcoholism and the ugly side of Hollywood. So it goes in an alternately raunchy, heartfelt, captivating—but mostly disposable—spin on life by a woman who mixes modern taboos with stories of personal crisis and pain.