Saturday, Sep 6, 2008
She rocketed to fame, then crashed and burned. Now, in her new one-woman show, the former star of "All American Girl" talks about the dark trajectory of Hollywood Ruin.
Jul 28, 1999 | The last time I saw Margaret Cho, we were in Hollywood. We were both vaguely hanging around the same pack of young L.A. comics, a lot of whom are pretty famous now. I was half drunk at Smalls. She walked in with her entourage of pretty, gay young men and had on a fabulous go-go dress and white boots, and we compulsively started sexy-dancing together. I felt special. Her big TV show was about to come out, and she was going out with Chris Isaak, and Disney had recently signed her to a contract worth millions. I was half-suicidal on a rotating schedule of Ritalin, Wellbutrin and a not-so-carefully controlled cocktail limit, and having seizures of depression so fierce friends would have to come and baby-sit me until my arms stopped uncontrollably jerking around, but I thought I was the only one with serious problems. Only last week did I realize that Cho was also hysterically crazy and traumatized during that little disco emergency. Who knew? She seemed so slick.
When her TV show, "All American Girl," came out, everyone felt sad for her, because it was so unforgivably lame. It was clear that she had no creative control; otherwise it would have been funny. The show was quickly canceled and America didn't hear from Margaret Cho for a while, because she was totally drunk off her ass.
Now Cho has a one-woman show, called "I'm the One That I Want," at the Westbeth Theatre in Manhattan, wherein she talks about the professional experiences that led her down the dark path of Hollywood Ruin. She is Clean N' Sober now, and more grounded. Her energies are tethered to her own center in a way that makes her seem taller and meaner and more fiercely alive.
The morning of the interview I woke up at 6:30, the result of a nightmare I had about a kind of Frankencelebrity: a blond with every surgery imaginable and virtually no brain except whatever the corporation asked her to stand for, including a few vaguely controversial anti-feminist sentiments; just enough for newspaper fodder. There were two different minds in my dream, the mind of the manager-agent who built her, who was thinking of all of the possible marketing angles, and the mind of the Frankenceleb herself; she had her own justifications for being what she was.
I began by telling Cho about the book I just finished writing: "Celebrity Re-examined as a Grotesque, Crippling Disease," and hoped she wouldn't object to my contention that fame is the worst thing that has happened in the New World since the influenza of '18. I'm always looking for evidence to support my conjecture that celebrity in Hollywood is sort of like a Joel Peter Witkin photograph: It looks like a big lush banquet table filled with abundance and cornucopias, and then if you look at it closer you see that all the fruit is made of wax and that entree in the middle of the table is actually a dead baby. Happily, far from disagreeing with me, she bolstered all of my most vile contentions.
The last time I saw you, we were both in L.A., hanging out with these really fabulous people, and we all seemed like we were really "happening" at that moment in time, and then looking back on it now, I realize that half of the people that I knew were unbelievably miserable.
I think around that time I was really close to death. This is the sick part of fame -- I was in the depths of my alcoholism, I was really sick, I felt so washed up, and part of me loved it, being washed up, and part of me was in such pain ... I had this really irresponsible boyfriend. I was having such a bad time in my life, and my lost fame kept coming up as the reason why ... and I got pregnant, and I had to have an abortion, so I went to the doctor to have an abortion, and I'm having the abortion, and the doctor said, "You know, when you had your TV show, it really didn't capture who you are as a comedian. And I think if you go back and do it again, that you should really strive for more creative control." And I said, "You know what? That's fine, but could you just kill my baby?" That didn't make it into the show -- "I'm the One That I Want" -- but it totally captures what happened. It would keep coming up, this disease. It is a disease, fame is a disease, like cancer or alcoholism; you catch it, and it never quite leaves you.
I read in your press material that in one incarnation of your new show you were talking about your relationship with Chris Isaak; I remember seeing you talk about that relationship at Luna Park (a Los Angeles comedy club) in 1995. You were really struggling with it.
That was really creepy. I mentioned it in the show, and it got so much attention that I took it out, because that is a show unto itself. That experience was so -- not exactly heartbreaking. It's kind of like fame, in that you put all your dreams, your hopes, your aspirations, on somebody, and you think they're going to be the greatest thing, if you can just get that person, your life is complete, and then you get that person and that person is worse than you ever imagined. It's not his fault. He's a very nice guy, but he's not what I pictured or wanted or imagined or anything.
You were both real famous at the time you were involved. What was it like being famous and having an affair with a famous person? Was it like a sun consuming another sun? Was the fame a big aphrodisiac?
No. Not really. I was so insecure about mine, and he was so ... I don't know what, about his. It was really more about this attraction, that was real. He never really mentioned my job to me, and I didn't talk about his job to him.
Oh come on! It didn't even play a little part?
No! It was this weird unsaid thing; it was so obvious, it was never talked about, which made it weird.
Do you think the attitude of non-famous people toward celebrity is different in L.A. than it is in San Francisco or New York? I tend to think of non-famous L.A. people as really craven and desperate in their pursuit of fame.
Yeah, but [in L.A.] it's hidden. They don't want to admit it. It's not as naked as it is in other places, like New York, where it's really raw, and ambition is clearly evident in conversations and interaction. In L.A. people are more closeted about it; there's more of a desperation there. There's more of a need to conform to the system ... there's more eating disorders, more plastic surgery. They try to make appearances fit, whereas in New York or other places, it's more about the art, the real stuff.
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