I started booking Margaret in colleges when I had my own Talent Agency in the early 90's. She got a standing ovation at a college showcase and it was clear she would be able to make a lot of money performing on campuses. When most young comics were working for a free meal to get 10 mins. of stage time at The Improv or The Comedy Store, Margaret had an opportunity to do a full 60 minutes in front of an audience for about $1000 a show, many times a week. She worked her ass off. It isn't an easy life, driving from gig to gig and performing in front of sometimes hostile audiences. But, she got GREAT and I knew Hollywood would be blown away.
And it was. I set up a showcase for the TV networks and studios and we started taking meetings. Before long there was a bidding war for a sitcom, which would come to be named,
All-American Girl, in which she would be the star.
But, something else was going on. "Annie," Margaret's manager at the time, was getting paranoid that Margaret would leave her. From her autobiographical book, I'm The One That I Want:
Annie convinced me to take a meeting with a big agency behind Karen's back. It was doubly treacherous because Annie was staying at one of Karen's employee's apartments, blowing pot smoke out of the sliding glass doors.
Goddammit if I was going to let Margaret's then manager take this deal and all my work right over to William Morris. In her words…
But Karen had a plan of her own…Karen sent in Greer, a new manager from a hot firm that she knew would impress me.
Greer convinced me to leave Annie and sign with him. Karen would still be my agent…This was a brilliant move on Karen's part. She must have known that her words would make a deeper impression on me when spoken by a man. It is horrifying to acknowledge the sexism within yourself, because then you see the enemy is not in front of you, but behind your own eyes. The reason I didn't feel worthy of the love and support Karen gave was because she was a woman, and I couldn't trust her. I had grown up with the idea that while women may make strides without men, they could only do the real work with them. Even though Karen really did everything, she had to make me think it was Greer's work that was making such an impact. ( I'm The One That I Want, Ballantine, 2000)
I continued negotiating the deal and giving "Greer" the details to relay. It was a nice feather in his cap, as he was negotiating his new employment contract with Sandy Gallin at the time. It didn't hurt that he was bringing this deal with him into the company in which his new boss would be a producer on a groundbreaking sitcom starring the hottest comic in town.
But soon, the awful truth starting sinking in. This was going to be a disaster. A 40 year old Jewish man was writing words for Margaret (then 23) who was revered by her fans for the words she had written for herself. Issues surrounding race needed more sensitivity than they were being given. The downside of doing this wrong would be devastating to Margaret's career. No one would listen to me and she was not asserting herself. I remember when she told me that one of the producers told her she had to lose weight:
My agent, Karen, called almost immediately after I hung up with Gail. She was outraged and was urging me to pull out of the show…"They can't ask you to lose weight. They can't do that! Don't let them do that! It isn't right. And if that is who they think you are, this show isn't going to work! ( I'TOTIW, Ballantine, 2000)
I was fired one week after I was notified by Disney that the pilot was being picked up. I was devastated but, on some level, oddly relieved. I didn't really expect Margaret to pull out of the sitcom but now the consequences wouldn't be my responsibility. Everyone else thought this was the beginning for Margaret, that she was on her way to superstardom. I saw dead careers. I watched as everything I thought would happen happened. Each episode alienated more of her fans. She was saying things on the show she'd never say in her comedy and allowing her ethnicity to be exploited in ways offensive to many.
After the sitcom was canceled I heard that she had to cancel a bunch of live appearance dates due to lack of ticket sales.[note: Around that time Roseanne, Brett Butler, Cybill Shepard, Ellen, and Candace Bergen all had sitcoms. It's sad to see what has happened to the representation of women in TV and comedy in this country.]
About two years later, sometime in 1996, I got a message from Margaret on my answering machine. From the book:
I wondered how my old agent Karen was doing. Once I remember calling her when I was drunk, after business hours and leaving a message on her machine: "You were right about everything…"
Two years after that, in 1998, she and I began working together again, this time, since I had dropped my agent's license, I was her manager. I watched how the stories of how she had almost died from overexercising and undereating while drinking too much and taking too many drugs trying desperately to be what she thought the TV show wanted her to be resonated with her audiences. I knew that if we could get this cautionary tale of what happens when you lose yourself and believe too much in Corporate America and the images it puts forth out to the public, it would re-inspire her old fans and bring in thousands of new ones. We took the show she named,
I'm The One That I Want, to a small Off-Broadway Theatre to workshop and refine it. Although every word was Margaret's, I was at each performance, arranging, editing, re-ordering, and directing her until the show was selling out every night, getting rave reviews, and winning awards.
These are the inspiring last words from that show which would almost always insure her a standing ovation:
I am not going to die because my sitcom got canceled. I am not going to die because someone thought I was fat. I am not going to die as someone else. I'm going to live as myself and I'm going to stay here and rock the mike until the next Korean-American, fag hag, shit starter, girl comic, trash talker, comes up and takes my place. (I'm The One That I Want, Cho Taussig Productions, 2000)
We were asked to extend the run indefinitely but decided instead to take it on the road. Stacy Mark at William Morris who had convinced me she should be kept on as Margaret's agent, set me up with a bunch of promoters and it wasn't long before it was selling out 2000 seat venues. Unafraid to speak truth to power, her fearlessness resonated with many GLBT, feminist, Asian and Liberal organizations, which heaped many more honors and invitations upon her.
Along the tour, Stacy told me that HBO wanted to talk to me about taping
ITOTIW for one of their comedy specials. It sounded great until I found out they wanted us to cut it to 60 minutes (it was 95) and they wanted to tape it in Aspen (uh, Aspen? Do they even have people of color in Aspen?). I also hated how the cameras in most of their comedy shows always went to the audience, as if the director was the ultimate commentator: "I think it's more important that you know this person in the audience thinks it's funny than it is to actually watch the comedian. And, by the way, look at my great camera work!"
After many sold out performances and as many standing ovations, I realized I was in the midst of a phenomenon. Not only was I convinced the world had to see this show but, I was determined to make sure they could see it uncompromised and uncensored. There was only one way to do that. In Nov. 1999, Cho Taussig Productions, Inc. was formed. We'd be equal partners, Margaret would put up the collateral for a loan that financed the production of the film and I would run the company without taking a salary.
CTP, Inc. filmed, produced, and ended up distributing the movie of the performance of
ITOTIW at The Warfield in San Francisco. In it, she wore a burgundy outfit similar in color to Richard Pryor's suit in "Live on Sunset." To me, this was an homage to that great performer and film, right down to the sweaty armpits. And, we never panned the audience during the show, instead, opting to speak to them before and after the concert. These fearless Gay and Lesbian, tattooed and pierced, of mixed race and ambiguous gender fans did not represent the corporate status quo.To me, we were metaphorically and literally, as Margaret herself would soon become known for doing, giving the voiceless a voice.
"Stay on her face" became my mantra in the editing room. I wanted people watching the film to feel like they were in the concert theatre. Quick cuts, although the default in these days of limited attention spans, worked against that goal. Being at a Margaret Cho concert is probably one of the few times her fans are together with so many like-minded people in a supportive and safe, sexism, racism, and homophobic-free environment. It's a truly heady experience that, after being at so many concerts, I felt obligated to try to duplicate for the home or theatre viewer.
Now that she had her own production company, we would never again have to rely on another entity to get her words out, unfiltered, to the growing number of people who had found a new role model, a new hero.
The film made more money per print than any movie in history ($1.4M over 1 year on 9 prints).
Margaret Cho was on her way to becoming an icon.
