Notorious C.H.O.

Margaret Cho opens this set with a deeply profane, supportive joke about providing oral sex to 9/11 rescue workers. This follow-up to I’m the One That I Want ditches the career-retrospective framing of her previous tour to focus squarely on filth, bodily functions, and queer culture.

Filmed at Seattle’s Paramount Theatre, Notorious C.H.O. captures the comic leaning fully into the explicit persona that endeared her to alternative audiences in the early 2000s. She spends significant time evaluating the inherent gayness of Bette Midler’s Beaches character, running through a lengthy treatise on the indignities of a colon cleanse, and explaining how men’s apartments would look like murder scenes if they got periods. While her last film dug into the trauma of her short-lived ABC sitcom, this hour operates as a pure, boundary-pushing celebration. The film occasionally cuts away to short interview segments with Cho’s parents, who discuss their daughter’s graphic material with a mix of genuine pride and polite embarrassment.