Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 8, 1995 TAG: 9504110090
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LYDIA MARTIN KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
These days, the king of ``Pulp Fiction'' is making a killing in that department, but Cho, poster child for Generation X, has been teething on the fruits of near-stardom. She's not taking things sitting down.
With her ABC sitcom ``All-American Girl'' on hiatus and in limbo (ABC hasn't yet decided whether to bring it back a second season), Cho is going back to her stand-up-comedy roots, touring 20 cities this summer.
Cho, who hit the big time on the club circuit joking about growing up Asian-American in the happy (if not dazed and confused) '70s, is giving her Korean family a break this time around. They are no longer the butt of her jokes. Reaching relative fame is.
``It's about what it's been like not being a famous person, but a relatively famous person, while all of the experiences are still new to me,'' says Cho, 26.
Like the time she attended a meeting at Madonna's office. OK, Madonna wasn't there. But she got to check out her desk and swing around in her chair.
``I touched her phone and stuff,'' Cho said this week from her Hollywood Hills bungalow, decorated in a retro-futuristic style inspired by the 1971 movie ``A Clockwork Orange.''
She was born and raised in San Francisco. Her Korean parents were somewhat liberal, she says, but by Korean standards, ``They're Abbie Hoffman and Timothy Leary.''
In the late '80s, after enrolling in the San Francisco State University's theater program and discovering there were few dramatic roles available to Asian women, Cho turned to comedy. She developed her routine at a small club above her parents' bookstore, where she worked part time. ``On my breaks I would go upstairs and do a set. My parents were less than thrilled.''
She did a series of comedy houses after that, and by 1992 was doing the TV circuit - A&E's ``Evening at the Improv,'' Fox's ``Comedy Strip Live,'' MTV's ``Half-Hour Comedy Hour,'' and VH-1's ``Comedy Spotlight.''
She grabbed the attention of producers at Disney in 1993, which began producing ``All-American Girl'' for ABC in 1994.
She's been basking in celebritydom ever since. The woman who grew up dreaming about doing a guest spot on ``Love Boat'' has been like an Xer in a pop-icon store since she got her own sitcom last year and started meeting some of her childhood idols.
``If you hang out long enough, you get to meet really cool people,'' she says.
It was by hanging out that Cho wound up having dinner one night with her demigod, John Travolta.
``I had nothing to say to this great creature. When you are in the presence of these people you want to be able to talk to them as a person, not as somebody you have worshiped for years,'' she says. ``I mean, I'm somebody who saw `Grease' like 42 times in two months. I can't deal with the reality of these people.''
Cho is getting a chance to be in the movies herself. She has just wrapped up work on director Randal Kleiser's low-budget feature film ``It's My Party,'' a comedy-drama in which she plays the best friend of an L.A. decorator (played by Eric Roberts) who decides to commit suicide rather than succumb to AIDS. But not before he throws himself a big bash.
Kleiser, by the way, is none other than the director of ``Grease.'' And Olivia Newton-John actually has a part in the new movie. Cho is beside herself.
She says she is grooming herself to be a big-screen star by watching every movie she can get her hands on. But it's not going as well as she planned.
``The other day I saw Fellini's `81/2' and `The Bodyguard,' and I enjoyed `The Bodyguard' infinitely more. I mean, `81/2' is a masterpiece. But I cried and screamed watching `The Bodyguard' and `81/2' barely moved me. The whole thing really depresses me.''
Another thing that gets her down is all the criticism of ``All-American Girl,'' which just ended its first, 18-episode season. Critics have said the show offered a stereotypical and unflattering portrayal of Asian Americans.
The show, in which Cho plays a Valley Girl whose Korean parents are frustrated with her general slacking and her job at a mall cosmetics counter, usually ranked second in its 8:30 p.m. slot on Wednesdays. But it finished 55th among all shows for the season.
``I have been criticized very unfairly because of my ethnicity, because I am a woman, because of everything,'' Cho says. ``They want the show to be the be-all-end-all. And that's really unfair.''
While Disney producers wait to see if ABC will pick up the show for a second season, they have gone back to the drawing board, stripping Cho of her uptight family and moving her into a place of her own, which she shares with three guys.
If the revamped show airs, it will be kind of like a ``Four's Company,'' except Cho gets no Jack Tripper-style ogling from her roommates.
``I think the show will work better that way, because it's a lot closer to who I am,'' says Cho, who lived with two male roommates for years.
``When you are friends with guys for a long time, the whole gender thing gets lost. You become entities, like they don't consider you a woman at all.''
by CNB