Rather than sign on to do a comedy special for a cable network, Cho became determined to capture her show as a movie so that her message wouldn t be edited. Since I financed and produced the film myself, I didn t have to edit anything out, she says by phone from her home in Los Angeles. I always wanted to do a standup comedy film, much like Richard Pryor s films in the 70s. That was what I really wanted to accomplish. So it just was the right time.
Timing is everything to a comedian.
Cho thought her time had come in 1994, when ABC hired her to be television s first Asian-American sitcom lead. Cho was told that her face was too Asian for television and that she needed to lose weight to conform to the Hollywood standards for female body types. Then she was told that she wasn t Asian enough, and an Asian consultant was brought in to make her character more ethnic. Cho, then in her early 20s, went on a crash program of diet and exercise and lost 30 pounds in two weeks. Kidney failure, dangerous diet pills and the show s cancellation resulted.