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MARGARET CHO is not funny.

Not first thing in the morning, anyway, which is when I reach the comedian by phone at her Hollywood home. There'll be no jokes today about menstruation or her misadventures with colonic hydrotherapy, two of the less unseemly topics discussed in her new concert film, "Notorious C.H.O." . Today she'll talk about . . . mental health.

"For some," she says, "my act is pure entertainment. For others, it's a kind of healing." Something about the way she says this suggests she's not just talking about her audience either, which can include a theater with a few thousand paying customers or a dozen gay, lesbian and bisexual teens "sitting in a room."

"A lot of my material comes out of my own pain," says Cho, who compares her envelope-pushing style, both on stage and in the unpublicized motivational speaking engagements she does for small groups, to that of Sandra Bernhard, Richard Pryor and Roseanne, performers who mine their own lives for laughs. "It's like they say: Comedy is tragedy plus distance."

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At times, it seems as if there's nothing off limits to the 33-year-old performer -- not her family, her sex life nor her insecurities about body image. "Things that are off limits are things that are happening to me at the moment," says Cho, "that are very present. In general, I don't feel like talking about something until I'm done with it. If it's happening, it's too raw."

"I've experienced every kind of discrimination there is," she continues, noting, as she does in the film, that, as a person of size, as a person of color, as a woman, a bisexual, as a person of intelligence and a person of integrity, she is a minority several times over.

So, does that mean that straight, skinny, stupid, dishonest white men rule the world? "Yeah, they do," laughs Cho, cracking up for the first time. "Not that there's anything wrong with them. It's just that those people that are left out don't have a mirror. If you're Asian and you want to be in movies, you have to be able to run up a wall. While I adore all of those actors, I don't relate to them. They're as foreign to me as they are to you."

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For Cho's next stage show, which she is in the process of writing, she says she'll focus on racial politics. One of the things inspiring her is the recent flap over the Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts whose cartoon depictions of Asians were called racist by many. "For so long, Asians were the silent minority," says Cho. "We didn't feel we had the right to be offended."

"As a minority, I have the right to talk about my life," Cho says, alluding to her signature impersonation of her mother's thick accent. "I have a long history of making fun of her to her face. Others have pointed out that it might be racist, but I can't be dishonest about my life."

Cho believes there's a difference between her act and, say, Ms. Swan, the incomprehensible immigrant character portrayed by "Mad TV's" Alex Borstein (who says the character is based on her European grandmother). "She's clearly in yellowface," says Cho of Borstein. "I think it's very funny and she does it well, but she wears eye makeup and she's not Asian."

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"There's this backlash if you complain about any of this," says Cho. "People say, 'You Asians are overreacting, you have no sense of humor.' Well, guess what? I do have one."

-- Michael O'Sullivan

ENLARGING ON 'PHOTO'

For writer-director Mark Romanek, "One Hour Photo" was, in part, a tribute to the lonely man movies of the 1970s, films such as "The Conversation" and "Taxi Driver" in which the protagonist is watching society from the outside. There was always the possibility in those movies that the main character could lose control, attack someone, do something terrible.

"One Hour Photo" , in which photo technician Sy Parrish (Robin Williams) becomes obsessed with a family whose pictures he has developed over the years, only hints at such dark possibilities. Of Sy, Romanek says he "never wrote him in mind as a psycho stalker, a bad guy. I always thought of him more like a creepy saint."

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The movie, which he wrote and directed, is "a terribly tragic love story, in a way. . . . By the end we tend to feel sympathy toward Sy. I like that the audience has to continually reassess how they feel about him, and make their own assessments, rather than be told what to think."

Williams's performance as the eccentric Sy was "a fantastic contribution to the movie. Robin wanted to play that guy. As the result, Sy became even more surprising, more subversive and unexpected. And on a mundane level, [the casting of a big name] brought more attention to the movie."

The movie, Romanek's second feature (after a 1985 cult film called "Static" that Romanek all but disowns), was a welcome departure from a career of music videos. The director, who has shot videos for Janet Jackson, David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails and R.E.M, "understood the nature and charisma of star power. With my videos, I was creating a delivery system for that, in much the same way like cigarettes deliver nicotine. I delivered star power. [With 'One Hour Photo'], I was trying to do the same thing on a grander scale, to crystallize what's great about Robin Williams. . . . He was really ready to try something different."

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-- Desson Howe

GO-GO DOCUMENTARY

Filmwise, these are good times for go-go: the Godfather of Washington's homegrown sound, Chuck Brown, is honoree and prime motivator of a new double-disc DVD, "Put Your Hands Up! The Tribute Concert to Chuck Brown." He's also at the heart of a new documentary, "The Pocket: The DC Go-Go Movement," making its world premiere Sunday at the Lincoln Theatre. Filmmakers Nicholas Shumaker and Michael Cahill trace the music's history back to the Young Senators show band and blue-eyed soul sensation Tommy Vann in the late '60s, and even smooth jazz master Grover Washington Jr., but Brown's impulsive crafting of the endless groove with his Soul Searchers is what defined the instantly identifiable go-go sound, and the history and cultural significance of that discovery are well explored by Brown, go-go historian Charles Stephenson and poet-educator Thomas Sayers Ellis.

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While go-go veterans Sugar Bear and Little Benny are also featured, much of the 90-minute film focuses on such hopefuls as the Crossover Band and the Uncalled 4 as they search for their own identity and celebrate go-go's continuing power in their neighborhood streets and rec centers. This is Chocolate City culture that's seldom the subject of media attention, much less recognition, unless there's trouble attached. Fugazi's Ian MacKaye soberly addresses commonalities of aggression and occasional violence in the hard-core punk and go-go communities, and the music's commercial challenges are examined. Concert footage, particularly that built around Backyard and its charismatic vocalist, Big G, captures the hyperjubilant communal energy that still drives go-go and makes it a cultural phenomenon whose influence now straddles three generations. The film will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Lincoln Theatre. Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door, $20 for students. Call 202-328-6000.

-- Richard Harrington

WILD DINER FARE They don't come much more "indie" than this: As part of Wild Diner Films' Digital Room screening series, "Loneliness Is Soul," a collaborative film produced and co-directed by Rick Schmidt, author of "Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices: How to Write, Produce, Direct, Shoot, Edit, and Promote a Feature-Length Movie for Less Than $15,000," screens Tuesday at 7:30 at HR-57 Center for the Preservation of Jazz and Blues, 1610 14th St. NW (Metro: Dupont Circle). Watch and learn. Admission $6. Call 202-667-3700.

-- Michael O'Sullivan

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