Margaret Cho's first concert film, I'm the One That I Want (Frameline24), looked at the comedian's San Francisco roots, her freewheeling bisexuality, her unpleasant brush with TV sit­com fame (1994's short-lived All-American Girl) and that staple of Cho's comedy, her inad­ vertently hilarious mother. Notorious C.H.O., filmed live at Seattle's Paramount Theatre, cap­tures Cho's recent 37-city tour, which ended with a career triumph at Carnegie Hall.

A somber post-9/11 opening monologue dedicated to rescue workers at Ground Zero veers off in a typically irreverent direction that sets the tone for a stream of fresh new material. Cho reveals "the gayest thing I have ever heard in my life!" (it happened in Scotland, believe it or not), riffs on how the world would be different if men had periods ("every bachelor apartment would look like a murder scene") and details the ongoing but so far unsuccessful quest to find her G-spot (an eye-opening visit to a straight S&M sex club didn't help). We also learn what sort of woman turns her on (slender supermodels need not apply; Cho would prefer "a bull dyke who looks like John Goodman"), and Cho tells us perhaps more than we need to know about her visit to a colonic irrigation clinic in L.A. called Water's Gift, where Enya plays in the background and "the lines are blurred between medical procedure and entertainment."

Cho also regales us with stories about her best friends from her high school days in San Francisco, Alan and Jeremy, two teenage drag queens who taught her how to be fabulous, funny and fierce. (She remembers them as "Crouching Drag Queen, Hidden Faggot.") Cho summons up that fierceness for her closing monologue, which takes a serious turn to confront the trauma of growing up with an eating disorder — in a world where thinness is synonymous with beauty and self-worth.

Preceding and following the concert are shots of Cho's dedicated fans paying homage to an icon still in the making. (Having seen Cho do it, who can resist imitating her mother? "Moran! What is 'Ass-Master'?!") An interview with both her mother and father, shot when Cho brought the tour to a sold-out audience at Davies Hall in San Francisco, provides another level of insight into the evolving performance art of one of America's funniest and most intelligent comic talents.