Marga Gomez

MARGA GOMEZ is hilarious. Devastating. And really nice, too. She's the perfect personality to be a triple threat at Pride—emceeing, performing and ruling with an iron fist as Parade Grand Marshal. She spoke to Metro about her upcoming hat trick, how gay guys love cleavage and which celebrities should avoid San Jose this weekend.

METRO: As Master of Ceremonies at San Jose Pride, do they spoil you? Do you get to wear something special, like Ellen at the Oscars?
MARGA GOMEZ: In addition to the MC gig, I have a standup act on Sunday after the parade, and during the parade I will be one of the grand marshals. So that's three outfits. Saturday, I MC a sort of Lesbian Lilith fair, so I will dress appropriately in a lot of ripped denim. As grand marshal, I want to dress like an old-fashioned marshal from a Western: cowboy hat, a marshal badge and a buckskin vest—faux buckskin, for the vegans. After the parade, I'll have more gay boys in the crowd, so I'll have to wear booty shorts and something low-cut, because surprisingly, gay guys love cleavage.

What are the coolest and uncoolest parts about being the MC?
The coolest part about being the MC is setting the tone for the day and making friends with people I never met before. The uncool part of being an MC is we don't get the best dressing rooms. One year they gave me a porta-toilet to change in. But on Sunday, when I'm a featured act, I'll get a cabana, sushi and a masseuse.

Does the gig impress the ladies?
If me being the grand marshal and waving to thousands in a convertible doesn't impress the ladies, then maybe they aren't gay.

Can you share your most memorable Pride moment from the past?
It involved Jennifer Beals and whipped cream, and that's all I can tell you.

Because you're smart and sassy, does anyone ever call you 'The Gay Sarah Silverman,' and if so, do you find that a compliment, or just annoying?
I've been doing this since before Sarah Silverman, so you could ask her if anybody calls her "The Heterosexual Marga Gomez." Actually, Herbert Siquenza from Culture Clash once called me "The Latina Lily Tomlin." I'll take that.

You're a comedian with a reputation for bringing the brutal truth. What kind of material are you going to let loose with at this year's Pride?
I'm going to take down as many celebrities as I can. I hereby warn Lindsey, Britney, Paris and George Bush to stay away from San Jose unless they feel like crying. I also may dish dirt about my parents-to-be Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. They've adopted every kind of child—why not a Latina lesbian?

- MetroActive San Jose, CA

By Louise Kennedy, Globe Staff | October 28, 2006
If you've ever wondered what it's like to share a household with two parents who are desperately trying to become household names, Marga Gomez has a story to tell you. And what a story it is: Fierce, funny, affectionate, and angry, "Los Big Names" weaves the tale of her parents' quest for celebrity with her own wild ride through the outskirts of fame.

Willy Chevalier and Margarita may never have reached the pinnacle of stardom, but in devoting themselves to their showbiz careers they gave their daughter plenty of rich material for a career of her own. OK, so they also gave her little more than a walk-on role in their outsize domestic dramas, but that trauma just gives her more to talk about.

And talk she does, in a one-woman show that received a Drama Desk nomination Off Broadway and plays this weekend at the Boston Center for the Arts, as part of Theater Offensive's 15th Out on the Edge Festival . With sharp writing and carefully honed delivery, Gomez uses her background as one of the country's first openly gay comedians to create a show that's part standup routine, part family drama, part showbiz satire, and all entertainment.

That's not to say it's all funny. A few barbed asides let us know about her parents' sometimes violent fights, and Gomez doesn't let the laughs overwhelm the complexity of her life as a Latina, a lesbian, and a child of two narcissists who could never quite give her the love she longed for. But she does find humor even in the dark moments, and in the lighter ones she's truly hysterical.

Her own adventures in Hollywood provide some of the most sidesplitting moments, as she auditions for the role of Kathleen Turner's maid in a Lifetime movie -- "But you're my friend, too!" Gomez's nastily perfect imitation of Turner insists, even as she says to keep vacuuming -- or rehearses her four lines in the ill-fated science fiction film "Sphere." The "Sphere" story leads to a show-stopping reenactment of the death by jellyfish (hilariously represented here by balloons) of another minor character, played by a then-unknown Queen Latifah.

Her Sharon Stone imitation is pretty darn funny, too. But even the characters we don't know so well -- those big names themselves, Cuban comedian Willy Chevalier and Puerto Rican dancer Margarita -- come to unforgettable and amusing life in Gomez's impersonations. As she mimics her father's ebullient swagger or her mother's runway-ready stroll, Gomez makes us feel as amused, appalled, and affectionate toward them as she does herself.

At nearly two hours without intermission, the show could use some tightening. And, structurally, it sometimes feels more like a series of standup routines than a carefully shaped play. But it's all great stuff, so it's hard to know just where Gomez could start trimming -- especially with the ghosts of those two Big Names at her side, each grappling to stay forever at center stage. - Boston Globe

By Peter Marks
If the Friars' Club ever decides to roast New York City, Marga Gomez should be on the dais.

Ms. Gomez is a comic marksman, whether her target is the East Village (''the neighborhood where 'Trainspotting' is a feel-good family film'') or an updated ''West Side Story'' (''Sexy. Tough. And everyone's fighting for apartments''). Her observations about the Manhattan she knows and loves, a borough of secret sublets, lesbian karaoke bars and health food store owners who go from serene to ballistic in a New York minute, are an insider's guide to the idiosyncrasies of city life in the mid-1990's.

New York in all its insanity is a recurring theme of ''Joking the Chicken,'' Ms. Gomez's new one-woman show, which is being presented late on Friday and Saturday nights at Performance Space 122 (150 First Avenue, at Ninth Street, East Village), and ends this weekend. Unlike some of her other solo pieces, like the autobiographical ''A Line Around the Block'' at the Joseph Papp Public Theater last spring, ''Joking the Chicken'' is closer to conventional stand-up than to monologue. Nevertheless, the show is a giddy 90 minutes with the deliciously cheeky Ms. Gomez. Decked out in fire-engine red, she can be as incendiary as a Molotov cocktail.

The comedy occasionally becomes political. On the campaign trail, she says, Bob Dole ''broke the cardinal rule of show business; I think it was Marlene Dietrich who said, 'Never let them see you fall off the stage.' '' Ms. Gomez is less successful when she falls back on stand-up staples like airline jokes; she fares much better when she is describing what her life as a ''Latina lesbian'' is like. It's an identity, she says, that leads people to assume that she must be ''a powerful, forthright woman who can dance.''

Even if she's not a dancer, Ms. Gomez is a woman to watch. - New York Times

"I idolized my father," says Marga Gomez, recalling her youth in New York City with her Puerto Rican-born mother, a dancer, and Cuban-born father, a comedian.

"Being a dancer and having guys hit on you -- I really didn't think that was cool. But my dad made everybody laugh. We'd go out to the beach and people would send him a beer, which is like getting an Academy Award in the Bronx. I love adoration. I love people liking me. I think people go into comedy for those reasons -- they want to be liked and appreciated."

But Gomez, the popular comedian-actress who headlines Washington's Laugh Out Loud gay and lesbian comedy festival this weekend, also knows that comedy is serious business.

"It's been said that comics are pretty serious people, almost morose, " she says from her home in San Francisco. "I'm kind of an intense person. I get goofy and all that, but then, I do have a serious side. Things can bother you, and sometimes you can really make things right by filtering them through humor and parody."

She pauses, as if for dramatic effect, before her true confession slips out, accompanied by an irrepressible snicker. "The thing that really got me into it, though, was...well -- you know -- to pick up girls."

Do tell.

"At a women's festival, my tent was next to a singer-songwriter who kept singing, "I am a lesbian, lesbian, lesbian, lesbian..." It went on like that for quite a while. I had to fuck a sailor after that. "

MW: When did you come out?

MARGA GOMEZ: During college. Isn't that a requirement? My "friend" would come home with me to visit, and we slept in a single bed. We would just carry on, and we got too loud. My parents freaked out. They threatened my life. They threatened me with plantain bananas. But they "knew" it wasn't my fault. They knew it was just The Girl, and all my strange friends from the drama club -- all those weird kids who were coming over. Then, they got real revenge. A year later, they "forgot," so I had to come out to them again and again. They just pretended there was no outburst, no crisis.

MW: When did you decide to perform professionally?

GOMEZ: When I moved to San Francisco. I dropped out of college and came here with a girl in the '80s. I just wanted to see what California was like, and picked San Francisco randomly. I didn't even know it was the gay mecca. I just thought it was hippies. There was this really great underground, counterculture performance scene happening here. It happened in New York, too, but I had to leave New York to discover it.

I was really passionate about comedy, and they had these open mikes at various clubs. It was really uncomfortable for me, and the audience, when I'd go up there. There was still not a lot of acceptance of out performers. But there was a club called the Valencia Rose, and they had a gay comedy night where they wanted you to talk about being queer. I got up there, and the audience was really supportive and hungry for it. I'm sure that I sucked in the beginning. But it was a very forgiving crowd. We were all in uncharted territory. I figured out what I was doing. I found my voice.

MW: Has your style changed much over the years?

GOMEZ: I sometimes think of myself as the Dyke of Darkness. In gay comedy, when it first started out, you had to be very happy all the time. It was like, "Being gay is great! My girlfriend this, and my girlfriend that..." But I was dating women, and it was always going wrong. So I was petty, and small, and liked to complain. Any comic will complain about whomever they're dating, right? Men will complain about women, women will complain about men. But just because I'm a lesbian, do I have to always turn the other cheek? That's kind of my inclination -- just to be a big complainer. I don't want to be a cheerleader out there all the time. My stuff is really just coming from my own experience. I've always had a social consciousness. I've always been desperate to find love. I've always been lusty. I've always been small. I've always been flawed. These things don't really change. It's just the context you're in.


MW: What are the current big complaints that drive your material?

GOMEZ: Well, I don't know if I'll talk about this in D.C., but I recently did a show in New York after I'd gone to a sex club for the first time with a girl I'm seeing. It wasn't really a complaint or anything, it was just a new experience. I was most excited by the cheese and crackers they had out. But then I was worried to eat them because I was afraid it was part of some Hickory Farms Girl/suburban housewife scene. It's weird, because no one takes their socks off, and that, to me, just isn't hot. There are all these little baby butches chained up to Pathmark shopping carts, and you're supposed to look at them, but you're not supposed to have any expression at all. But I'm very co-dependent. I'm trying to keep a poker face, but at the same, I'm like, "Are you okay? Did that hurt?" And there was sticky stuff everywhere. We didn't have any gloves, so I didn't really do too much. Then you run into people you know while you're getting fucked. It's like, "Oh...hi...are...you...still...taking ...PILATES?" Everybody else had a good time. That's the whole thing. Everybody else has a good time -- but me. Everybody else has a better minute plan on their phone -- than me. I just feel cursed, but at least I can have these pity parties for myself, which are called performances. I talk about sex quite a bit. It's great, because New Yorkers are so hardcore. But I'm going to try and read the paper a little bit before I go to D.C.

MW: Are you still seeing the same girl?

GOMEZ: Yes, and that's another thing that's sort of a phenomenon in my life -- younger women. I'm, let's say, over thirty-five. I don't have any children, but I guess I must have some sort of maternal feeling. She's, like, twenty-six, and looks up to me as a gay historian. I tell her things that I don't even know about back in the day, because I was stoned then. I make shit up, like "Back in the day, we were poor and couldn't even afford a rainbow flag. We had plaid. Nobody would march in our parades, except for Scottish people, and they weren't even gay. We didn't have a community. We had to go door to door to find people, like, ‘Oh, are you the lady of the house? Do you have any sensitive men inside who can dance? Oh, no men at all? May I see your fingernails? Are they short enough? Yes, come with us.'" And I tell her we didn't have Ellen, or Will and Grace. We had Miss Jane Hathaway.

"I've always had a social consciousness. I've always been desperate to find love. I've always been lusty. I've always been small. I've always been flawed. "

MW: So, you like 'em young. What's the lesbian equivalent of "chicken hawk?"

GOMEZ: "Marga Gomez." [Laughs.] It isn't even that, though. Lesbians are just always in couples, and I'm one of the few single lesbians who are, let's say, over thirty-five. It's like I should have a scarlet letter on me, but it should be an "S." It's not natural. But this girl is really amazing. We just me a couple of weeks ago, and we're really getting along great. She's a femme. Which makes me not a femme. She has incredible underwear. It's not even called underwear, it's lingerie. What I have is underwear. I buy it at Walgreen's in a tube. It's old underwear, too.

MW: I understand you were in the movie Sphere.

GOMEZ: With Sharon Stone and Queen Latifah -- the lesbian wish list. It's one of the most bizarre movies ever made. Lots of jellyfish and anemones. Queen Latifah and I were killed first. I was a computer expert, and she kept this biodome in operation. We were military personnel. But the first time you see us, we're baking and serving muffins to the scientists. Shortly after that, we're killed. I do tell people I played a lesbian, although the role had no lesbian lines, or any kind of lesbian action. It was all in my eyes. Like, I'd be at the computer, and you could see that I really wanted to be shooting pool.

MW: You're a method actress, then.

GOMEZ: Exactly. Then being with Sharon Stone, who has been my imaginary girlfriend since Basic Instinct, was a real treat.

MW: Do you play primarily a gay comedy circuit?

GOMEZ: I really do. I love to have a mixed audience, but I definitely want to have a progressive audience. And I love to have men and women in the audience. There's a women's circuit as well, with women's music festivals.

MW: Do you do a lot of women-only events?

GOMEZ: No. In fact, I don't like to play women-only, because it usually involves camping, and I'm really not an outdoors person. I can't do too many of those, because I can't spend too much time outside. I freak out. I'm just worried that there's dog poop everywhere. And you have to be very lucky with your campsite. The last time I was at a women's festival, my tent was next to a singer-songwriter whose favorite number was "I Am a Lesbian." She kept singing, "I am a lesbian/lesbian, lesbian, lesbian/lesbian, lesbian, lesbian...." It went on like that for quite a while. I had to fuck a sailor after that.

MW: You're not a fan of the lesbian folk music genre?

GOMEZ: Actually, they have a lot of rock now at the festivals. There are a lot of rocking young girls -- you know, "grrrlz." The folk music isn't predominant anymore. And the girls are really wild now. A lot of piercings. They're definitely tougher.

MW: As a comedian, are you labeled as a Latino as well as a lesbian?

GOMEZ: There are so many things about me. I don't really like to proceed as the Latina Lesbian Comic. But it's shorthand for people, so I don't mind. Sometimes I'm hired because I'm Latina. I happen to be one of the first out comics. It's important to have diversity in our movement. Ideally, I would like to be hired because I'm good at what I do. More than anything, I'm kind of neurotic, and quirky, and edgy. I really believe that, basically, I'm a comedian. Either you think I'm funny, or you don't. And the stuff I talk about, that's just my material. Everything about me is in there.

- Metro Weekly, DC

Marga Gomez, Funny Girl

Voluble comic has no problem being the voice of 'Latino dorks'
Compiled by Gretchen Giles


Interviewed in these pages 10 years ago, comic Marga Gomez described her dating scene succinctly. "The lesbians I've known are not good at dating," she complained. "We're good at relationships, so all our dates are like relationships—even a first date. We go to dinner, discuss our innermost secrets and the secrets of our ex-lovers; then we'd have dessert, pay the check and maybe I'd have the guts to pop the question 'Do you want to come back to my place and weep?' Then there would be couple's counseling and division of property by the second date."

Fast forward a decade, and Gomez is now partnered up, joking that her girlfriend is a smoker, which makes it so much easier to get along with her. "When you're with a fuck-up," she joshes, "they'll give you anything."

Gomez stars with Ugly Betty's Alec Mapa at the 15th annual Gay Pride Comedy Night, an evening of standup followed by an old-fashioned dance party that has gained in popularity every year. There is no star or co-star, as each comic is delighted to be co-headlining. Things are so gosh-darn friendly and giddy that event organizer Ellen Silver even wants straight folks to attend, and given the level of the performers and the $15 ticket, they may just take the plunge.

Count on Gomez to offer some light-hearted conciliation to the recent Proposition 8 decision by the California Supreme Court. "We don't want our children to know about gays marrying," she joked during a show before last year's election. "It's better that they just know about gays dating—and cruising."

Asked recently if her career has changed as Latinos become a more visible and vigorous political and cultural force, she says, "I like to call myself the butch Ricky Martin. Yes, there's more visibility and clout, but there is also more backlash. Hello, Lou Dobbs, swine flu? I don't get as much bounce from the 'Latin explosion,' because I am a Latina who can't speak Spanish or dance salsa; I can only eat salsa. I'm part of the silent minority in the Spanish majority. Latinas like me get attitude from other Latinos because of our gringo accents. I'm writing a show about this issue, a comedy that I'm opening Off-Broadway later in June. I want to be the voice for Latino dorks."

After the Santa Rosa gig, Gomez flies back east for a series of gay pride blow-outs before heading to Scotland for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and then stints in Mexico. She exults, "This will be a great pride month for me. It's my birthday, my TV special airs, I play Boston Pride, play a week in N.Y.C. off-Broadway, and get to work with Alec Mapa. I'm hoping Alec can hook me up with Salma Hayek. My girlfriend will give me a get-out-of-jail-free pass for that."


The 15th Annual Pride Comedy Night starring Marga Gomez and Alec Mapa is slated for Saturday, June 6, at the Wells Fargo Center. 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. 8pm. Tickets from $15. 707.546.3600. - The Bohemian, Santa Rosa, CA