Written and performed by Margaret Cho and Ben Lee. Produced by Ben Lee, engineered and additional instruments by Nic Johns. Camera by Ione Skye. Graphics & Editing by Al Ridenour. Download the song for free, for a limited time only, until March 20, 2010:
Performers and Guest Hosts include George Lopez, Slash, Ray Romano, Cedric the Entertainer, Andy Garcia, Cypress Hill, Margaret Cho, Russell Peters, Beth Hart, Cheech & Chong, Kobe Bryant, Larry David, Samuel L. Jackson, Amber Valetta, Don Cheadle, Eva Longoria Parker, Magic Johnson, Charlie Wilson and Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Proceeds will go directly to leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty, CARE, for relief efforts in Haiti.
This is my latest music video for an amazing song called “Young James Dean” by one of my favorite bands, Girlyman – Ty Greenstein, Doris Muramatsu and Nate Borofsky. We shot it in Los Angeles and San Francisco with some fantastic appearances by Monistat, the brains behind the transguy quarterly, Original Plumbing- Amos Mac and Rocco Kayiatos, Ian Harvie, Madison Young, Donna Delore, Tomcat, and many many others! Special thanks to my husband Al Ridenour for camera work in LA, Chip Yamada for editing and Mookey Goh for assisting me in SF. I did almost all of the photography myself, with the exception of the band shots in LA, which were done by Al. When I was shooting Ian’s part in front of my house, I fell really really hard on my knee because I was trying to protect the camera and break my fall with my body (!) and there’s still a bump there but I am not mad at it because I love this video. Pretty much everyone involved in the video (both in front of and behind the camera) is trans/butch/queer/femme, which for me, in the greater LGBT world, is my family. The song is a meditation on butch identity, and so I wanted to show how beautiful we are as a community, no matter what gender we are or what we choose to be. I was going for an old Smiths video look with a SF sensibility. I think you can practically taste the fog. It’s a real San Francisco treat.