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More recently, Cho and Daniels starred in Bam Bam and Celeste, playing the title characters in a madcap road trip movie that also features Alan Cumming and Kathy Najimy. Salty Features premiered the film at last September's Toronto International Film Festival. Unlike Can't Stop Dancing, a release date is in the offing.

Opening for the edgy, outrageous Cho is a very good, but very tricky, gig. Margaret is a force of nature as an entertainer: the Hurricane Katrina of edgy comedy. Cho's comic genius is compelling, making it near impossible for anyone else to impress, before or after, she's taken the stage.

Once you're seated for a Cho performance, no one else will do. But Bruce Daniels does. Articulate, calm, soft-spoken, in many ways the antithesis of his superstar boss, he keeps the customers satisfied and laughing.

How does he do it? Rather than telling jokes, Bruce, with gusto and masterful timing, simply recounts the funny and poignant stories of his life.

His risky role of first on the bill for a comedy legend notwithstanding, the handsome actor-comedian is foremost a source of nurture for his force of nature employer. Before, during, and after Margaret's star turn, Bruce is nourishing her, providing heaping helpings of Tender Loving Care. Whether it's assisting Cho with a tricky piece of costuming, providing encouraging words back stage, or getting her motor running en route to the theater, Bruce Daniels is Cho's steadying Rock of Gibraltar.

Is he consciously aware of being as much the star's sustainer as her opening act?

“I wasn't aware at first,” he tells me. “I didn't see it.” He pauses, and then continues; “Now I think there's something about me and Sagittarius women. My mother is Sagittarius, and so is Margaret. Recently, I've come to know another Sagittarius woman. Rather than being a natural nurturer, I think I'm protective of Sagittarius women.” Whether Daniels has a natural feel for fostering, or a zodiacal affinity for Sagittarius women, it works, big time.

Comfortable in the comedienne's formidable shadow, for now, Daniels admits to wanting something more, telling us, “I've become more ambitious with the years. Now that I've gotten a taste of success, I want more.”

As he hones his stand-up style with Cho, Daniels must also be nurturing dreams of a day when he's a headliner.

Crystal-balling his life five years from now, Bruce Daniels predicts, “I'm an actor, too, and, in the future, I want to be acting more. I want to write a script and have a someone at my side with whom I can enjoy life.

“I'd like to have a child, but that means I'd have to be off of the road. I'd want to be home to raise my child.”

A Brokeback Mountain fan, the actor-comedian nonetheless laments, “I'm tired of straight actors always playing gay roles. Why can't gay people make a movie that's as good as Brokeback Mountain?”

Despite his affinity for acting, and his desire to eventually become a homebody father, Bruce Daniels doesn't intend to retire from stand up anytime soon, claiming, “I could give up the road, but I couldn't quit the stand up. I get hundreds of letters from high school students telling me how much my comedy has meant to them.”

And that's no laughing matter.

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