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December 18-24, 2008
editorial@boulderweekly.com
 Still smokin’
With their long-awaited reunion and a new film in the works, Cheech and Chong light it up in high style
by Ben Corbett
We use suppositories now,” Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong chime simultaneously when asked if they still smoke marijuana.
It’s been 23 years since they’ve performed together, yet the chemistry is as impressively tight as the duo’s 1970s prime, when crafting routines like Acapulco Gold, Basketball Jones, Earache My Eye and Blind Melon Chitlin — sketches as American and timeless as the minds that created them. Not to mention the infinite laughs they still inspire more than three decades after the fact. During TBS’s Cheech and Chong Roasted held at Ceasar’s Palace in November, the program attracted 2.4 million viewers, breaking the network’s former record, and only illustrating that none other than Cheech and Chong can fill the vacuum they left in their own wake back in 1985.
As far as live performances go, aside from next-generation initiates, there are two types of veteran Cheech and Chong fans: those who actually used the mammoth rolling paper that came as a collector’s item with the 1972 vinyl release of the Big Bambu album, and those who didn’t. Those who didn’t will bring theirs along to the show, hoping for an autograph, while those who did will stand in the meet-and-greet line boasting about how long it took to smoke that spliff back when you could still buy an ounce of Mexican schwag for $30, which is exactly how much it took to fill the thing.
So be prepared to get stoned. At least if you go to the performance. Because that probably won’t be a cloud of night mood incense causing zero visibility between you and the stage when Cheech and Chong run through their classic routines. Entering the theater will be something like entering a spongy, smoke-filled lung, and after this long of a wait, it’s as much a tribute to the fans as it is to the aging comics that performances on Cheech and Chong’s reunion tour have been selling out in mere minutes. But this should come as no surprise. Vitality is measured by demand, and in the realm of comic relief—a la sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll — following eight years of national confusion, demand is soaring.
“America needs a hug right now,” says Chong. “America is so screwed up. The capitalistic system has fallen totally on its face. Every Bush move just failed miserably. He has the worst karma. It’s just like when Cheech and Chong were born during the Vietnam War and people needed something to laugh at. Right now they need something to laugh at more than ever.”
“That’s us,” adds Marin.
Now celebrating the 30th anniversary of the cult film classic Up In Smoke, the drug-induced duo has reached around the globe with their own brand of humor, netting an audience that now crosses four generations of fans and devotees. Formed in 1968 against the backdrop of the Nixon administration, what made Cheech and Chong special was their street theater personae cast in the glow of 1970s fringe: The burned-out ’60s casualty, Anthony “Man” Stoner, kicking it with East L.A. low rider, Pedro De Pacas, both puffing on quarter-pound spliffs of Mexican pot while drumming up the next hustle. From the bungling cop Sergeant Stadanko to the prurient Sister Mary Elephant, the duo became the counterculture’s social commentators through their characters, helping to ease the weight of an otherwise serious atmosphere of fear and paranoia. Discovered in 1971 by record producer Lou Adler, after releasing their first self-titled album, Cheech and Chong debuted as the first comedians to open up for a rock concert, setting the long-running trend that followed.
“It was the Rolling Stones,” says Chong.
“Is that the band with the satisfaction?” asks Cheech.
 “That’s them,” says Chong.
“Well, we were actually just starting,” says Cheech. “We were in our budding stage. That’s when the first album came out. We were the big underground hit.”
“Mick Jagger’s a pretty smart guy,” says Chong.
“Yeah,” says Cheech. “He’s a real fart smeller. I mean smart feller.”
“We opened for the Allman Brothers,” says Chong. “We opened for Vanilla Fudge.”
“Alice Cooper,” says Cheech.
“We opened up for Joyce Brothers,” says Chong (as Cheech cracks up hysterically). “That was on the couch. That’s where we opened up for her.”
After cutting five comedy albums through the 1970s, the two moved into celluloid. Following the wild success of 1978’s Up In Smoke, Cheech and Chong released five more films, including Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie (1980) and Still Smokin’ (1983), both instant B-rated cult classics. Unfortunately, their creative peak came during the fever pitch of Nancy Reagan’s War On Drugs, which, besides creating a puritan climate of national fear for any kind of drug association, essentially stigmatized the comedians as evil contributors to the poisoning of America’s youth. With films that seemed to glamorize drug consumption suddenly taboo, Cheech and Chong released 1984’s The Corsican Brothers, an otherwise tame film with mere innuendos alluding to sex and drugs as
compared to the balls-out humor that won the team their earlier accolades.
Losing popularity due to the new circumstances, and with other passions in mind, Cheech opted to seek a film career not involving drug themes, while Chong stayed the course of his original vision and stage persona. While older fans will remember Cheech and Chong from their heyday as comedy titans during the 1970s and ’80s, the next generation knows them from Cheech’s 1996-2001 role as Inspector Joe Dominguez, Don Johnson’s sidekick in the popular TV cop show Nash Bridges. Chong, on the other hand, carried on the tradition as aging stoner Leo in the hit comedy series That ’70s Show from 1999-2006.
Despite rumors throughout the years of possible reunions, and although Chong says the 23-year absence of Cheech and Chong is because of “Mexican/stoner time,” the two went through a period of bad blood and public back-biting that never got too serious. With Cheech comfortable in his Nash Bridges niche and doing TV and film cameos and voice-overs in Disney films from the character Banzai in The Lion King (1994) to Ramone in Cars (2006), Chong fared as best he could without his other half. But finally, the ice was broken during a 2005 HBO Comedy Festival panel discussion that thawed the once-cool relations. Since then, rumors picked up momentum, culminating in a June 2008 announcement of the Light Up America reunion.
“For years,” Chong says, “the only question anybody really asked me was: ‘Hey, where’s the other guy?’ I’d go to pitch a script, and they’d say, ‘Well, you know, if you had Cheech with you, we’d have a go.’ There’s a lot of anal people in the world. They hate to see the salt shaker and the pepper shaker apart.”
 To supplement his stand-up income, aside from film parts, under the safe umbrella of the Clinton administration, in 1999 Chong launched a family business, Nice Dreams Enterprizes, an Internet mail-order marketing outfit run by his son Paris that sold paraphernalia such as Chong Glass custom smoker ware. Shortly after, in a Feb. 24, 2003 raid, under a sting operation called “Operation Pipe Dreams,” John Ashcroft’s Justice Department arrested 55 individuals selling glass pipes, Chong being the big catch and high-profile example. Although a pound of marijuana was discovered in Chong’s Pacific Palisades home, he wasn’t charged. In a case of entrapment, an employee of Nice Dreams sold his Chong’s custom glass to an undercover agent in Pennsylvania, where sales of the contraband is prohibited. In May of that year, Chong pleaded guilty to Conspiracy to Distribute Drug Paraphernalia and in October served nine months at the Taft minimum-security facility. How was Cheech affected by news of Tommy’s arrest?
“I cried,” he says. “I sat down and cried. I said, ‘Oh no.’ Then I brought him a fruitcake.”
Chong adds: “Everybody said, ‘Hey! Some fruitcake’s here to see you!’”
Cheech explains that he visited as often as he could. “I wanted to come more, but he couldn’t stand the anal searches.”
“They told me no more Cheech visits because it caused too much of a commotion in the visiting room,” says Chong. “When prisoners heard that Cheech was coming, everybody scheduled their visits for that day. The place was overcrowded, and they had to turn people away.”
A victim who was set up, and the latest score for the other side in the ongoing War on Drugs, Chong says, “It was more of Bush continuing Nixon and Reagan’s failed policies. It was really a smoke screen to hide the way they were thieving.”
Adds Cheech: “We find out more and more that the people fighting the War on Drugs are the people that want to go on fighting it: the people that run the prisons, and the DEA and those kinds of police. Because if they don’t have a War on Drugs, they don’t have a job. Half of the people in prison are in there for drugs. Half!”
In February 2005, still on parole, Chong launched into his new passion, The Marijuana-Logues, a pot-smoker’s take on Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues. However, after only two performances, Chong’s parole officer pulled the plug on the show’s star after audiences were seen smoking pot during performances (obvious due to the large clouds of smoke filling the halls), a probation violation. Meanwhile, Chong wrote two new books, during and after his jail stretch, The I Chong: Tales from the Joint and Cheech and Chong: The Unauthorized Biography.
“It was like doing a homework assignment that you put off forever,” he explains. “Finally you have to finish it. I worked on it in jail, and I worked on it after. I realized that how I write is I research for a couple of years, then I put it all in a book in about a month.”
Finally in 2006, with parole behind him, Chong did a few quick stand-up shows in the U.S., stating publicly that he was leaving for his hometown Vancouver, never to return, and perhaps launching a major lawsuit against the U.S. Justice Department for constitutional issues. So why the return now?
“Bush is kind of out of office now,” says Chong. “Actually, he always was. He never was in. But we’ve got the new Obama regime, and they’re more Chicano-stoner friendly. I decided that you can’t run away from your problems, ya know. Not for the kids. Because the kids are our future.”
Are Cheech and Chong nervous about returning to Pittsburgh, the place where Chong’s troubles began, and where they’ve just scheduled a show for the ongoing Light Up America tour?
“Never,” they answer together.
Says Chong: “What’s her name? Mary Beth Buchanan [U.S. Attorney and Chong’s prosecutor, now refusing to resign under the new administration]. She better start getting nervous. They’re going to start investigating her for politicizing the White House. They’ll probably keep everybody in there long enough to get indictments against them.”
“Yeah, that’d be nice,” adds Cheech, who during the interim since Nash Bridges has continued his career in film, doing a spot in Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse, as well as the TV hits Judging Amy, Lost and Grey’s Anatomy, to name a few. Marin is also known for owning the largest Chicano art collection in America, perhaps the world, and he spends a portion of each year taking selections on the road, promoting the work of traditional and up-and-coming Chicano artists in museums across the country, giving talks, spreading the word of La Raza. More, he announced just this week a new film now in pre-production which he’ll both direct and star in called The Angel of Oxnard.
As for the comedy team, Cheech and Chong are putting together a live performance DVD of the Light Up America tour for release in 2009.
“We’re working on that by doing the show and making sure it’s ship-shape,” says Cheech, with Chong adding, “We’re working on trying to remember what we’re working on. We’re also working on the script for the next Cheech and Chong movie. We both want to do Santa Claus and His Old Lady, that album that we got out. Up in Smoke was really our live act and our records put together. Santa Claus and His Old Lady, at least it’s got a visible, recognizable title. The first thing you look for in a Cheech and Chong movie is a good title.
“We were also thinking of Pineapple Express III,” Cheech throws in.
“The next one will be probably the best thing to ever hit film or the stage in centuries,” says Chong
“Ever,” says Cheech.
“I saw Australia last night,” says Chong, “and our movie is going to be even more spectacular than that. We’re gonna have way more horses in it.”
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