Cheech Marin answers the phone at a Ritz-Carlton hotel room in Florida, where he is booked under the name Dick Gozinya. He chuckles mischievously when told that asking the front desk clerk to be connected to his pseudonym's room was a little awkward. He may now be a world-class Chicano art collector and respected actor, but he clearly hasn't lost his crass sense of humor.
Two days later, while appearing with partner Tommy Chong during the first of two shows at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom, Cheech confirmed that his humor is still as delightfully ribald as ever. The two are in the midst of their first national tour together in more than a quarter-century, and Cheech proclaimed his enjoyment at being onstage in Hampton.
"New Hampshire is so beautiful for like one more week, and then fuck it, man," he said, shivering at the thought of a New England winter.
Cheech and Chong took the stage after an opening set of standup comedy from Chong's wife, Shelby. Her routine served largely as a prolonged introduction for the packed house, recounting the duo's unlikely rise to stoner infamy.
But the crowd would later get a firsthand taste of the illustrious Cheech and Chong brand of comedy, as the pair rummaged through recycled sketches from their old albums and movies. They did the "pulled over" scene from "Up in Smoke," as well as their popular Ralph and Herbie dog skit. Cheech did his act as comic musician Red Neck, and Chong gave new life to 156-year-old bluesman Blind Melon Chitlin'. Cheech became the exuberant host of "Let's Make a Dope Deal," and Chong transformed into the show's stir-fried contestant. Throughout, the pair added new, contemporary tidbits to their timeless routines.
The audience members, many of whom grew up with Cheech and Chong and seemed to know every word of each sketch, ate it up. Although both actors have remained in the limelight to some degree over the years, they have done so separately, abandoning their affiliation for two-and-a-half decades. Why did the pair split up?
"Well, egos. He had one and so did I, and we got fed up with each other," Cheech said. "There's always creative friction when you're trying to do something or create something, and we just kind of kept fighting about whose ideas were gonna dominate, and it came to the point where we didn't want to hear what each other had to say anymore."
When the two parted ways, Cheech "went straight," as Chong puts it. He spent six seasons alongside Don Johnson in the CBS police drama "Nash Bridges," and accepted roles in such movies as "Tin Cup," "Desperado" and "From Disk Till Dawn," as well as all three installations of "Spy Kids."
Chong maintained his burned-out stoner reputation, appearing regularly on "That '70s Show" from 1999 to 2006 and starring in such underground films as "Evil Bong" and "Secret Agent 420." He also directed movies and wrote two books, including this year's unauthorized autobiography of Cheech and Chong (unauthorized because Cheech never signed off on the project).
But both Cheech and Chong said the time was right to reunite, with demand high from audiences and promoters, alike. Chong said the two fought every step of the way, but tensions vanished once they actually stepped back onstage together.
"Actually, we're starting to get along," Cheech said with a chortle. "I mean, even in the height of our acrimony, we still really loved each other a lot. You can't spend that much time with somebody and not develop a feeling for them and appreciate what they do. We're each other's biggest fans, we really are."
Chong spoke to The Wire separately from another hotel, where he was staying with his wife. When informed the interview was being recorded, he said he didn't mind. "I've been in the federal joint, so I've been recorded all my life," he said.
Chong is very open about his arrest for distributing glass bongs in 2003 and the nine months of incarceration that followed. He described the federal raid on his house in detail in his 2007 book, "The I Chong." The episode reads like a scene from an old Cheech and Chong movie. He groggily answers the door in his boxer shorts at 5 a.m. and stands there in utter confusion while armed men ransack his home.
"It was pretty funny when you look back on it," he chuckled. "But I was shaking. I was shaking like a leaf because I was so outraged at the ignorance that I was actually feeling."
Recognized internationally as the beloved patriarch of marijuana advocacy, Chong admits that he thought he was above getting arrested on pot charges, let alone for selling bongs that actually belonged to his son's company. He noted that he has never dealt pot or committed a serious crime ("Even when I grew it, I would give it away. I would never sell it"). He believes he was targeted by federal agents because of his celebrity status as an outspoken marijuana campaigner.
"It showed me how corrupt the Bush administration Republicans are. They've got this conservative façade that is just an excuse for them to rob the country blind," Chong said. "My take on it was that they were doing a preemptive strike against the culture, as they did these wars. Take all their enemies out, you know? And they consider potheads their enemy."
Chong said he's currently on "sabbatical" from smoking grass. He said he smoked frequently while on tour with his wife doing standup, but the rapid character changes in his sketch routines with Cheech require him to have his wits about him. He quit before the tour started, which means he's been clean for, oh, about three weeks now.
"After I get off the tour, I'll probably go back and toke up a bit," he said. "But that's the greatest thing about pot, is that you don't have to smoke it."
Cheech, too, does not light up as often as he used to. "Only when I have it," he quipped. Then, elaborating, "Not as much, because I'm older now and I don't need as much anymore."
But Cheech remains a staunch supporter of marijuana legalization. In fact, he seems to get a bit worked up talking about it.
"I think it should be legal. I think it's ridiculous that it's not," he said. "I think that if they legalized marijuana tomorrow, it would do more for the economy than 10 $700 billion bailouts."
He enumerated the merits of legitimizing marijuana in the United States. It would add a new tax base, he said, and would enable police to tackle real problems instead of chasing potheads around. He noted that 50 to 60 percent of people in prison were convicted of drug-related charges, and their incarceration is paid for by taxpayers.
Chong addressed the legalization issue during a standup routine at the Ballroom. You know pot is harmless, he said, because your first instinct after taking a drag off a joint is to give it to somebody else. Not so with cocaine, he joked. But is marijuana a "gateway" drug? "Yeah, gateway to a good time," he said.
Asked if they would advise aspiring comics to smoke weed, both Cheech and Chong shied away from giving a wholehearted endorsement. "I wouldn't advise anybody to do anything, really," Cheech said with a laugh, noting that he knows many comedians who refuse to smoke because it makes them paranoid.
Chong's comments were similar. "Smoking pot's a very personal thing," he said. "I've known people, geniuses, that would get sick, get dizzy, if they ever toked up. And then I've known other geniuses that smoked every day."
Chong says he has even smoked with Arnold Schwarzenegger, a.k.a. the Governator. The California Republican has admitted, since becoming governor, to smoking with Chong back in the old days–a confession that brings Chong considerable pride.
"I love the fact that he admits it. He fessed up to it," Chong said. "I tell people all the time, Arnold probably knows more about the human body than most doctors, and he would never put anything in his body that would harm himself."
Indeed, Chong prides himself on having stayed in good physical condition throughout his acting career, even lifting weights during his years with Cheech. Now 70, Chong is still tall and lean. Although his beard is tinted a dignified white, he looks good for his age, and he can turn on his vintage stoner drawl at the drop of a hat.
Cheech, although eight years younger than his partner, has grown a bit more portly, and his iconic mustache is no more. But his trademark Chicano accent sounds exactly the same as it did in the 1970s, and he danced around the Ballroom stage with youthful energy. The crowd was especially delighted to see Cheech reprise his role as rocker Alice Bowie, strutting around the stage in a pink dress and tattooed body suit.
When Cheech and Chong met in Vancouver some 40 years ago, they may have seemed an unlikely pair. A third generation Mexican American, Cheech (born Richard Marin) was raised in the barrios of East Los Angeles. Chong, whose father is Chinese and mother is Scots-Irish, was born in Alberta, Canada, and grew up in a poor neighborhood near Calgary.
Chong was running a topless joint in Vancouver when he first met Cheech, who was in Canada dodging the draft. Both avid musicians, they soon started a band together. At their first show, Chong explains, the duo started by warming up the crowd with some comedy. After 45 minutes, they were still going, and the band hadn't played a single note. The crowd's enthusiastic response convinced them to delve into comedy full-time, and they adopted the name Cheech and Chong, combining Cheech's nickname with Chong's last name. After a few weeks, they left Canada and moved to L.A.
Cheech said he had no idea at the time that he and his new partner would go on to become superstar icons of the counterculture.
"When we first started doing this, we were like, 'Wow, we have a job. They're paying us, man. We're off the streets. We even bought a used car. Wow.' And so we just kept doing it," he said. "It was like climbing this ladder, you know? We never looked down until we were at the top, and then we looked down and said, 'Jesus Christ, we've come a long way.'"
Chong was less surprised by the duo's success. He said he knew they would be a hit the moment they first took the stage together. But he does not know how or why he and Cheech demonstrated such instant chemistry. "I have no clue," he laughed. "I don't have any idea. I guess it was the opposites. I was older, he was younger. I was long hair, he was short hair. I think it was the opposites."
Cheech had a few more ideas. He noted that he and Chong were both minorities who grew up in black neighborhoods and immersed themselves in black culture. They shared similar tastes in music, and, most importantly, they made each other laugh. Their diverse backgrounds, he said, only made them more open to different ideas.
After something like nine albums and six movies together, the stoner duo comedy genre that Cheech and Chong pioneered is still prevalent today. Already in 2008, Hollywood has released two major motion pictures based around pothead tandems: "Harold and Kumar" and "Pineapple Express." Cheech and Chong both agreed that these films do for modern audiences what they did for crowds in the 1970s and '80s. Chong said he is honored to have influenced everyone from Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow to Beavis and Butthead.
"I love that we've influenced a whole culture, a whole genre, especially in the movies," Chong said. "You can see it in the industry, and it's an honor."
The entire marijuana culture, Chong added, has gone incredibly mainstream. Almost everyone you meet, he said, either smokes pot, used to smoke pot or will smoke pot in the future.
But Cheech and Chong's comedy is not just about getting high and acting stupid, Chong said. "We showed the world, especially the Chicano world and the brown-skinned world, that two guys could use their ethnicity and become successful being exactly who they are," he said. "That's why everybody that sees us can relate to us, because we're them."
Cheech agreed, adding that their comedy is just as relevant today as it was 30 years ago. He pointed to some of their Mexican folk songs, which reference issues of immigration and the status of Latinos in the United States.
Although his career has evolved to include numerous roles outside the stoner comedy arena, Cheech said it won't bother him at all if he is primarily remembered as half of the perennially stoned misfit duo Cheech and Chong. On the contrary, he is proud to have broken all the rules to become a star.
"I'm immensely proud of Cheech and Chong. I wouldn't undo anything from Cheech and Chong for all the money in the world," he said. "To be a part of that is something that I will go to my grave being enormously proud of."
But Cheech is not going to his grave just yet. And rumors suggest that his work with Chong will not be finished with this tour. During her routine in Hampton, Shelby mentioned that there's a new Cheech and Chong movie on the horizon, which came as welcome news to their loyal fans.
Cheech and Chong closed their first show at the Ballroom with an acoustic rendition of the title song from their most popular movie, "Up in Smoke." In a demonstration of their enduring charm, they soon had the entire audience singing along with the chorus: "When life begins to be one long and dangerous road, I take a toke and all my cares go up in smoke."
News Hawk- Ganjarden 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: The Wire
Author: Matt Kanner
Contact: The Wire
Copyright: 2008 The Wire
Website: Best Buds
Two days later, while appearing with partner Tommy Chong during the first of two shows at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom, Cheech confirmed that his humor is still as delightfully ribald as ever. The two are in the midst of their first national tour together in more than a quarter-century, and Cheech proclaimed his enjoyment at being onstage in Hampton.
"New Hampshire is so beautiful for like one more week, and then fuck it, man," he said, shivering at the thought of a New England winter.
Cheech and Chong took the stage after an opening set of standup comedy from Chong's wife, Shelby. Her routine served largely as a prolonged introduction for the packed house, recounting the duo's unlikely rise to stoner infamy.
But the crowd would later get a firsthand taste of the illustrious Cheech and Chong brand of comedy, as the pair rummaged through recycled sketches from their old albums and movies. They did the "pulled over" scene from "Up in Smoke," as well as their popular Ralph and Herbie dog skit. Cheech did his act as comic musician Red Neck, and Chong gave new life to 156-year-old bluesman Blind Melon Chitlin'. Cheech became the exuberant host of "Let's Make a Dope Deal," and Chong transformed into the show's stir-fried contestant. Throughout, the pair added new, contemporary tidbits to their timeless routines.
The audience members, many of whom grew up with Cheech and Chong and seemed to know every word of each sketch, ate it up. Although both actors have remained in the limelight to some degree over the years, they have done so separately, abandoning their affiliation for two-and-a-half decades. Why did the pair split up?
"Well, egos. He had one and so did I, and we got fed up with each other," Cheech said. "There's always creative friction when you're trying to do something or create something, and we just kind of kept fighting about whose ideas were gonna dominate, and it came to the point where we didn't want to hear what each other had to say anymore."
When the two parted ways, Cheech "went straight," as Chong puts it. He spent six seasons alongside Don Johnson in the CBS police drama "Nash Bridges," and accepted roles in such movies as "Tin Cup," "Desperado" and "From Disk Till Dawn," as well as all three installations of "Spy Kids."
Chong maintained his burned-out stoner reputation, appearing regularly on "That '70s Show" from 1999 to 2006 and starring in such underground films as "Evil Bong" and "Secret Agent 420." He also directed movies and wrote two books, including this year's unauthorized autobiography of Cheech and Chong (unauthorized because Cheech never signed off on the project).
But both Cheech and Chong said the time was right to reunite, with demand high from audiences and promoters, alike. Chong said the two fought every step of the way, but tensions vanished once they actually stepped back onstage together.
"Actually, we're starting to get along," Cheech said with a chortle. "I mean, even in the height of our acrimony, we still really loved each other a lot. You can't spend that much time with somebody and not develop a feeling for them and appreciate what they do. We're each other's biggest fans, we really are."
Chong spoke to The Wire separately from another hotel, where he was staying with his wife. When informed the interview was being recorded, he said he didn't mind. "I've been in the federal joint, so I've been recorded all my life," he said.
Chong is very open about his arrest for distributing glass bongs in 2003 and the nine months of incarceration that followed. He described the federal raid on his house in detail in his 2007 book, "The I Chong." The episode reads like a scene from an old Cheech and Chong movie. He groggily answers the door in his boxer shorts at 5 a.m. and stands there in utter confusion while armed men ransack his home.
"It was pretty funny when you look back on it," he chuckled. "But I was shaking. I was shaking like a leaf because I was so outraged at the ignorance that I was actually feeling."
Recognized internationally as the beloved patriarch of marijuana advocacy, Chong admits that he thought he was above getting arrested on pot charges, let alone for selling bongs that actually belonged to his son's company. He noted that he has never dealt pot or committed a serious crime ("Even when I grew it, I would give it away. I would never sell it"). He believes he was targeted by federal agents because of his celebrity status as an outspoken marijuana campaigner.
"It showed me how corrupt the Bush administration Republicans are. They've got this conservative façade that is just an excuse for them to rob the country blind," Chong said. "My take on it was that they were doing a preemptive strike against the culture, as they did these wars. Take all their enemies out, you know? And they consider potheads their enemy."
Chong said he's currently on "sabbatical" from smoking grass. He said he smoked frequently while on tour with his wife doing standup, but the rapid character changes in his sketch routines with Cheech require him to have his wits about him. He quit before the tour started, which means he's been clean for, oh, about three weeks now.
"After I get off the tour, I'll probably go back and toke up a bit," he said. "But that's the greatest thing about pot, is that you don't have to smoke it."
Cheech, too, does not light up as often as he used to. "Only when I have it," he quipped. Then, elaborating, "Not as much, because I'm older now and I don't need as much anymore."
But Cheech remains a staunch supporter of marijuana legalization. In fact, he seems to get a bit worked up talking about it.
"I think it should be legal. I think it's ridiculous that it's not," he said. "I think that if they legalized marijuana tomorrow, it would do more for the economy than 10 $700 billion bailouts."
He enumerated the merits of legitimizing marijuana in the United States. It would add a new tax base, he said, and would enable police to tackle real problems instead of chasing potheads around. He noted that 50 to 60 percent of people in prison were convicted of drug-related charges, and their incarceration is paid for by taxpayers.
Chong addressed the legalization issue during a standup routine at the Ballroom. You know pot is harmless, he said, because your first instinct after taking a drag off a joint is to give it to somebody else. Not so with cocaine, he joked. But is marijuana a "gateway" drug? "Yeah, gateway to a good time," he said.
Asked if they would advise aspiring comics to smoke weed, both Cheech and Chong shied away from giving a wholehearted endorsement. "I wouldn't advise anybody to do anything, really," Cheech said with a laugh, noting that he knows many comedians who refuse to smoke because it makes them paranoid.
Chong's comments were similar. "Smoking pot's a very personal thing," he said. "I've known people, geniuses, that would get sick, get dizzy, if they ever toked up. And then I've known other geniuses that smoked every day."
Chong says he has even smoked with Arnold Schwarzenegger, a.k.a. the Governator. The California Republican has admitted, since becoming governor, to smoking with Chong back in the old days–a confession that brings Chong considerable pride.
"I love the fact that he admits it. He fessed up to it," Chong said. "I tell people all the time, Arnold probably knows more about the human body than most doctors, and he would never put anything in his body that would harm himself."
Indeed, Chong prides himself on having stayed in good physical condition throughout his acting career, even lifting weights during his years with Cheech. Now 70, Chong is still tall and lean. Although his beard is tinted a dignified white, he looks good for his age, and he can turn on his vintage stoner drawl at the drop of a hat.
Cheech, although eight years younger than his partner, has grown a bit more portly, and his iconic mustache is no more. But his trademark Chicano accent sounds exactly the same as it did in the 1970s, and he danced around the Ballroom stage with youthful energy. The crowd was especially delighted to see Cheech reprise his role as rocker Alice Bowie, strutting around the stage in a pink dress and tattooed body suit.
When Cheech and Chong met in Vancouver some 40 years ago, they may have seemed an unlikely pair. A third generation Mexican American, Cheech (born Richard Marin) was raised in the barrios of East Los Angeles. Chong, whose father is Chinese and mother is Scots-Irish, was born in Alberta, Canada, and grew up in a poor neighborhood near Calgary.
Chong was running a topless joint in Vancouver when he first met Cheech, who was in Canada dodging the draft. Both avid musicians, they soon started a band together. At their first show, Chong explains, the duo started by warming up the crowd with some comedy. After 45 minutes, they were still going, and the band hadn't played a single note. The crowd's enthusiastic response convinced them to delve into comedy full-time, and they adopted the name Cheech and Chong, combining Cheech's nickname with Chong's last name. After a few weeks, they left Canada and moved to L.A.
Cheech said he had no idea at the time that he and his new partner would go on to become superstar icons of the counterculture.
"When we first started doing this, we were like, 'Wow, we have a job. They're paying us, man. We're off the streets. We even bought a used car. Wow.' And so we just kept doing it," he said. "It was like climbing this ladder, you know? We never looked down until we were at the top, and then we looked down and said, 'Jesus Christ, we've come a long way.'"
Chong was less surprised by the duo's success. He said he knew they would be a hit the moment they first took the stage together. But he does not know how or why he and Cheech demonstrated such instant chemistry. "I have no clue," he laughed. "I don't have any idea. I guess it was the opposites. I was older, he was younger. I was long hair, he was short hair. I think it was the opposites."
Cheech had a few more ideas. He noted that he and Chong were both minorities who grew up in black neighborhoods and immersed themselves in black culture. They shared similar tastes in music, and, most importantly, they made each other laugh. Their diverse backgrounds, he said, only made them more open to different ideas.
After something like nine albums and six movies together, the stoner duo comedy genre that Cheech and Chong pioneered is still prevalent today. Already in 2008, Hollywood has released two major motion pictures based around pothead tandems: "Harold and Kumar" and "Pineapple Express." Cheech and Chong both agreed that these films do for modern audiences what they did for crowds in the 1970s and '80s. Chong said he is honored to have influenced everyone from Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow to Beavis and Butthead.
"I love that we've influenced a whole culture, a whole genre, especially in the movies," Chong said. "You can see it in the industry, and it's an honor."
The entire marijuana culture, Chong added, has gone incredibly mainstream. Almost everyone you meet, he said, either smokes pot, used to smoke pot or will smoke pot in the future.
But Cheech and Chong's comedy is not just about getting high and acting stupid, Chong said. "We showed the world, especially the Chicano world and the brown-skinned world, that two guys could use their ethnicity and become successful being exactly who they are," he said. "That's why everybody that sees us can relate to us, because we're them."
Cheech agreed, adding that their comedy is just as relevant today as it was 30 years ago. He pointed to some of their Mexican folk songs, which reference issues of immigration and the status of Latinos in the United States.
Although his career has evolved to include numerous roles outside the stoner comedy arena, Cheech said it won't bother him at all if he is primarily remembered as half of the perennially stoned misfit duo Cheech and Chong. On the contrary, he is proud to have broken all the rules to become a star.
"I'm immensely proud of Cheech and Chong. I wouldn't undo anything from Cheech and Chong for all the money in the world," he said. "To be a part of that is something that I will go to my grave being enormously proud of."
But Cheech is not going to his grave just yet. And rumors suggest that his work with Chong will not be finished with this tour. During her routine in Hampton, Shelby mentioned that there's a new Cheech and Chong movie on the horizon, which came as welcome news to their loyal fans.
Cheech and Chong closed their first show at the Ballroom with an acoustic rendition of the title song from their most popular movie, "Up in Smoke." In a demonstration of their enduring charm, they soon had the entire audience singing along with the chorus: "When life begins to be one long and dangerous road, I take a toke and all my cares go up in smoke."
News Hawk- Ganjarden 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: The Wire
Author: Matt Kanner
Contact: The Wire
Copyright: 2008 The Wire
Website: Best Buds
