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[match strikes]
CHONG: Okay, now, we're all warmed up.
We're ready to party, okay?
The greatest thing about partying
is that you don't have to go nowhere to party,
and nowhere's a cool place to be
because you're already there.
You're-you're going nowhere.
This is going nowhere.
Who you are depends on where you're going.
So when you have to go somewhere,
bring someone along that knows where they're going.
["Lost Due to Incompetence" by Yesca playing]
CHONG: There are certain things you can't do on television.
And we made a list of them. We're gonna do them all.
[cheering, applause]
DINAH SHORE: Cheech & Chong started
the whole hard-rock comedy craze.
They've set an all-time record for comedy records sold.
CHEECH: And now it's time
for America's favorite daytime fun show,
Let's Make a Dope Deal.
TONI TENNILLE: I got to ask you about the drugs,
because I know both of you experimented very heavily.
It's not hard to see what drugs do to you.
- You know... - Make you rich.
TENNILLE: Well, you-- yeah. [laughs]
JOHNNY CARSON: You heard about
the new death penalty in California?
You have to stand between Cheech & Chong
- for half an hour. - [laughter]
INTERVIEWER: You have been busted.
We got busted for obscenity.
- INTERVIEWER: You did? - BOTH: Yeah.
MERV GRIFFIN: Cheech & Chong were just honored
as the Comedy Team of the Decade.
Their films have earned close to $200 million.
How many movies do you have planned for the future?
- Seventeen. - [laughter]
TOM SNYDER: Are you a one-joke team?
No, we're two-joke.
- Yeah. - [laughter]
SHORE: Do you have any views on politics?
We're not into sick humor, actually.
- No. - [laughter]
INTERVIEWER: Do you ever argue?
- No. No. - Yeah. Yeah.
- No, we just... - Yes.
- We don't argue, you know? - We argue.
- We discuss. - We argue.
We don't argue. We discuss.
FRED SAXON: Don't you feel that you're contributing
to something illegal in this film?
Uh, I certainly hope so.
CHEECH: We like to contribute to the growth of America
and the stunting of the growth of America.
GERALDO RIVERA: Cheech, how'd you guys get together?
Hey, man, roll them bigger than this, man.
CHONG: It's all seeds, man.
CHEECH: I-I think we got ripped off.
- Uh, gentlemen? - Oh.
[chuckles] Uh, well, we got together...
[laughter]
♪
Tommy, what is it about Cheech that you most admire?
Cheech, he's very up to date. He's like a,
a TV set I can tune into at any time
and find out what's going on.
He's like a wife that, thank God,
- I don't have to go to bed with. -[laughter]
INTERVIEWER: Okay, Cheech.
What is it you most admire about Tommy?
He always surprises me, you know.
He always knows more than I think he knows.
He has this real Gemini personality,
so he's real right on the track and then he's off in the stars.
It's fun to follow him both places.
You never know what it's gonna be. [laughs]
"Oh, well, follow this train for a little while,
see where it goes."
[laughing]
♪
CHEECH: Where in the desert, Tommy?
I don't know, man. He just said "the desert."
Well, the desert's a big place, man.
Did he say any particular spot in the desert?
Dave told me.
- Well, what did he told you? - He told me
- "in the desert." - Not a name? Not a town?
Not a place? Not anything?
No, he said something about a joint. I remember that.
A joint?
Well...
Do you got a joint?
Are you two what people think you are?
- From... - Dopers?
- Well, that's not what I mean. - [laughter]
We won't-- we'll get into that later.
But, I mean, people think you're two crazy, you know...
- Uh... - But you're not. You...
- No, no. - I saw you backstage.
What are, what are you really like?
We're very serious-minded.
- Very serious? - Yes.
TENNILLE: It's quite an unlikely pairing
because Cheech, you are Mexican American, born in Watts?
- Mm-hmm. - And you are Chinese Canadian,
- raised in... - Well, half, half Chinese.
How in the world did you ever get together?
CHEECH: It was a mix-up
- at the Green Card office. - [laughter]
Shit, I had a joint. What did I do with it?
Come on, you must have
old joints in the-- in your pocket.
Are you fucking with me? You've got a joint.
- You always got weed, man. - I never have the joint.
I always smoke the weed that you have.
That's how it works.
So, no joint?
I can't believe we're in the desert without any weed.
Don't worry. Things will work out, man.
They always do.
Something will happen.
That's what I'm afraid of.
INTERVIEWER: Are you satirizing
- the drug culture? - CHONG: Whatever.
INTERVIEWER: Well, if you're satirizing it,
does that imply that you can see something's wrong with it?
- All we do is-is generally... - Well...
...just portray it as it is, you know?
See, there's no set rules, because you never know.
Like a lot of people say, "It was wrong
"for this guy to go to jail, but yet he wrote
a great novel while he was in there."
Because people's experiences, man,
how can you say they're right or wrong, you know?
People go through what they need to go through
in order to be-- in order to get some use
of living on Earth.
So how can you make any judgment?
I can't.
All we can do is, uh...
is just be funny.
CHONG: My whole being, my success,
my life, dates back to my earliest memories.
One day, my brother and I were walking down a dirt road,
and a car pulled up.
It was a carload of missionaries.
And they said, "Hey, you boys want to go to camp?"
And I immediately, "Yeah, I do. What's camp?"
It was a Bible camp, Christian Bible camp.
First thing they did was they taught us how to pray,
'cause if you learn how to pray, you pray for wisdom,
'cause that's one thing that can be granted.
My mother had TB, and so we all got checked out,
and I had a little spot on my lung.
I ended up in the hospital.
I became an observer,
because I couldn't participate, but I could watch and learn.
INTERVIEWER: How tough was it
growing up in Canada?
CHONG: I never knew I lived in poverty
until someone told me about it years later, you know,
'cause when I was there,
everybody was in the same boat, so...
We lived in between the country and the city,
and we had none of the conveniences of the city,
but we had none of the luxuries of the country.
My dad was Chinese.
My mother, Scotch-Irish descent.
The Chinese were considered not human.
Interracial marriage was very dangerous.
You could go to jail.
Mom taught me early on, "You're different.
"And by being different, people will notice you.
So you better be your best."
- [fire crackling] - [crickets chirping]
They had a little birthday party
for this girl across the alley,
and I was specifically not invited
because I was half Chinese.
But I could see the bonfire from my window in my bedroom.
The kids gathered around, all my friends.
It makes you sad,
but it also makes you... it gives you knowledge.
You know? You go, "Oh." [chuckles]
"Oh, that's what they think of me."
CHONG: I'm digging this, man. I love the desert.
CHEECH: I love the desert, too.
I just like to know where I'm going sometimes.
And apparently, they have no weed in the desert.
You'll see. Weed will appear.
[sighs] Okay.
[siren wailing]
♪
CHEECH: The thing that I remember most
about South Central is that it was extremely violent.
I saw three murders right in front of my eyes
by the time I was seven.
It was 99.9% Black.
All my friends, everybody that I knew was Black,
and I was one of the only Chicanos.
Uh, there was a few Asians
and some lost white people. [chuckles]
But that was it-- it was all Black.
So I thought that was normal, you know, "Okay."
And I was just like one of them.
My friend Junior lived right across the street
from the school, and his mama did Bobo Brazil's laundry.
[bell ringing]
Bobo Brazil was a big wrestler of the time, and he had
a white Cadillac convertible with zebra upholstery.
And he used to come and pick up his laundry,
and he'd pull up in front of the school.
And the whole school knew that Bobo Brazil was here.
- [children clamoring] - And then when he came out,
I saw the reaction that he caused among the kids.
He was on TV every Wednesday night
wrestling Killer Kowalski and Mr. Moto
and Sándor Szabó and all these great wrestlers.
- [audience cheering] - [bell ringing]
ANNOUNCER: Bobo Brazil!
That was really show business for my neighborhood.
We were a real typical middle-class family.
The mother who would stay home and take care of the kids
and did all the housework
and provide all the emotional comfort.
And my dad was the worker and the stern,
authoritarian father.
A neighbor once said, "Oscar,
"you're the most even-tempered man I've ever met.
Always mad."
And so, that kind of described my dad.
He was a tough guy.
LAPD, on the force for 30 years.
[gunshot]
It was a shit job, man.
You just saw the worst aspects of humanity every day.
It affects how you interact with people
and your view of people.
So he kind of assumed that whenever he was asking me
a question about, "Where were you?
What are you doing? What did you do?"
that I was lying to him.
He was right most of the time.
I just learned to be a better liar, I guess.
[laughs]: That was my first role as an actor.
If I could get by my dad with a story,
well, "That was a pretty good story. I-I told it well."
CHONG: You still won't grow your mustache back.
You've made such an imprint with that character,
and then to have you not doing that?
You know, it-it-it's really hard to accept it.
So, your mustache is so, uh, important
- for the Cheech character. - Yeah.
That's your-your trademark, and you-you refuse to do it.
I didn't want to wear a mustache
because I was doing other roles.
And also, it made me look older,
- and I didn't want to look older. -Well, yeah.
- Y-You're not Cheech. - Yeah.
Of Cheech & Chong.
- I'm Cheech of Cheech Marin. - Yeah, well,
that's the difference. That's the difference.
Nothing lasts forever, Tommy.
You know? Nothing lasts forever.
♪
ANNOUNCER: The youngsters,
aged from 14 to 18, come from all walks of life.
All members of the Army Cadet Force
come once a year for a week under canvas
with ex-Army officers.
CHONG: Army Cadets in Canada
was like a vacation for the poor.
I learned how to shoot a rifle,
and I learned how to smoke, and I learned how to drink.
I learned how to play guitar.
♪
We would play all night,
go to bed, wake up and reach over and start playing again.
♪
I got turned on to Ornette Coleman and pot the same night.
I would go down to the jazz club with my guitar
because it got me in for free.
One night, this bass player gave me a joint.
I smoked up my first toke
and listened to Ornette Coleman play "The Lonely Woman."
♪
It's the most beautiful turn-on in the world.
The next day, I quit school immediately
because I knew in my heart
all I wanted to do was play blues and smoke pot.
That's all I wanted to do.
CHEECH: I think the goal
in moving the family out of South Central
to Granada Hills is that they wanted
to move us to a safer place.
The air was different and the sun was different
and all the houses were brand-new,
and it was like you just got transported to Oz.
I discovered I was creative, like, right away.
I remember in grade school, I was a singer.
I had the ability to sing in tune at a very young age.
I would make up harmonies in class,
and the teacher would look at me,
"Well, how did you learn that?"
"I-I didn't learn it. I just did it."
The biggest adjustment is not seeing any Black people.
I remember the first day of school,
I went out to play at recess and I said,
"Oh, tetherball. I know that."
So I sat on the bench and waited for my turn.
These two kids walked towards me.
The one bigger kid pushes me off the bench,
and he goes, "Hey, blackie, get to the back."
What?
From South Central, I learned to get in the first punch.
The kids were bigger in the Valley,
so I learned to be funny.
[solemn choral singing]
I experienced the racism
in Granada Hills at the very, very beginning.
And I got over that real quick
because I shifted from public school
to Catholic school.
And they didn't play that shit.
They didn't play no blackie/whitey shit.
They just played straight-up corporal punishment.
You know, when you walk into class, there's a cross
with a guy nailed on it,
uh, uh, so y-you get what the deal is.
♪
Every kid that goes to Catholic school
is convinced that they want to be a priest or a nun
at some point
because they cram that into you every day.
It's called a vocation. And eventually,
if they repeat it enough, then you get a vocation.
So I was going to be a priest,
accepted to the junior seminary.
And then I started going to parties,
and the girls liked me,
especially the white girls named Debbie.
I was exotic to them,
and they were exotic to me.
Then I realized no girls whatsoever in priesthood.
I-I don't know about that one.
♪ Let's go, let's go, let's go. ♪
["Do You Want to Dance" by Bobby Freeman playing]
♪ Well, do you wanna dance and hold my hand... ♪
CHONG: I started a band,
and we called ourselves The Shades,
because we were all different colors.
♪ Do you wanna dance?
Trying to fit into the white world,
I was an outsider.
When I discovered Black culture,
my life changed so beautifully.
♪ Hey!
♪
I was accepted into the hippest culture
on the planet,
and fell in love with the music
and this gorgeous 15-year-old, Maxine,
at the same time.
When I saw her, I said, "Whoa."
When I brought Maxine home,
my dad took me in the other room and says,
"Son, she's Black."
I said, "Pop, you're Chinese."
♪
CHONG: Maxine and I always had a bond.
That's why, when Maxine was ready to get married,
we got married.
Because Maxine really was wife material.
We moved to Vancouver, I found a house,
and that's where I spent my time,
raising kids and being happy.
Oh, you know what?
I think I dropped some gummies a couple of days ago.
Where?
It's in this seat over here.
Well, get down. Come on.
♪
CHONG: The Shades broke up,
and the new group was called Little Daddy and the Bachelors,
even though we were all married.
It was perfect.
You're sure you had 'em, huh?
I had 'em, man, I had 'em. I know I had 'em.
CHONG: And so we were playing a gig,
and I was standing outside of the venue
when this beautiful young blonde, Shelby,
comes walking up.
She said, "Take us to the Harlem Nocturne."
And I thought, "Oh, this snotty-nosed little bitch."
Take-- Get, get... Okay.
So we drove to the Harlem Nocturne,
and she gets out of the back seat,
and she gives me the nicest kiss.
I was like, "Whoa!"
And then she turned and walked away into the club.
- Hey, was that... - SHELBY: No!
Got 'em. I knew they were here, man.
What the hell?
CHONG: My Chinese friends built
this club called The Shanghai Junk.
They were on the verge of going under,
so they offered the club to me and my brother
to see if we could do anything with it.
We changed it into a strip bar
and started making the rent.
Around that time, I found this incredible singer,
Bobby Taylor.
♪ When I found you, dear
Bobby was very ambitious.
♪ I found something new, dear... ♪
We would play as many as five sets a night.
The club started making money, and we started buying houses.
I ended up moving next door to Shelby.
It was total coincidence.
Mind you, I was very happily married to Maxine.
We had a beautiful family,
but I, um...
discovered acid.
And that was when I learned when you do acid with a lady,
prepare to spend the rest of your life with her.
CHONG [chuckling]: I got the gummies.
- [sighs] - [Cheech chuckles]
Well, open them up.
Okay, I'll tell you what.
I'll give you a gummy, you take half,
and you give me the other half.
- Okay? - Okay.
That way, I won't lead you down the wrong path.
- Okay? Just take half. - Okay. Just take half.
You took it all.
No, I didn't. Here.
I don't want it after being in your mouth.
Oh, you don't want it? Okay.
I'll do my own half,
and...
two.
- Good gummy. - Yeah?
You know, these are loaded.
I hope so.
I've built up a resistance.
So, what are we supposed to be looking for?
Dave said to look for a sign.
- A sign? - Yeah.
What is the sign supposed to look like?
Don't worry, you'll know it when you see it.
Ah.
- Look for a sign. - Okay.
No sign here.
INTERVIEWER: How is the fact that
your father was a cop affect your youth?
I learned to duck real quick.
INTERVIEWER: You got into physical fights with him.
Yeah, he used to beat me.
I was his punching bag, you know.
And I was just a wiseass, man.
Just a motormouth, you know.
Whatever he had to say, I had, you know,
ten wise answers for it, you know?
INTERVIEWER: And he used to smack you up
- by the third or something? - Yeah.
Did it get to a point where he had to catch you?
- I mean, you ran? - Yeah.
Well, that's exactly what it was
is that, like, when I got to be about 12,
I could run faster than he could.
- Mm-hmm. - I was really fast.
And so I-I had this, like, little radar thing going.
I could only stay a certain distance from him
and be wise, you know?
'Cause I knew I could outrun him from that distance.
But he used to chase me through the house,
out through the yard, over the fence
and down the alley.
CHEECH: My relationship with my dad
was always contentious. Always.
We fought a battle our whole lives.
I left home because one of us was gonna get hurt.
And I told him that if he ever hit me again,
I was gonna do something about it.
♪
College, man, that was, like, the big melting pot.
There was kids from all over.
You could voice your opinion in college,
and everybody had a different opinion.
Catholic school, you go, "Uh, God told me,
and now I'm telling you."
I was in line trying to register for class,
and this really cute girl says,
"Oh, I just signed up for pottery.
You should take it with me."
I threw my first wad of clay on the wheel,
and that was it.
I was gonna be a potter.
My recessive Mexican pottery genes
came jumping out, said,
"Hey, vato, where you been, man? Come on."
And that coincided with the first time I smoked a joint.
I came home one night,
and all my roommates were having a party.
One of them handed me this hand-rolled cigarette,
and I go, "Wh-What's this?"
- [match strikes] - I took a hit.
[cow moos]
The only thing I remember was thinking,
"And what else have they been lying about?"
♪
♪ You don't want me running around... ♪
CHEECH: Everything was rapidly changing,
and there was a growing recognition
that we were a big generation with a lot of power.
And we started exercising that power.
REPORTER: Never has this dissent been as emotional,
as intense as is the dissent against the war in Vietnam.
[gunfire]
CHEECH: The Vietnam war was starting
to really rage at that time.
And they were drafting college-age kids.
I was exempt because I was in college,
but all these other kids were going and going and going.
♪
[explosion]
I had this conversation with my dad, who was
a Navy World War II vet, and he said,
"I don't believe in what they're doing over there,
but if they called me, I would go."
Well, that was the difference between us, you know.
Uh, I-I-I did question authority,
and I didn't like the answers I was getting,
if I ever got an answer.
We are not only opposed to the war in Vietnam.
We're opposed to the draft of anybody, Black or white.
CHEECH: We had tons of influential,
radical speakers.
David Harris, my favorite,
he was the one that influenced me the most.
The assumption that Selective Service
makes about us, and the assumption
that the American states makes about
the young people of this country
comes into a fundamental contradiction
with the way we understand our own lives.
CHEECH: The concept of the draft resistance movement was
refuse at every step.
If you were not registered, don't register.
If you registered to vote and they called you up
for a physical, don't go to the physical.
Use the bureaucracy against itself.
And that's what I decided to do,
and I was, uh, active in the... in the chapter.
♪ And I'm free, oh, yeah, oh, yeah ♪
♪ Free, free spirit.
CHONG: Wow.
Look at the desert now.
It actually reflects off the clouds.
And it gives a nice glow.
- Uh-huh. - Mm.
So, how much was in these gummies?
Whoa.
[sighs]
Ho-ho!
Shit.
♪
CHONG: We're gigging around town
when we got discovered by The Supremes.
Diana Ross saw us, loved us, called Berry Gordy.
Berry Gordy got on a plane, flew to Vancouver,
and he signed us.
And we ended up in Detroit.
♪ Where is your love going?
Shelby got pregnant that acid night.
She got pregnant and decided to come with me.
Maxine knew about Shelby, and Shelby, of course,
knew about Maxine.
They were pretty cool about it, you know, considering.
In fact, everybody was pretty cool about it.
I wouldn't say I was cool about it.
But I had two kids, and I loved him.
- You okay? - Huh?
Why?
Am I driving okay?
♪
CHONG: I spent my time recording the record
and trying to support my two families.
♪ I'm a guy...
Bobby Taylor was a legend with Motown.
Whenever we appeared live, which was quite often
because Berry loved to show us off,
all of Motown that was in town would come to see us
and just marvel at Bobby Taylor's voice.
♪ You know you're Little Miss Sweetness ♪
♪ Sweetest girl in the world, now... ♪
DON CORNELIUS: You're songwriters, right?
- What'd you write? - I wrote uh,
uh, "Does Your Mama Know About Me?"
For Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers?
- Yeah. - Oh, he's a great talent.
- Yeah, really. You know Bobby? - Of course I know Bobby.
♪ Does your mama know about me? ♪
♪ Does she know just what I am? ♪
CHONG: I was always writing.
I-I write to this day. I'm a compulsive writer.
And I wrote a poem.
How'd you get inspiration for a song like, uh,
"Does Your Mama Know About Me?"
I used to sort of hang out with the Black set,
so to speak, you know, and I used to watch
a lot of friends of mine like Bobby Taylor
take out white girls, you know?
- Uh-oh. - And drop 'em off.
- Cut... cut that part out, please. -[laughter]
And now a word from Artra. Uh...
[laughter]
CHONG: "Does Your Mama Know About Me?"
was my first taste of being a songwriter.
REPORTER: General Lewis Hershey,
the crusty 74-year-old head of Selective Service,
has told draft boards across the country
to take away the deferments of registrants
who take actions interfering with
Selective Service procedures.
CHEECH: General Hershey issued
a directive that anybody who turned their draft card in
or-or burned their draft card or anything that we were doing
would be immediately reclassified 1-A
and sent to the front lines of Vietnam.
Totally illegal.
Your critics say that you're
stifling dissent in this country.
If it stifles dissent to get people
to obey the laws, I'm guilty.
CHEECH: People were freaking out.
People were being sentenced to eight years in prison.
My pottery teacher, who knew of my circumstance, said,
"I have this student who's in Canada right now
and maybe could use an assistant."
That's all I needed. I was on a Greyhound bus
and on my way to Canada to be a potter.
REPORTER: It's entirely possible
for a draft dodger, posing as a visitor
or a student, to cross the border
and simply disappear.
CHEECH: I had never been in a place
where it was snowing before.
I had never seen snow.
It was the purest time in my life.
I was meditating every day, going down to the river
for my water,
chopping wood and working as a potter.
I was in heaven.
The funny thing was, is I moved to the exact location
that Tommy Chong was born and raised in.
My mother and I would write every once in a while
just to let her know that I was okay.
I'd never talk to my father all the time I was in Canada.
I didn't communicate with him ever.
No phone calls, no letters, no nothing.
Just goodbye.
CHONG: Hey, man.
Why do you always drive?
♪
CHONG: San Francisco was a happening place.
We had a gig at Big Al's on Broadway,
and I had a whole week to explore that area.
At night, we had nothing to do, so I'd wander around the clubs,
and everybody that was anybody was playing.
Lenny Bruce was at the Hungry I.
I couldn't afford to go in to see him,
but I sat out in the alley and listened to him.
I wandered around, and I stumbled into a theater
where The Committee were playing.
It was an improvisational group.
That night, they did a bit
where the whole cast became little dogs,
and one's taking a dump,
another one's sniffing the other one's butt.
And then crawled off the stage,
but just seeing human beings taking a little doggie poop
on the stage just made me laugh so hard
I literally fell out of my seat.
I had never laughed so hard at anything.
I was sick of the blues by then.
I wanted to see acting. I couldn't get enough of them.
So I would go down every night if I could and-and see them.
CHEECH: I got a job at a ski resort being a fry cook.
At that time, I had very little to do,
and I learned how to ski.
Sort of.
[bone cracks]
In the process of learning how to ski,
I learned how to break my leg in half.
I had a compound fracture,
and I was in the hospital for a month,
and then I was in a full-length cast for six months.
This girl I knew said,
"You can stay here while you recuperate," so...
while she went to work during the day,
I would hobble around the house.
She only had one record album in the whole place.
And it was this Diana Ross and The Supremes
Love Child album.
And on this Love Child album, there was a song called
"Does Your Mama Know About Me?"
And I would listen to it every day.
♪ Does your mama know about me? ♪
And the lyrics were right on
about what was happening at the time.
And so one day, I said,
"But what brother wrote this song?"
And I turned over the album, and it said,
"Lyrics by T. Chong."
What kind of name is T. Chong for a brother?
CHONG: We were playing the Regal Theater
in the heart of the Chicago ghetto.
Everybody played the Regal Theater.
And there was a group called The Jackson Five Plus Johnny.
♪ I know you told me...
CHONG: When we first heard Michael sing,
it was a revelation.
He was the most talented little guy I'd ever seen.
And so Bobby Taylor convinced Joe Jackson
and the family to come to Detroit.
♪ Well, you didn't
♪ You didn't want me around, baby, yeah... ♪
CHONG: Bobby had him audition for Berry.
♪ Love me no more
He signed them immediately.
♪ But I want to know something, yeah... ♪
Bobby Taylor quit the band and went solo.
He ended up producing at least their first record for sure.
♪ I just want to say, yeah, I just want to say, yeah... ♪
And that was the last band that I was in.
- ♪ I've been a fool ♪ - ♪ Oh-oh, whoa
♪ I've been a fool for you, baby, yeah... ♪
CHONG: The clubs got into a little bit of trouble,
so I had to go back to Vancouver.
♪
I started working in the light booth,
doing the lights for the girls' show,
and then I saw how uninteresting the show was.
They needed some kind of new direction.
It's a typical Canadian floor show.
And the girls come out one at a time,
and here's Candy and here's Lotty
and here's Maryland.
And that was the end of the show.
Well, no one watched it.
These drunks would come in and get drunk
and pass out, kind of look up there,
and it never interrupted their conversation.
But I-I wanted to see something happen, you know?
So I-I, I used all these people as an improv group.
CHEECH: At the end of the season,
my roommate says,
"Well, I'm going back to Vancouver.
Come with me. We'll live in Vancouver."
Sounds great. I had never been to Vancouver before.
So away we went to Vancouver.
TV HOST: This is Canada's Haight-Ashbury,
an area of Vancouver that houses
Canada's largest hippie population.
CHEECH: Vancouver in the late '60s
was the San Francisco of Canada.
Bands were coming out of there.
Culture was coming out of there.
It was like the hippies
without the political aspect of it.
Out of the blue, I ran into a high school friend of mine,
and he was writing for the Western Canadian version
of Rolling Stone.
We hooked up and he said,
"Hey, I-I remember you were a writer from high school.
"Want to write some articles
or do some reviews for this magazine?"
I had no experience interviewing people,
but I said I did.
One day, I met with the publisher, and he says,
"There's this guy I want you to meet.
"His name is Tommy Chong, and he has this weird thing.
"It's an improvisational theater company
in a topless bar in Chinatown."
CHONG: A friend of mine that owned a magazine,
he knew of a guy that would fit the show really well.
Funny little guy named Richard, and I should meet him.
It was the first time I'd ever seen a Mexican.
[laughing]
And I said, "Oh, you're sort of like a... Hindu." "No."
"Are you a rug rider or what?" You know?
CHONG: "I don't know. What is he?
You know, he-he's something."
And then someone said, "He's Mexican."
I'd never met a Mexican before.
That's the same opinion I had of him
'cause he was Chinese, but not Chinese,
or he was, like, Mongolian or something, you know.
[chuckles]
I gave him this line of bull
that I was this great improv actor and writer.
And so he says, "But you should come down to the club
tomorrow night and see us."
It was a little sketchy, you know.
The club was up on the second floor.
[groaning]
It was dark and a lot of bikers and loggers
and hockey players and pimps.
And there was a lot of girls
that you could tell they were working.
CHONG: We were backstage,
and I was looking through the curtains,
and Cheech was with this gorgeous brunette
wearing a full-length mink coat.
CHEECH: Tommy always said she had this mink coat on.
She never saw mink in her life.
It was some rabbit fur deal, but to him, it was a mink coat.
CHONG: Soon as I saw that,
I said, "Well, he's hired." [chuckles]
CHEECH: They came out.
It was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen.
They had a classical guitarist.
They had a mime, a mime in a strip bar.
And these girls dancing kind of in chiffon see-through.
And they would take that off, and so I was like,
"What is this?"
In the middle of that comes this guy, David Graham,
Tommy's original partner, and he starts singing...
♪ I dream of Brownie in the light blue jeans ♪
♪ She is just as neat as licorice jelly beans. ♪
And out comes Tommy, and he goes,
"What kind of fucking song is that?"
And starts beating him with this newspaper.
And it just cracked me up.
- [laughing] - I just thought,
"Oh, this is really off the wall, man.
Okay, I'll-I'll work with these guys."
♪
When I got hired by Tommy,
I got hired as a writer for the group.
Every day, we would have little rehearsals
and I would throw out new little bits we could use.
And so very quickly, I started writing bits for myself.
LAUNCH DIRECTOR: One, zero.
CHONG: It was around the time we landed on the moon.
And so one of the first bits he did
was about being shot into space.
And then, when he's in space,
he's looking around and there's no one around,
so he starts masturbating.
Cheech came out of college, and he had...
you know, I mean, he was a singer.
He used to sing like Johnny Mathis,
and he had short hair and he'd meditate.
You know, everybody would be smoking dope, and we'd go,
"Is he a narc?"
[laughs] They thought I was a narc
- for the longest time, yeah. - CHONG: Yeah.
And Cheech is sitting there like a little...
Mahavishnu bass player.
[laughing]
CHONG: He had this beautiful energy.
I never met anybody quite like him.
I've always done the, the next thing to come along.
This came along cool.
Improv strippers. Yeah, I could do that.
The City Works was real street theater.
Anything was possible
'cause you never knew what was going to work.
The show went two hours a night.
In the first hour, we'd do our show,
and then we'd take suggestions from the audience
for the second show.
CHEECH: You know, everybody else viewed this
as like this temporary lark they were doing.
Tommy was the one that was most serious
about making a real go of it and proved to be very astute.
He's a very funny guy
in seeing what's really obvious that nobody else sees.
CHONG: There was a garbage strike in Vancouver,
and this hippie Strawberry was sitting on a pile
of plastic garbage bags in the rain.
And he was on acid.
And I found out that he was homeless.
So I said,
"Well, I got a nightclub, and you can stay there."
He said, "Oh, okay."
Strawberry was, like, perpetually stoned.
That's where I got the... that "Hey, man."
That was Strawberry. [chuckles]
And we needed someone to work the lights.
So Strawberry became our light man
and our biggest critic.
"Hey, man. Oh, hey. That last act really sucked, man.
"Hey, but you were, you were really good.
But it really sucked, you know?"
"Whoa. Whoa.
That was horrible, man." [chuckling]
And Strawberry would be late with the blackout sometimes,
and we'd be frozen in position and Cheech would go,
"Strawberry. Blackout, Strawberry."
[snoring]
CHEECH: It got to the point where
we were causing a little bit of noise,
and they sent the theater critic
from the Vancouver Sun.
He thought he was going to see
some avant-garde theater company,
kind of like Living Theatre out of New York.
What he got was hippie burlesque.
The crowd went from 20, uh, drunk bikers
that would throw money around
to a couple of hundred theatergoers
who would count their change.
And so we ended up, uh, being fired.
My brother wanted to take the club back
to the old stripper format,
and we had run our course as an improvisational group.
And so the group broke up.
[glass shattering]
The girls went back stripping.
David had a family,
and he wasn't interested in going anywhere.
CHEECH: The mime artist wanted to go to the woods
to get his head together.
I'd been to the woods. My head was together.
CHONG: We were the last two left standing.
- [phone ringing] - CHEECH: Tommy called me up.
Said, "I-I got what we can do.
"We'll form a group, me and you.
"I'm a guitar player, you're a singer,
"and we'll do music like a lounge act,
and we'll do these skits."
CHONG: And we were gonna do
a battle of the bands in Vancouver.
A big, big event.
There was about
maybe a thousand young kids there, you know,
ready to hear music.
But we were gonna start out with comedy,
and then we were going to go into music.
CHEECH: And the band's all ready to play.
So we did one bit,
- [snoring] - got attention.
- [audience laughter] - People shut up
and started coming to the front of the stage.
We did another bit. They were with us.
So we did a third bit. Yeah, big standing ovation.
[cheering]
CHONG: Right after we got off stage,
the bass player said,
"So, when's our next gig, boss?"
[chuckles] Knowing very well
there was no gig 'cause they never played a note.
We're driving home that night 'cause I had my dad's car,
and the windshield wipers didn't work.
[thunder crashes]
Vancouver is notorious for the rain.
And the rain was coming down really hard.
So Cheech and I were taking turns
leaning out the car window with a coat hanger.
We were saying, "Wow, let's look at you and me, bud."
CHEECH: We're all buzzed about having won
the battle of the bands.
We got to go to America. We got to go to the U.S.
And then we got to do this, we got to do that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This was fun.
What do we call ourselves?
'Cause he wanted his name to be on whatever he was in.
He was a Shade.
He was a Bachelor.
He was a Vancouver.
Whatever is gonna be next, he's gonna have his name on it.
So I said, "Yeah. Me, too. I want my name on it.
So, how are we gonna do this?"
CHONG: Richard and Tommy? No.
Chong and Marin? Nah, that's not exciting.
CHEECH: How about Dick and Tommy? No.
Tommy and Dick? No.
How about, uh, Marin and Chong?
Sounds like a "se habla español" law firm, man, you know.
CHONG: And I said, "Do you have a nickname?"
CHEECH: Well, my name in my family is Cheech.
Uh, it's short for "chicharrón,"
which is a... a deep-fried pigskin.
It's like Mexican potato chips.
When I was a little baby, my uncle looked in the crib
and said, "Ay, parece un chicharrón.
Looks just like a little chicharrón."
CHONG: Cheech.
Cheech & Chong. Cheech & Chong.
CHEECH: The musician in both of our heads heard that,
'cause it had this rhythm. Cheech & Chong.
It was never Chong and Cheech
'cause it had nothing to do about billing.
It had to do about the sound
of how those two names sounded together.
CHONG: That was it. That was the name.
CHEECH: Cheech & Chong!
We went across the Georgia Narrows Bridge.
There was a sign that said, "Proceed at your own risk."
And we're going "Yeah, yeah, we're gonna be big, man.
"We're gonna, we're gonna be the biggest names
in comedy, right?"
As we float off into the fog, "Cheech & Chong,
Cheech & Chong, Cheech & Chong."
It was almost like a train. "Yeah, here we go.
- Big time, here we come." - [train whistle blows]
[lively music playing]
♪ Na, na-na, na-na
♪ Na-na, na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na ♪
♪ Na-na, na-na, yeah
♪ Na, na-na, na-na
♪ Na-na, na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na... ♪
CHONG: We got two choices, New York or Los Angeles,
and L.A. is a lot warmer.
CHEECH [chuckling]: It's a little warmer. Yeah.
It's easier to starve in L.A. than it is in New York.
INTERVIEWER: Is that a period
that you had to go through is starving in L.A.?
CHONG: Sure, everybody has to go through it.
In L.A., I mean, show business capital of the world,
you, you have to know someone to get an audition.
INTERVIEWER: Mm-hmm.
You know, you just can't, uh, to even play a free gig,
you can't just get up and do it.
You have to know somebody.
INTERVIEWER: Who did you know?
- Well, nobody. We... - [Cheech laughs]
♪
CHEECH: We immediately went to Maxine's apartment.
CHONG: I showed up with a Mexican.
I wasn't a musician anymore.
And now I'm looking
for a gig as a comedian.
CHEECH: Tommy says, "Hey, Maxine,
this is my partner Cheech, and we need to stay with you."
And to her everlasting credit,
Maxine said, "Okay," and let us in.
I slept on the couch, which was all right at nighttime,
but in the morning,
Rae Dawn and Robbi would get up and watch cartoons
and eat their cereal and give me that glare, like,
"Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?"
And so I just rolled over and went back to sleep.
CHONG: Basically, we were broke, both of us.
And I started phoning around
looking for a gig for us to play.
And I found the Red Fox club.
- ANNOUNCER: Cheech & Chong. - [applause]
CHEECH: We hadn't figured out what to do
when we first walked out.
There was no routine. He'd talk, I'd talk.
We overlapped each other, so very quickly we figured out
that I would disappear and get ready
for the first character that I was gonna do.
And Tommy would start to develop this standup routine.
Here was a club that we could play every night,
work on our act every night.
It was like going to the gym.
The more you went to the gym, the stronger you got.
Any Chicanos here tonight, maybe?
They smuggle any of you in? [laughs]
Anyways, it's really hip being Chicano nowadays.
I'm really glad it came around.
I was really having a tough time
faking being Filipino, you know, so...
Didn't have a gold tooth and it was all, um...
[laughter]
I used to get nervous before I went on stage
in the early days.
And Tommy didn't make it any easier
when he would announce
that I was dodging the draft and wanted by the FBI.
He thought it was funny.
I didn't think it was so funny.
CHONG: Comedians back in the day,
they were treated like dirt.
They weren't respected.
They respected the stripper that brought in the people,
but they never had no respect for a guy
that was trying to make everybody laugh.
When you first start off with comedy, you write a set.
Six months later, y-you need a new set.
And it never stops.
And you just keep digging and digging and digging.
It's like working in a coal mine.
Well, y-you shit your pants or something?
Yeah, yeah, I shit my pants, man.
Well, why the hell don't you go home
and change them, for Christ's sake?
I'm not done yet, man.
[laughter]
CHEECH: Drama is cumulative and pays off at the end.
Comedy is joke by joke.
It's like playing the slot machines.
One nickel in, two nickels out.
CHONG: I had been through the Chitlin' Circuit
with a Motown band.
It's a very hard life.
But being a comedian was such a huge step.
We weren't going to give up.
CHEECH: The only mode of transportation we had
was Tommy's Honda 90.
So, to go to a gig,
we would take all of our costumes
and put them on at the same time,
three or four coats, couple pairs of pants,
tie shoes around our neck,
have three or four hats on at the same time,
and tool around from L.A. to Pasadena,
Santa Monica to Hermosa Beach.
"Oh, it's those two guys on the Honda 90."
CHONG: They never had comedy clubs then.
It was just the soul clubs.
CHEECH: We opened for every major Black act
that came through L.A.
The Isley Brothers.
Ray Charles. Edwin Starr.
The Chi-Lites. The Delfonics.
Our act became very Black at the time,
but it was half Black, half marijuana,
which was half Black anyways.
CHEECH: Hey, give me some more of that.
CHONG: I don't feel nothing, man.
CHEECH: Hey, neither do I, man.
Takes a lot to get me stoned, man.
[laughter]
Hey, why don't you turn on the radio?
CHONG: It's been on, man.
[laughter]
CHEECH: Right away, as soon as we did
our first drug joke, we know, hey, these people get this.
This is what they really laugh at.
So we said, "Oh, let's kind of do some more of that."
- You go first. - [screams]
CHEECH: Hello, ladies.
We're doing the Playboy interview. [laughs]
INTERVIEWER: Let's speak a bit about influence, okay?
- Influences. Okay. - We have two.
[interviewer laughs]
Sex and drugs.
INTERVIEWER: Sex and drugs.
What about The Committee?
Oh. Love 'em.
- CHEECH: Yeah. - I love 'em.
They hated us, but I love them to death.
INTERVIEWER: Wh-Why? They said that you
took their routines or something?
- We did. We sure did. - CHEECH: We took everybody's.
I-I took, borrowed some of the bits
that they used to do.
Even though I can remember everything,
we had to do it, you know,
Mexican/Chinese style, you know?
And so they changed and we just added our own characters,
but we used their situations, you know?
Because when you're out there performing,
you'll use anything, you know? Pryor...
CHEECH: Yeah, Richard Pryor used to do Bill Cosby.
Bill Cosby routines, you know?
You start... you start somewhere, you know?
And so, uh, but what happened with The Committee
is that they just stayed in this one little, uh, theater
and they never ventured out.
So, when we started venturing around,
- their bits become our bits. - CHEECH: Right.
[growling]
[yelping]
[laughter]
CHONG: So, two things happened.
They got really bugged at the fact
that we were doing their bits.
And then they got more bugged when they found out
that they couldn't do them anymore
because everybody thought they were doing
- Cheech & Chong bits. - Yeah.
So they really didn't like us very much.
[growling]
[barks]
Herbie!
- Hey, how are you? - How are you?
[laughter]
- Hey, you're looking good, man. - Hey.
Hey, I like your haircut. That's a nice one.
Oh, you like it? It's a Farrah Fawcett, man.
- How's it look? - [laughter]
CHEECH: I mean, the dogs was an exercise
out of An Actor Improvises.
Be a leaf or a strip of bacon or an animal.
And they were just basic stuff.
When we did it, we created characters
for those... for those dogs and the things they were doing.
And we weren't afraid to get gross with them.
CHONG: Comedians are very touchy about bits.
But a good joke is shared, you know, it's passed on.
And so no one really cares about the pedigree
of the material, as long as it's funny.
I'd like to congratulate you on your new show.
I want-- I want to wish you every luck on your jokes.
Every Friday night, all the luck in the world.
Well, thank you. That depends on your jokes Wednesday night.
[laughter]
CHEECH: Every standup comedian
has a rivalry with every other standup comedian.
♪
If you're talking about the same subjects,
they're gonna obviously overlap.
What you do, eventually, is you evolve your own voice.
The only thing you have as an artist is what you see.
Which is different from everybody else.
I started working on this character,
then all of a sudden, my mind clicked into a guy
that picked me up hitchhiking.
And I just remembered his rap, he says,
"Yeah, man, I work like a donkey, you know?"
"Hey, man, I don't have to graduate.
I can go in the service, you know?"
And that was his attitude.
In the middle of a sentence, he'd be looking,
"Ooh, look at that chick, ooh.
Saw too much." [chuckles]
And the essence of his character
was cruising and looking at chicks,
and it was easy from there.
Chinga, chinga, chinga, chinga, chinga.
Chinga, cabrón, cabrón, cabrón,
cabrón, cabrón, cabrón, cabrón, cabrón.
Cabrón.
Puta, puta, puta, puta, puta, puta, puta, puta, puta, puta.
[laughter]
So few Latins make it into show business,
into the mainstream.
Do you ever feel any heat
because the character is a negative character?
CHEECH: He's not a negative character.
He's a very positive character, actually.
People would say he's a negative character
because he gets loaded, likes chicks, cruises around,
but anybody who doesn't see that
as what's happening in the streets
got their head in the sand.
Why he gets by is because he's innocent.
God protects fools and children.
And he's both.
[chuckles]
♪
CHEECH: The thing about roasting a chicken
is if you know exactly what temperature your oven is at,
well, then you can come out with a chicken
that's like chicken marbella.
You make it with olives, capers, onions, prunes.
Yeah. Chill. Well, just think about it.
I was running myself ragged between two families.
Scooting back and forth from my soul family
to my white family.
One night, coming home to Maxine's house,
I found my wallet was missing.
I had been pickpocketed.
Maxine had enough of me by then.
It was just too much for her, and she told me,
"Just go. Just-just go." You know?
"It's not working." And it wasn't working.
["Little Bitty Pretty One" by Thurston Harris playing]
That's where my life with Shelby officially began.
TENNILLE: Now, tell me about your lady.
Are you ever gonna get married to this lady?
CHONG: Well, she told me she'd marry me
when she turns 40 or I become a millionaire.
Well, I think the wedding bells are ringing, my dear.
No. Not according to our accountant.
No, what it is, it'll be when I get a million.
Because I don't think she'll ever turn 40.
I don't think she ever will, either.
Living with you will keep her young.
♪
- You guys drove right by me! - What?
Shit.
We didn't see you, honey.
Oh, you're stoned.
You're stoned.
Now you're gonna
- fuck things up with Dave. - Whoa.
Well, look how beautiful you look.
Whoa.
The old stoned charmer.
Yeah. Wow.
Where we going?
♪
CHEECH: Hootenanny Night was an invention by the white clubs
to get you to play for free.
The first six acts that were there
when the club opened at 6:00
could go on that night in reverse order.
CHONG: The funniest thing is the government,
the changes they go through trying to find out
who junkies are, man.
And that's the easiest thing in the world in the Army.
All you have to do is take roll call.
"Johnson." "Sir!"
"Henderson." "Sir!"
"Rodriguez." "Right here, man."
[laughter]
"Here."
We take you now inside Vietnam.
CHEECH: "All right, men, huddle up.
"Huddle up, boys.
"You been complaining, haven't had a change
"of underwear in six months?
"We'll take care of that right now.
"Johnson, you change with Gonzalez.
"Henderson, you change with Smith.
- All right? All right." - [laughter]
[laughter and applause]
CHEECH: After the show at the Troubadour,
some woman came up and said,
"Lou Adler was in the crowd tonight
and he wants to meet you guys at his office."
I told Tommy. He didn't know who Lou Adler was.
No, I had no idea who Lou Adler...
And of course Cheech schooled me.
CHEECH: Lou Adler.
Lou Adler is one of the world's great record producers.
At the time, he was the biggest record producer in the world.
He was a big deal and he was well known in the business.
He grew up in Boyle Heights,
which was the Jewish section of East L.A.
And he recognized the characters that we were doing.
CHONG: Cheech said he's the guy that produced
that record you love, the Carole King Tapestry album.
And I said "whoa" right there.
And then he told me
that Lou produced the Mamas & the Papas
and he had, uh, Sam Cooke and...
He was like one of the top...
He owned his own record company.
That's how... how big Lou was.
CHEECH: We go in there and there's, like, gold records
everywhere on the walls.
He says, "Well, what do you guys want to do?"
"Well, make a record, I guess."
"Well, what kind?"
"Um, gold, uh, seems to be what you make,
so let's make a gold record."
He was very nice, he said he enjoyed the show,
but he was very quiet. He hardly spoke.
CHEECH: And so he said, "Okay, well, what do you need?"
I said, "$1,000," and Lou was ready to write the check.
CHEECH: And I go, "Wait a minute, Mr. Adler.
Uh, there's two of us, so we'll need $2,000."
And I said, "I want a little tape recorder."
We got the tape recorder and the money...
[cash register dings]
CHEECH: And signed a deal right then.
♪
CHEECH: The first time we went into the studio,
we didn't have any idea how to do it
or what we were gonna do.
And we said, "Well, we'll just set up a couple chairs
"and set up some mics and we'll do our thing,
and it'll be fine."
And it was a bomb.
It was like nothing, no reaction,
there was nobody to react to.
And so we didn't... "Ugh, that was terrible."
What we had to learn was how to make things sound funny.
'Cause we were a visual act. We could look funny
and make faces and... [growls]
...and act it out,
but that didn't translate to record.
So, we used this little mixdown room
to rehearse in.
And we created our-our first record.
By accident.
CHEECH: Creativity is inherently fraught
with conflict and tension.
Especially if you're talking about two guys.
What I think is funny and what you think is funny
and-and what the audience thinks is funny
and... but we're in the studio, we had no audience,
so we had to finally kind of come together to agree
on what was funny, and the criterion was
it had to make us laugh.
Cheech put on all his costume.
He was a very method actor.
And he went outside.
He was gonna play a dope dealer,
and he was gonna knock on the door,
and I was gonna let him in.
Then we were gonna improv a, you know, a dope deal bit.
It was like 110 degrees outside.
It was in the middle of August.
And I'm inside, and it's air-conditioned.
It's beautiful.
And I got the little tape recorder set up.
- And then Cheech knocked. - [knocking]
And when he knocked, my eyes immediately went to the door.
And so I couldn't see if the needle moved or not.
No answer.
And so now I'm looking at the tape recorder
wondering, "Did that record or not?"
He knocks again.
And I saw the needle jump.
So, "Oh, it's recording."
And so I said, "Who is it?"
"Who... who is it?"
You're not supposed to say, "Who is it?"
You're supposed to say, "Come in."
I went into character. I-I just started improv-ing.
I go, "It's me, Dave."
And I go, "Dave?" And he goes, "Yeah, Dave."
He thinks I'm gonna open up the door.
And then I said,
"Dave's not here."
So now I realize I can torture the shit out of Cheech
by keeping him outside as long as I could.
And so I just sat there until he knocked again.
- [knocking] - "No, it's me, Dave. D-A-V-E.
Open the door. I got the stuff."
"Come on, quit fucking around.
It's hot out here, man." He's banging on the door.
And finally he opens the door, and he's laughing his ass off.
And he was really angry.
I thought he was gonna attack me or something.
So I said, "Listen, listen, listen."
We both cracked up. We both cracked up.
We played it again, cracked up even more.
We took it to Lou, and Lou heard it and he goes,
"Okay, we're recording that tonight."
Lou took the recording and shipped it
to all these radio stations.
And so the next morning, L.A. woke up to...
[rooster crowing]
[knocking]
CHONG: Who is it?
CHEECH [whispering]: It's-it's Dave, man.
Will you open up? I got the stuff with me.
- CHONG: Who? - CHEECH: Dave, man.
- Open up. - CHONG: Dave?
CHEECH: Yeah, Dave. Come on, man. Open up.
- I think the cops saw me. - CHONG: Dave's not here.
♪
CHEECH: You sure we're going the right way?
- Oh, I know where we are. - Where?
We're in the middle of fucking nowhere.
No, we're southwest of fucking nowhere.
We're not in the middle yet.
Oh, hey, let's ask this guy.
[car horn honks]
Excuse me. Hello.
Can you tell us how to get to the joint?
- Lou! - What the--
Tommy, Cheech. How are you guys?
We're good. What are you doing out here?
- I'm taking a walk. - Oh.
- Well, get in, man. Get in. - Oh.
- Let-let's talk, man. - We'll give you a ride. Lou!
I thought it was a mirage.
ADLER: Okay.
CHONG: Damn, boy.
CHEECH: Lou knows how much to produce
and how much not to produce.
He helped us creatively by giving approval
over what we were doing
'cause we were making up this method
as we were going along.
CHONG: Cheech and I would show up at the studio,
and we'd look at each other, and one of us
would say, "You hungry?" "Yeah, let's go have lunch."
We'd come back after a long lunch and light a joint.
Next thing you know, an idea would come in our head.
♪ No stems, no seeds that you don't need ♪
♪ Acapulco Gold is
[inhales deeply]
♪ Badass weed.
- Cut. - [sighs]
How'd that sound to you?
Hey, man, that was far out, man.
We got a cut, man.
Yeah, that-that sounded pretty good to me.
I think we could wrap it up.
Oh, hey, no, man.
No, I want to do it again, man.
- Again? - Yeah, man.
Like, I had a thing to do.
You know, when you talk, man. When a cat talks, I want to--
I got a thing to say, man.
I was gonna say it, but I forgot it, man.
- You want to do it again? - Yeah, man.
Let's do it again.
Okay. All right.
Hold it. Give me a joint, man. Give me another joint.
All right, far out, man. Okay.
- We'll get it right this time, man. -Yeah, okay.
All right, let's try it again, huh?
- Okay. - Ready?
Yeah. [inhales deeply]
"Acapulco Gold Filters," take 403.
CHEECH: We spent all our time in the studio
recording the first album.
Once it came out, we went on the road immediately.
♪
CHONG: Lou Adler got us visibility immediately.
He had the balls to go to the limit.
And Cheech & Chong, in return,
gave him the products to work with.
♪ Black Lassie
♪ Fat and sassy
♪ She was poor, but now she's rich... ♪
CHONG: He really became the pillar of our success.
It was a beautiful marriage.
CHEECH: Lou very carefully crafted
our public image so people knew the flavor
of what they were gonna get.
You're about to meet the first Chinese American comedy team
in history.
I don't know which one is Chinese.
Will you welcome Cheech & Kong!
It's Cheech & Chong, first.
Chong.
Hey, man, what's happening?
[laughter]
Hey, man, this your amigo Sanchez de San Fernando
saying come on down to Wide Track Town
here in Wilmington, ese, man.
We got some out-of-sight chorts here for you to look at, man.
Look at this chort over here, man.
Now, that's a '53 Chevy
with pink and purple tuck and roll, man.
- Are you Chinese? - No, I'm Mexican.
You're Mexican. You're Chinese?
- No... Uh, yeah, I'm Chinese. - There...
Listen, there's something a little wrong in your bio.
- What-what is your nationality? - Chinese.
You really are?
- Canadian Chinese. - Canadian Chinese.
My father married a white woman.
That is really funny.
[Cheech chuckling]
RADIO DJ: Already on the Billboard charts,
the new single from Cheech & Chong.
CHEECH: We were aware of our hit status
right at the beginning because we were
on the radio all the time.
Wherever we went, the album preceded us
by about a week, so there was this growing awareness
of this act that was very different.
ANNOUNCER: Please welcome Cheech & Chong!
[cheering and applause]
CHEECH: We got up, we went to the airport,
got on a plane, did the show,
went to the next city and did the same thing.
It was just nonstop.
We wanted our albums to be funny
but conceptual at the same time.
CHONG: Everything we did with the record,
you could enjoy with your imagination.
CHEECH: Hey, man, two more cars and we're there, man.
- Tell those guys to be quiet. - CHONG: Hey, you guys,
be quiet, man.
We're almost at the ticket thing.
Come on, let's hear it for Sister Mary Elephant.
Here she is.
CHEECH [high-pitched voice]: Class.
Class!
Shut up! Thank you.
[normal voice]: The U.S. Open National Masturbation Champion
three years in a row, Harry Palms.
Come on out, Harry!
Tell us, how does it feel?
CHONG: Sore. Oh.
CHEECH: Well, you get a little fucker about that big.
You get it?
♪
CHONG: Hey, Margaret, did you see that?
Ah, yow.
CHEECH: That was the greatest.
Two guys with a bag of Goodwill clothes and one roadie,
making as much as big bands
with no overhead.
We were in that rock and roll life.
CHONG: It was the Waikiki Bowl in Hawaii.
CHEECH: You're confusing the two.
- No, no. -We never played it another time.
- The only time we played it was once. -We...
No, we played it about three times.
- Uh, three times now? - Maybe four.
Maybe four times.
- Four times we played it? - Yeah.
- We only played it once. - You only remember one.
I-I remember everything.
You don't. I wish you did, but you don't.
CHEECH: Oh, now you wish I did.
How do you know that we played it four times?
CHONG: I was there.
If they were always getting along,
one of them wouldn't be necessary.
Tommy and Cheech were the first rock and roll comedians.
No doubt about it.
They opened for the Rolling Stones
in front of 20,000 people, doing comedy.
CHEECH: It was at a little venue,
and then we came back to, uh, Waikiki.
What did you say, Lou?
- Uh, nothing, guys. - Okay.
And then, uh, we played the, uh, HIC again.
We sold out two shows there, remember, that one night?
ANNOUNCER: Cheech & Chong
on Eyewitness News.
In the lifestyle of each generation,
there's often a very close correlation between
its humor and its drugs.
Well, for these two comedians, Cheech & Chong,
their humor revolves around marijuana.
Their first album has now won a coveted Gold Record award.
Their new album is called Big Bambú,
and you don't even have to hear the album
to know its contents.
I asked if money and success might spoil them.
No, there's a lot of hippies in Los Angeles.
They pay to see us, and they support us, you know, so...
There's nothing wrong with money, you know?
- It's just how you use it. - Yeah.
Nothing, nothing greater than a rich hippie.
SANDERS: The only complaint they'd had about the album was
that the giant rolling paper inside has no gum on the edge.
Someone said if it did,
they could roll two and a half ounces.
Roger?
[strumming guitar]
♪ They're busting folks in New York City ♪
♪ But not the evil bastards that they should ♪
♪ They're busting the dope smoking hippies ♪
♪ Along with the brothers and the others in the hood ♪
♪ Got to get it legal
♪ Get marijuana legal now
♪ Let's get it legal
♪ And I don't care how.
CHEECH: We weren't political, by any means.
We didn't advocate one party over the other.
We were just kind of like street hippies that were like,
"Hey, we should have the right to get high, man."
And that's kind of about how deep
our political philosophy went.
CHONG: My stance on weed legalization:
It should not only be legal.
It should be mandatory in some cases.
That's the way I look at it.
There should be some people that
should be forced to smoke a ton of pot.
[cheering and applause]
All you people are all lit up, man.
You're usually lit up in the dark.
They said, you know, we've got to cut our dope bits,
- you know, so, um... - [crowd booing]
So, I mean, you know, really, seriously speaking, man.
I mean, how many... how many people here smoke grass?
- How many? - [cheering and applause]
About six.
CHEECH: That's a government survey.
Anybody here on acid tonight?
[vocalizing]
[cheering and laughter]
CHEECH: Drugs were really our off-duty hours.
But when we're off hours and we want to get high,
maybe think of something funny...
Oh, I can do that tomorrow when I have to go to work
and be straight about it but act high.
DICK CLARK: May I have your name and age?
- May I have your name and age? - Oh, hi, hey.
Uh, uh...
- What? - [laughter]
CHEECH: It always astounded me,
why isn't everybody doing dope jokes?
They're smoking dope.
I guess for some of those comedians, it was too obvious.
It was too "Yeah, well, everybody's doing that."
Well, in fact, nobody was doing that.
So we were the first ones, and we, in effect,
stole home plate.
GERALDO: Would I be blowing your cover
if I told everyone that you
really aren't into drugs, that you're both athletes
and that drugs are just something that you joke about
that you don't do very much of?
- No we, we, um... -No, no, we-we do drugs all the time.
We mainline seeds and stems, um... and, um...
We don't lift weights or anything.
No, we don't run all the time or, you know,
tai chi or nothing.
GERALDO: But the fact is both Cheech Marin
and Tommy Chong are straighter than most.
And I spent long hours with both of them
running along one of the few remaining Malibu beaches
that still hasn't been turned into asphalt.
CHEECH: We were just California guys
and we worked out, but we smoked
as much dope as anybody else.
There was this interesting dichotomy that we revealed.
INTERVIEWER: What about the first time
you did other drugs, like acid?
Yeah, it was about '68. I remember.
It was, it was when it was called "try this," you know.
- Try this, yeah. - CHONG: As a matter of fact,
I was just with Timothy Leary last night,
and-and they laid some acid on me.
And this is real acid.
Oh, that's good acid, too. Blue Blotter.
And you only need a little bit.
I still take acid occasionally, about every six months or so.
- It's like a cosmic colonic. - [laughing]
You know? No, I'm... I'm being very serious now,
because I-I take it every once in a while
just to kind of-- you need something to jolt you
out of wherever you are.
We advocate the friendly drugs, you know,
like, uh, when you say "turn on" somebody,
that's sort of a-a positive thing.
And you want to say "get high."
That's another uplifting, positive thing.
And it's a recreational drug, which is also positive.
And we've done our own independent drug research.
[laughter]
- Which is ongoing, you know. - Yes.
- We got a, we got a grant from Colombia. -Yeah.
[laughter]
We think we're right.
TOM SNYDER: Only time will tell.
Yes.
♪
There's more verses, but I can't remember 'em right now.
[applause]
In the category of Best Comedy Recordings,
the nominees are
Lily Tomlin,
Bill Cosby, Cheech & Chong.
[applause]
♪
"Basketball Jones."
A-one, two, three, four.
["Basketball Jones" playing]
[cheering and applause]
♪ Yes, I'm the victim of a Basketball Jones ♪
♪ Ever since I was a little baby ♪
♪ I always be dribblin'
♪ In fact, I was the baddest dribbler ♪
♪ In the whole neighborhood...
CHONG: "Basketball Jones."
That started off as a fun ride
with, uh, Jack Nicholson to the Laker game.
CHEECH: Lou invited us,
and Jack Nicholson's an out-of-control driver.
- [sinister laugh] - [horn honks]
CHONG: He's got his own rules.
When Cheech gets nervous, he starts singing.
[whistling]
CHEECH: This song comes on the radio
called "Love Jones."
I started going... ♪ Basketball Jones
♪ I got a Basketball Jones.
CHONG: I immediately start writing the lyrics.
The next day, Tommy said, "Let's record that."
♪
CHONG: We showed Lou.
He said, "Let's do it."
We always use what's in front of us,
and because of Lou Adler, we got access
to the best musicians in the world.
CHEECH: It just so happens,
in the next studio was George Harrison,
Billy Preston and Carole King.
So Lou goes over there, "Hey, George, can you come over
and-and play on this record?"
[imitating George Harrison]: "Ooh, I'd be glad to."
♪ Basketball Jones
♪ I got a Basketball Jones
♪ I got a Basketball Jones, oh, baby, ooh ♪
♪ Basketball Jones...
CHONG: When Lou Adler did anything,
he did it first-class all the way.
He was a big part of our lives in so many ways.
He showed us class.
He showed us style.
And he took Cheech & Chong
right to the very, very top of the heap.
♪ Basketball Jones
♪ I got a Basketball Jones
♪ Oh, baby, ooh.
[lively chatter]
CHEECH: Touring was just nonstop,
and we needed a rest,
so I moved to the farthest part of Malibu
to get away from all the influences in Hollywood.
It would take three days for the world to stop spinning.
I just wanted to sit in my living room,
look out the window.
I was married to Rikki, and she was very supportive,
but it was hard when we had to travel.
Sometimes, we were absent from the house
for long periods of time, so that's always hard on a family.
Tommy and I always lived close to each other.
It was essential to our process because
there was this constant conversation
going on about the act.
CHONG: Sitting in a studio
and making up funny bits, it was so much fun.
And after a while, it became a job,
and then we couldn't do it anymore.
We ran out of that record energy.
CHEECH: We told Lou that we were gonna
take time off and write a movie
'cause we wanted to do movies next.
He took a deep breath.
"Okay, well, I'll try to find you a deal."
♪ They're gonna put me in the movies ♪
♪ Oh, they're gonna make a big star out of me ♪
♪ They're gonna make a scene
♪ About a man that's sad and lonely ♪
♪ And all I got to do is act naturally. ♪
The first pass of the script was called
"Cheech & Chong's Greatest Hits."
We handed Lou the script without any kind of
traditional first, second, third act structure.
We were gonna make this "day in the life" movies,
and that was far more interesting than plot.
What we very soon realized,
it really had to center on two characters from the act,
and the most obvious ones were Pedro and Man.
We took off a year at the height of our success,
and at the end of the year,
the deal for the movie didn't come together,
and Lou said, "I can't convince the studios
to see this vision,"
even though he had produced a couple movies.
BOBBIE WYGANT: The fact that you were
so successful with Rocky Horror,
did that help you get people to...
The success of one film
doesn't necessarily give you the total financial backing
for another film.
I actually financed the film.
That's one way to get around it.
["Low Rider" by War playing]
♪ All my friends
♪ Know the low rider
♪ Yeah
♪ The low rider
♪ Is a little higher
♪ Yeah...
CHEECH: At some point in the process,
Lou explained to me that
he'd always wanted to direct a movie,
and this was his chance.
The only thing that was important to me
is that Tommy and I worked together to do the scenes.
I didn't care who the director said he was.
CHONG: We knew that,
when we got in front of the cameras,
we were gonna do what we had to do, what we did.
We were Cheech & Chong. We're just gonna be funny.
Oh, what's that? She's hitchhiking.
[tires squealing]
Hey, watch out. Coming over. Geronimo!
[car horn honks]
Hey, Dubble Bubble.
Come on, baby, I'll give you a ride. Let's go.
- Hey, you ain't a chick. - Yeah, I know,
but listen, that's the only way I can get anybody to stop, man.
Hey, that's false advertising, that, man.
Oh, wow, I... Hey, I really like your car, man.
CHEECH: Those two guys, they belong together.
And from the time Man hopped into Pedro's car,
they were together.
Led Zeppelin, ooh.
Hey, be careful with that shit, man.
Oh, is it heavy stuff, man? [laughs]
Will it blow me away?
Better put your seat belt on, man, I'll tell you that much.
Shit, I've been smoking since I was born, man.
I could smoke anything, man.
Like, I smoked that Michoacán, man,
Acapulco Gold, man.
I even smoked that tied stick, you know?
Tied stick?
Yeah. You know, that stuff
that's tied to a stick, you know?
- Oh, Thai stick. - Yeah.
Yeah, that didn't even do nothing to me, man.
I could probably smoke this whole joint, man,
and still walk away, man.
Wouldn't be no problem at all, man.
Toke, toke it up, man.
[mumbles]
CHONG: Kind of grabs you by the boo-boo, don't it?
CHEECH: Our success depended upon
an uninterrupted conversation between the two of us.
Lou was getting in our way when he tried to assume control
of the creative direction of the movie.
Tommy was very indignant 'cause that was his position.
Lou had a lot of talents.
Directing a movie isn't one of them.
And we had a lot of talents,
and directing our own movies is one of them.
- CHONG: Who lives here, man? - CHEECH: That's my cousin
Strawberry, man. He's always got the best smoke.
CHEECH: When you make your first movie,
especially for comedians, you're gonna use everything
that you've ever learned or ever tried up until that point.
And that's what we did, plus more.
STRAWBERRY [over speaker]: Who is it?
- It's me, Pedro, man. - STRAWBERRY: Pedro's not here.
No, I'm Pedro, man. Open up.
CHEECH: We improvised inside the scene,
being spontaneous in front of the camera.
Just be cool.
How long you guys been in Mexico?
A week.
I mean, a-a day.
Which one is it, a week or a day?
A weekday.
You got any narcotics or marijuana in here?
[coughing]
Uh, not anymore. [laughs]
CHEECH: There was one day at lunch, we were talking about
different roommates we've had over the years,
and Zane Buzby told this story about this girl
that she roomed with that had this boyfriend named Alex,
and every time they made love, she would call out his name.
Tommy says, "Let's film that."
I go, "What do you mean?" "Uh, right after lunch."
And she'd start going like a motorboat, you know?
Fu-u-u-u-u-u-u-uck
me-e-e-e-e-e-e.
Fuck me, Alex. Fuck me, Alex.
- Fuck me, Alex. - CHONG: Oh, I got a cramp.
- Oh, oh, I got a cramp. - Yeah!
- Ow. Ow. Ow. - Yeah! Yeah!
ZANE: Oh, yeah, oh!
- No. No! - [moaning]
[Zane and Chong moaning]
CHEECH: It was one of the funniest
scenes in the movie, and it took a half hour to shoot.
[cheering]
Every single bit of that scene was improvised.
I didn't know your name was Alex, man.
Oh, I got a cramp.
Shit, I'd have a cramp there, too, man. Whoo!
What's going on out here?
CHONG: I really felt comfortable
shooting movies,
and it didn't matter to me who directed,
as long as I had a big say in the process.
This is where I get out.
["Up in Smoke" by Cheech & Chong playing]
CHEECH: We had finished filming,
and now it was in Lou's hands to edit it,
and he wouldn't let us in the editing room.
- You ready, Tom? - CHONG: Yeah.
CHEECH: The question was,
is this a Lou Adler film,
or is this a Cheech & Chong film?
♪ Up in smoke
♪ That's where my money goes... ♪
CHEECH: The movie comes out, and it's a giant hit. Giant.
CHONG: Nobody thought Up in Smoke
was gonna be anything but a bust.
But the problem was, we had a hit movie,
and both Cheech and I were literally broke, cash poor.
Our income depended upon our live performances.
And all the time we shot Up in Smoke,
we stopped touring on the road.
We had no income.
CHEECH: We started looking very closely
at the contract that we had signed without a lawyer.
Ah...
That was a huge, horrible deal for us.
A 90-10 split Lou's way.
So how much did your film cost?
Under two. It was probably a million and a half.
GERALDO: And how much did it gross?
They're talking $104 million worldwide.
Who knows?
We got a pair of lime green shoes out of the deal.
- [laughter] - GERALDO: How did you...
- $100. - And $100 and...
A crispy bill.
GERALDO: Out of the $104 million, seriously,
what was your original deal, if you don't mind my asking?
- We get, uh... - $50,000.
- $50,000 to split. - To split.
$25,000 each.
- GERALDO: $20,000? - Dollars.
- GERALDO: For writing... - To write...
- direct, star and promote. - and direct and to star.
- And promote. - And promote.
GERALDO: So, you guys made a great deal.
- Yeah. - Oh, beautiful deal.
- And we had... - And a jar of Vaseline.
No, we had ten percent of the back end.
- Was it ten percent or five percent? -Ten percent.
- Ten? -Ten percent of some vaguely defined 100%.
And we were committed to Paramount for six other movies.
CHONG: Lou never took a penny as our manager.
He wasn't a ten-percenter or twenty-percenter.
He owned the record company. That was enough for him.
Everything he did to manage us was really on his dime.
And I now realize that
nothing's more expensive than a free lunch.
CHEECH: Lou, Tommy, and I were really tight.
That was a big hit, and it affected me emotionally
for a long time.
We never had a lawyer, and he had years of expertise
doing these kind of deals.
We thought what would be fair is if we split it
a third, a third, a third,
and we would go on and make other movies
under that formula.
He... chose not to take that deal.
ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome those two fabulous furry
freaks of frivolity,
Cheech & Chong.
[cheering]
- How's everybody? - Yeah.
- Yeah. [chuckles] Okay. - [audience cheering]
Oh. We're movie stars now, you know what I mean?
- [cheering] - CHONG: You know what I mean?
So, we really don't have to do this shit, you know?
- You know that? - [laughter]
But then again, considering the deal we got,
we're gonna have to do a lot more of this. [laughs]
[laughter, cheering]
But I'm not, you know, I'm not bitter about the deal we got.
Fuck no.
[audience laughs]
CHONG: We had a Comedy Store
in the city that we could perform at.
Every big-name act in Hollywood came down to see us.
- What? - The paranoids.
- The paranoids are out there. - They're out there.
Oh, shit. Give me a Valium.
Never mind the Valium. Where's your gun?
- Oh, I forgot it. - Well, here, use one of mine.
- Okay. - [audience laughing]
- Where are they? - Okay.
- Oh, there's one over there. - Where?
- Click. Click. - Where?
- Click. - Wh-What's the matter?
Oh, the damn gun won't work.
Click. Click.
Well, take off the safety, stupid.
- Oh, yeah, right. - [audience laughing]
- There they are. Cum. - Cum.
BOTH: Cum. Cum. Cum. Cum. Cum. Cum.
- Cum. Cum. Cum. Cum. - Cum. Can't.
- Can't. Can't. - Cum.
- What's the matter? - I can't cum.
Can't. Can't.
- Well, reload. - Oh, right.
[audience laughing]
BOTH: Cum. Cum. Cum. Cum. Cum. Cum. Cum. Cum. Cum.
- We've overcome. They've gone. - Yay!
- Cum. Cum. Cum. - [applause]
CHONG: We were tied up.
We couldn't do another movie
without Lou Adler's, uh, permission and involvement.
In the meantime, we met Howard Brown.
I met them.
There was some sort of a problem with
the chap they did Up in Smoke with.
So, they were out of the movie business,
and all they were allowed to do is tour
because of the legalities of the problem.
And I saw them at The Comedy Store,
and I said, "They belong in the movies,
and-and so I've got to do something about it."
Howard Brown was a real fast-talking New Yorker,
and he wanted to be, uh, in show business.
I didn't like Howard Brown that much
'cause he was just so sleazy.
Tommy liked him 'cause he liked those kind of
sleazy street guys. They were more up his alley.
In retrospect, you looked at him,
and he was perfect for Hollywood.
CHONG: Howard was like a bona fide
Jewish gangster from New York.
He dressed like a gangster.
He kind of talked like a gangster.
He had that New York sensibility.
There's always a way to do things.
I-I loved the man. He was...
Him and I got along really good.
They have a problem with Lou, and, uh,
I said, "If I can solve the problem,
then I'd like to produce the-the Cheech & Chong movies."
CHONG: Howard says, "First of all,
we got to get you out of the Lou Adler contract."
It took a while, but he did it.
Then he says, "What would you guys be comfortable with?"
I said, "Well, you know, get us a million bucks, uh, uh, fee,
and we'll be happy."
With me directing.
That was the only thing I told Howard,
that I had to be the director.
INTERVIEWER: So, big meeting you had this morning, huh?
Yeah, we're trying to-to settle all the small problems.
I mean, the big problems, you know,
were settled like that, you know, when it came down to
who's gonna do what, who's gonna be director, producer.
We have no script. That's okay.
Give us a few million, we'll make it.
Don't worry about it.
Got them the highest paid, uh, amount up front,
you know, as a fee that was ever done
in the history of the business. No problems.
CHONG: And Howard phoned me, and he says...
The meeting only took a half hour at Universal.
So I called up Columbia.
"You're gonna tell them three stories.
"They're gonna pick two,
and you're gonna do two movies for them."
We got a three-picture deal with two studios
in one day.
♪
GERALDO: In the great Hollywood tradition,
everyone loves a winner.
In contrast to the $25,000 they both received
for their first movie, Cheech & Chong were both paid
a million dollars in advance for their next movie.
- Just be cool, man. - I'm cool. You be cool.
I'm cool. You just be cool.
GERALDO: How do you like directing?
CHONG: I love directing.
GERALDO: Is it new to you?
Film directing is new. You know, I've...
We've only... I've only been in two pictures,
and I directed half of one and all of the other.
At first, I was a little in awe, but...
but it's like riding a horse.
You got to get on and hang on.
GERALDO: Cheech said that between the two of you,
you've always been the director.
Yeah. Yeah.
He-he directs me.
You know, he-he has an opinion.
The great thing about Cheech & Chong is
that using improv techniques,
you're always wide open for somebody else's opinion.
That's why it's important as to who we're around
before we shoot or when we shoot,
because anybody around us, or any words, or television,
anything can affect us.
You got taken to the cleaner so bad last time.
I don't think so. I really...
I think it was a wash. I think it was even Steven.
I mean, we had a chance
to show... show the coach what we could do.
And, uh, so we didn't get paid for that game,
but we're starters from now on.
So, I-I never look back, but, you know,
I look back and think of how beautiful it was.
["Tequila" by The Champs playing]
CHONG: On the next movie,
I hired a first-time cameraman.
It was a good move
because he was so fired up to make his mark.
The first day, we did 42 setups,
and there was no warming up.
It was like, we went balls-out.
♪
I was always concentrating on making the scene funny
between Tommy and I.
♪ Mexican Americans
♪ Don't like to just get into gang fights ♪
♪ They like flowers and music
♪ And white girls named Debbie, too ♪
♪ Mexican Americans are named Chata and Chella ♪
♪ And Chemma and have a son-in-law named Jeff ♪
♪ Mexican Americans don't like
♪ To get up early in the morning ♪
♪ But they have to, so they do it real slow ♪
♪ Mexican Americans love education ♪
♪ So they go to night school
♪ And they take Spanish and get a B. ♪
Yeah, leave that in.
And that's all I got. How do you like it?
Oh, that's good. Uh, yeah.
It's like a protest tune, man.
- Yeah, I-I dig that, man. - Yeah.
CHONG: Even though we didn't have
a lot of things that other movies have--
the car crashes and all that other stuff--
I was more interested in getting the human side
and getting the humor and getting the real, uh,
uh, nitty-gritty.
- You got a light, man? - Huh?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Hey, I don't think you better light it in here, man.
- Why? - Oh, these gas fumes, man.
- Oh, man. - Well...
♪
Cheech & Chong are two sharp L.A. comics
who take old, tried-and-true material
and zing it right into their audience.
The drug culture.
Kids who are either too young or too wrecked
to know it's all been done before... better.
♪ Hey, homes, why don't you come along... ♪
The funniest sequence is so off-color,
I can't even begin to describe it.
Weird, anarchistic, anti-authority,
sophomoric, gross, bordering on repulsive,
and sometimes real funny.
When they were starting out, I was a kid,
and I thought Cheech & Chong were terrific.
I've grown up. They haven't.
Hmm. Maybe they know something.
- [applause] -♪ Business on the other side... ♪
SNYDER: You know, you two are really carrying on
the tradition of the Laurel and Hardy
and the Martin and Lewis and the Abbott and Costello,
the comed-- the male comedy team
in feature-length motion pictures.
Are you aware of that? I mean, is that...
- No. - No?
- [laughter] - Oh. Oh, yeah. Oh.
Oh, that. Yeah. [chuckles]
♪ On the other side...
CHEECH: Our relationship with the press,
right from the beginning, was always
a love-hate relationship.
They didn't see the intelligence it took
to make a really dumb joke.
Once in a while, one of the highest-class critics
would give us a rave review,
like Pauline Kael in The New Yorker.
"Okay, well, somebody's getting it."
CHONG: Everything worked in our favor.
And if you didn't like us, that was your problem,
and if you liked us, that was also your problem.
♪ Business on the other side... ♪
INTERVIEWER: You've got the money.
You're-you're living quite nicely.
Is this what the counterculture is coming to?
We found out that "counterculture" means "poor."
[laughter]
Yeah, we're no longer in the counterculture.
We're, uh, across the counterculture.
You know, they give five bucks across the counter,
and then we give them a record or a movie or...
something like that.
INTERVIEWER: You think of George Carlin,
you think, uh, Richard Pryor.
Is it fair to ask you how you think
you stack up to them as a comic?
CHONG: When they say "comics,"
they don't even mention Cheech & Chong.
They always say, "Oh, they're something else."
So we'll take that. We're "something else."
- Can you define it? - Nope.
♪ Nice dreams
♪ Hmm, little girl.
[laughs]
CHONG: Do you realize how long we've been doing this?
A long time.
Uh, it blows my mind when I think about it.
Look how far we've come.
I know. Way out in the desert.
[chuckles]
And where is Dave in this whole deal?
Dave's not here.
[laughing]
I've been dying to say that.
That cracks me up, man.
CHEECH: So, is this a documentary or a movie?
CHONG: I don't know, man.
CHEECH: Well, is there a script?
Are you serious?
Well, yeah, I'm serious.
You always say "we never had a script,"
and I wrote the script that we "never had."
I didn't write anybody's dialogue,
but I wrote the premise of the movie,
which a movie company needs.
In order to make a movie,
they got to know where to set the cameras.
If you wrote it, how did I improvise
all the stuff that I did?
Or you did or we did together?
I never said I wrote every line.
I said I wrote the outline.
So, like, "Joke goes here." You wrote that?
- I mean, all right, h-here... - No, see, see, you get,
- you get insulted when it comes to that. -I do get insulted.
But here's the perfect example.
- Okay? We were making Nice Dreams. -Yeah.
CHEECH: And, uh, we were in the insane asylum...
["Save the Whales" playing]
♪ Save the whales
♪ Hey, funky mama, save those whales... ♪
CHONG: In all my endeavors,
I never called myself a leader of anything.
I would organize the band, but I was never the best singer
or the best musician.
But I had an organizational sense.
It just came to me naturally.
CHEECH: At the beginning,
there was a younger brother/ older brother dynamic going on
because he had more experience, he was eight years older.
But I was learning a lot every movie.
Tommy kind of saw my ideas as an affront to his directorship.
No, man, I'm just trying to make the movie better.
CHONG: There's an age-old,
tried-and-true formula for making movies:
the director calls the shots.
It's movie etiquette.
When you have a vision, it's your vision.
Cheech wanted more say in what we were doing,
and it was like,
"No, this is what we're going to do."
Hey!
[panting]
My balls itch! [cries]
CHEECH: I was glad to listen to Tommy creatively
because we had the same process.
If I thought it was funnier or that I could make it funny,
I would do it.
His direction was very general:
"You have a padded cell. Be funny."
The essential part of knowing when something is funny
never changed.
Hey!
The thing that started to slowly change was
who was in charge of knowing everything.
[dialing]
Yeah. Marissa, bring me some tea,
and get me Howard Brown. Thanks.
We're gonna do a bit here. Cheech is really excited.
You know, "Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen."
Then we'll pull back and we'll see about four or five...
- Oh, okay. Okay. - ...bored people there.
HB, tell me some good news.
Well, the good news-- You want the good news?
Good news is we're partners with them in the movie.
They want to protect the movie from any injunction
- or enjoinment or lawsuit... - Bullshit.
They're gambling that I'm a nice guy
that won't give them any problems,
which I already have been, for the whole shoot, right?
- Right, right. -Well, I'm gambling the other way.
I'm gambling that-that we're popular enough
that if they don't see it our way,
then we're gonna-- we're not gonna feel
very good about working for them again.
That's right, you're one of the most important,
- if not the most important... - That's right.
So why don't they beat up the other schmuck
and leave me alone?
Well, if it's that...
CHEECH: Howard Brown had a lot to do
with the tension between us because he would tell
each of us different things.
"Oh, well, Tommy, you're-you're the star,
you're this or this," you know, "this is all you,"
and he would come out to me and tell me the same,
"Oh, Cheech, you know, y-you're really the star.
"And that Tommy, we-- he needs you, and blah, blah, blah,
and so you got to do this for him, blah, blah,"
and he was just a lying...
You know, and it was like... [exhales]: Ay...
- [door closes] -CHONG: I found a real doctor, man.
- Says he can help us. - Do you have the key?
TIMOTHY LEARY: I've got the key right here.
Oh, thank God.
Stick out your tongue.
[laughing]
There's the key.
BRIAN LINEHAN: You have Dr. Timothy Leary in the film.
- CHEECH: Yeah. - LINEHAN: And Dr. Leary offered
some interestingly convoluted explanations
of your work and your art.
I do not understand how he has likened your art
as film comedian to the work of Bruegel.
- Do you, Tommy? - I don't know who Bruegel is.
- Do you, Richard? - Yeah. Uh-huh.
Could you explain that for...?
Well, Bruegel, if you look at his paintings,
are very close to Hieronymus Bosch
in that there's a lot of things going-- it's...
His canvases were heaven and hell.
You know? And this particular picture,
more than anything else, was heaven and hell.
- Hey, man, I ain't bullshitting with you... -Hey!
Hey, man, give me my money back, man!
CHEECH: All these things happening together
that the eye cannot take in all at once.
But once you start studying, you see the complexity of life
in one canvas, and he makes it work.
- [people shouting] - What are you doing?
ROGER EBERT: Well, they say the original screenplay
for Cheech & Chong's Nice Dreams is written
on the back of an envelope.
Must have been a small envelope.
My suggestion for the title
of Cheech & Chong's next movie is
Cheech & Chong Go to the Drug Detoxification
and Rehabilitation Center,
Deal with Dope-Induced Brain Damage and Paranoia
and Learn to Make Funny Comedies.
What, do you think that's too long for a theater marquee?
Well, it might have been a better film than this one.
I'll tell you, this is, uh, this is bad stuff.
[fly buzzing]
- [buzzing stops] - There. Got it.
WYGANT: Do you ever get on
one another's nerves to the point where you get mad
and you don't speak for a while?
- Not Cheech & Chong. - Oh, come on.
- No. Yeah, yeah. - Really?
Yeah, Tommy's saying, Tommy's saying, "Uh-huh."
No, we get along just great.
- Don't we, Tommy? - [laughter]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh...
It's been, um...
brewing from the last picture that I directed.
[clears throat] 'Cause I kept being taken away
from Cheech, you know? And, uh...
So that's why the next movie we're gonna do, uh,
we're gonna get a director in to direct,
'cause now we got the confidence,
you know, we can do that.
[wolf whistle]
CHONG: We finished Nice Dreams,
and then we went into Things Are Tough All Over.
On the other movies, I would write,
Cheech would go on vacation, Howard would make the deal,
and then we'd come in and shoot.
But this time, Cheech wanted to be involved in everything,
and he didn't want me to direct.
I want to go back to the desert!
CHONG: Tom Avildsen was the editor.
I said, "Okay, Tom, you direct.
"You will go down as the director, I don't care,
but I'll actually be the director."
CHEECH: Jesus Christ, Chong.
It was this kind of replacement.
"I'll just promote Tom, the editor,
because I'm not the director," but he was.
Well, that was a great fucking idea.
- [acoustic guitar playing] - Thanks.
CHEECH: Hey!
♪
¡Come mierda, pendejo!
We're gonna die of heat frustration out here.
Play something else, will you, please?
That's desert music, man.
- Come on, mellow out, man. - Oh, "desert music."
Man, we're gonna die out here.
Hey, man, let's do that song we were writing in Chicago.
What song?
You know, that "Me and My Old Lady."
I don't know how it goes.
Come on, sure you do. You wrote it.
- I don't remember it, man. - Well, let's try it.
♪ Me
- ♪ And my old lady - ♪ My old lady
There you go.
♪ We like, we like-like to, like ♪
♪ We like to, like-like, get outside ♪
Uh...
♪ But sometimes
♪ People space us out...
Me and Tommy have been together
longer than I've ever been with any woman.
And you get these points that you got to just talk it out,
and it's very painful sometimes,
but you just do it 'cause you want that relationship
to go on, other than the fame and the money,
'cause it's really a lot of fun.
I mean, he's my best friend, you know?
CHONG: It's yin and yang,
you know, Cheech & Chong.
I'm passive, he's, uh, very aggressive,
and it works perfectly.
We complement each other. That's why we're together.
INTERVIEWER: Did the egos get in the way
of your work when you were directing?
Yeah. Yeah, it-it's a... it's a strange--
There was a learning process for both of us, you know?
And, uh, the nature of our act is I'm-- I-I always will,
you know, I'm the senior member of the partnership,
and so I can make some, some crucial decisions.
But then again, if-if I'm off on the wrong path,
he-he'll tell me about it.
And, uh, it's a very touchy thing,
you know, especially with movies.
You know, i-if you know anything about movies,
uh, that's the first thing that happens:
friendships dissolve, you know.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[fanfare playing]
[applause]
CHEECH: What happens in movies is
your ego gets quite large.
Tommy's ego was always
quite large, which is great.
You have to have a big ego to be in show business
'cause what you're saying is, "Look at me," you know?
I'm doing wonderful things. You should laugh,
or you should love us, or whatever it is
that's necessary.
[sighs] He got an ego
out of proportion to his actual talent.
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep...
CHONG: When I became the director,
that really drove a wedge between Cheech and I.
We were no longer partners.
I was the director, and Cheech was the actor.
Hey, listen, man, turn those mics down. Turn 'em down.
[Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra" playing]
CHONG: I think Cheech really wanted
to be equal in every way,
and you can't, because even though I directed,
he was the star of all the movies.
MAN: ...zero.
[rocket blasting off]
♪
CHONG: The movie was focused on him.
And I did that purposely
because it-it was a trade-off.
♪
[cheering and applause]
He didn't put me anywhere.
I was in the same position I was
since we started the act.
I was Cheech from Cheech & Chong.
And that came with its own thing.
If you weren't gonna be recognized
as the acting star, you wanted to be recognized
as the director-- I understand that.
So you think that I-I directed because,
uh, it was a job that I could do?
Instead of being the star, I could be the director?
Well, you always were the director.
It wasn't like...
And you got to earn it. You can't just say,
oh, because I was there with the other guy that directed,
I should be a director.
Did I direct as much as you did in the movies?
- Huh? - Did I direct as much
- as you did in the movies? - No.
- All right, then. - [truck roars by]
- No, you never... - See, that's a lie.
[laughs]
That's a lie?
Yeah. Well, of course it's a lie.
I directed just as much as you did in the movies.
- You know? - Okay.
When we had to re-- [sighs]
This isn't really worth going into.
Mine. Mine.
[wailing]
Mine, mine, mine.
- Mine, mine. - Ow!
CHONG: Cheech said,
"No more stoner movies.
I want to do a movie without dope."
I said, "No problem."
You know, it's like doing a comedy show clean.
You know, work clean. And I-I love the challenge.
So I said, "Yeah, let's do it."
♪
There's a lot of irony in The Corsican Brothers
because it's a movie about feeling each other's pain.
Who are you, and what are you doing here?
I'm your brother Luis.
You're lying. My brother wasn't Mexican.
Look, it's me.
Ow!
CHONG: There was a lot of meaning
in that movie.
Ah, Luis, Luis!
I didn't want to make amiable messes anymore.
I wanted to make more fully concentrated
and focused movies.
Tommy said, "I'm gonna write Corsican Brothers.
"I don't want any interference from you,
"and if you don't like it, give back the money
you received as an advance for the movie."
He wanted to cut me out of the process that was
the lifeblood of Cheech & Chong.
Wow, you know, people do have different memories of--
different experiences of the same event.
And so I have to respect that, you know?
If that's what he feels that's what happened,
that's what, that-- in his world,
that's what happened.
But not in my world.
Give me that!
Ow!
CHONG: Cheech wasn't interested
in the hard part of directing a movie.
You know, the nuts and bolts.
He wasn't interested.
He just wanted to perform.
You know, "Turn on the camera and I'll perform."
He wanted some kind of control over The Corsican Brothers,
which he never got.
[wind gusting]
[seagulls screeching]
CHEECH: After we wrapped Corsican Brothers,
I went back to Los Angeles.
My marriage to Rikki was unraveling at that point.
CHONG: And that's when Cheech
really pulled away from me.
He was in a very transitional time of his life.
CHEECH: Tommy was content to go--
I think he lived in France for three or four years.
I didn't know how he was gonna be relevant
to the U.S. audience by living in Paris,
but he wanted to bask in the South of France
and, uh... and exalt in his worldwide renown
as this comic genius director.
And I was just-- I was lost.
I went home, smoked dope and played guitar.
♪
And then one day, I looked up and I saw this brand-new thing.
I thought, "This is perfect for Cheech & Chong."
We're musicians, we're filmmakers,
and we're comedians.
We can make video albums.
♪
So I figured I would write these tunes
and direct the videos,
and he would direct the mockumentary
that wrapped around it.
And we'll do this together and it'll be great.
Come on, man, let's do a video, man.
I don't want to do a video, all right?
Don't want to do it.
All right, then I'll do it myself.
Good, do it yourself.
I'll do a lot of videos.
Well, good. Good for you.
I'll be a vidiot. Ha-ha.
You are already a vidiot.
Forget you.
CHEECH: I needed one more tune
for the package, and I was reading this article
in the L.A. Times about this young
Mexican kid who got caught in a raid
and got deported, but he was American.
At the same time, Bruce Springsteen's record
was playing on the radio:
♪ Born in the USA. So I started singing,
♪ I was born in East L.A.
♪ Man, I was born in East L.A.
Oh, yeah, you were born in East L.A.
Well, let's see your Green Card, huh?
Green Card?
♪ I'm from East L.A.
I showed up for everything you ever wanted, right?
There wasn't anything you asked me to do
that I didn't do.
- I asked you one thing. - To be an extra.
No, it's not an extra.
It was the vital part of the middle of the song.
[laughing]: It was... it wasn't.
All right, all you mojados down here,
I want y'all to hit the floor.
A cop, of all things.
Not even my character. It's a cop.
You wanted me to be a cop.
Where were you born, man?
Huh?
The Chong character doesn't do bit parts.
I protect my character.
Hey, are you one of those dudes that do horoscopes, man?
Hey, I'm a Cancer with a bad moon rising.
Look here, el vago. Watch my lips.
Where were you born?
And that's what it was.
- Well, that's the way you... - It was a fucking insult.
That's the way you perceived it because I was in charge of...
That's the way it was.
CHEECH: Born in East L.A. comes out.
It was a huge hit.
The head of Universal said, "I saw this video,
"I think that it's brilliant,
"and I think there's a movie there.
"But only for you.
"It's not a Cheech & Chong movie,
"it's a Cheech movie,
and I'm-I'm ready to do it right now."
[sighs]
At some point in the process,
the younger brother got old enough.
You weren't in the record. You weren't in the video.
The video prompted the film.
You weren't in it.
In my mind, I tried everything I-I could
to appease you.
I was tired of being excluded, and I...
But you never wrote for Cheech & Chong.
You wrote for Cheech.
Yeah. Okay.
INTERVIEWER: Now, let's get the record straight.
You and Tommy Chong are no longer working together?
Well, just not right now.
We're taking a little hiatus, and we're doing
individual projects we've wanted to do
for a little while, and we'll probably
get back together again and do something,
you know, after a while.
And that's what happens when you break,
when you break the thing like that, it's broken.
I told you when you walked away
that, hey, I still want to make Cheech & Chong movies, but...
- Oh, that's bullshit. - I'm sorry...
I said I'm sorry...
That is bullshit, man.
You're really stretching it now.
I... Oh, please, Tommy.
REPORTER: Tommy Chong has had the limousines
and the millions that go with them,
but the gold mine that created them all,
the Cheech & Chong team, is no longer his team.
We're sort of in the middle of the divorce,
and I don't have another woman yet.
[chuckles]
As far as a career goes.
Well, you were mad because I-I... I didn't want to
try to keep our career going.
- No, I... -I didn't want to keep you directing.
I didn't want to keep doing Cheech & Chong movies.
I'm going to do the--
By the way, when I finish this one,
I still want to go back and do Cheech & Chong movies.
Do other members of a band go off and do solo albums,
then come back and do the band?
- Well, we're not a band. - Yes, we are.
- No, we're not. - We're absolutely a band.
Cheech, that "nice people on both sides" argument
does not work with us.
And Chong doesn't work as an extra, you know?
[Cheech sighs]
I'm not doing this anymore.
[grunting]
CREW MEMBER: Cheech. Cheech. Get back in the car.
CHEECH: How you get the hell off this trailer?
DRIVER: Hey.
You got to be kidding me.
What the hell you think you're doing?
- Ever hear of safety? - We just...
I've been listening to you guys all day long,
and I don't care who you are, I want you off my trailer.
I'll-- Okay, okay, I'll--
How-how do you get the fuck off of this?
[truck horn honks twice]
- Oh, fuck. - What's the matter?
[groans] My knee, my knee.
How'd you do that?
Shit. Jumping off that rig.
Well, what did you do that for?
- [groans] -You okay? Here, put your... Here.
Come here. Put your weight on me.
- All right, just shake it out. - Yeah, that's better.
There you go.
You okay now?
It's better, it's better.
- It's better now? You okay? - It's good.
- Yeah. - You can make it?
Yeah, I can make it. Yeah.
All that stuff that happened...
- Yeah. - Years ago, man.
I mean, why-why are we dwelling on it?
Why don't we just let it go?
Yeah, I know what you're saying.
I don't want to do this shit, either,
but just, you drive me nuts!
No, but seriously,
we got to put all that bullshit behind us.
Okay.
Because we've got a whole beautiful life
ahead of us, you know?
Yeah.
[sniffs]
Hey, Cheech.
What?
[both chuckle]
CHEECH: The Joint.
[laughs]
CHONG: Yeah.
CHEECH: How's your knee?
CHONG: My knee's good.
CHEECH: Hey, you know what I was thinking?
- CHONG: Hmm? - CHEECH: That idea you had
about the marijuana wind farm?
CHONG: Yeah?
CHEECH: How would that work?
CHONG: Well, it's a great idea because the wind is free.
CHEECH: Yeah. We could work on that.
How much you think we can grow?
- CHONG: Thousands of acres. - CHEECH: Yeah?
CHONG: I mean, sky's the limit.
Everything's changing.
We got to prepare for the future.
CHEECH: Well, okay.
CHONG: Will you grow your mustache back?
CHEECH: No.
CHONG: No, seriously.
CHEECH: No.
Is that Dave's bike?
CHONG: I don't know.
♪
JIMMY KIMMEL: Is it true that you
once opened for Cheech & Chong?
- I did. - Where was that?
People forget, but Cheech & Chong were huge.
Oh, sure. Yeah.
Huge at the time.
Hey, man, it's Dave. Open up, man.
Dave's not here, man.
[laughing]
The guy's so high,
he doesn't even know that's Dave.
EMCEE: Homer. Homer?
Homer's not here, man.
- ALEX TREBEK: Cheech. - What is Camelot?
- Yes. Cheech. - What is a baster?
Yes. You're the winner today.
Your charity will get $50,000,
and Aisha and Anderson's charities $25,000 each.
♪ I got the Rollie on my arm and I'm pourin' Chandon ♪
♪ And I roll the best 'cause I got it goin' on ♪
♪ I'm a gangsta...
CHEECH: You do need a paint job, man.
Anything you want.
You know, like a flame job.
- No, thanks. - Maybe ghost flames.
You like old-school pinstriping?
Von Dutch style, huh?
- Whoa. - [gasps] Oh!
- CHONG: Om... - Hello? Hello?
- [coughs] - [flies buzzing]
- Hmm? - Hello. My name is...
Oh, you know, I'm gonna hit the pause button
right there, 'cause we're all good on
Bunny Scout cookies.
REPORTER: From marijuana movie icon to patron of the arts,
Cheech Marin's massive collection
of Chicano art and culture has toured the world
and now has a permanent home.
REPORTER 2: Tommy Chong was sentenced
to nine months in federal prison
for selling bongs on the Internet.
Lou Adler, man, is a treasure,
and hopefully we'll be up here one day
accepting an award for being
the first rock and roll comedians
to be indicted into-- oh, indicted
- into the Hall of Fame. - "Indicted."
We should indict Lou Adler
to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
What do you say?
[cheering and applause]
♪
ANNOUNCER: Cheech & Chong, ladies and gentlemen,
Cheech & Chong!
[cheering and applause]
Weren't they great? Cheech & Chong.
[cheering and applause]
♪
[music fades]