When Cheech Marin picks up the phone, hes already in character. Hello, Jack in the Box! What the fucks up? he bellows in his trademark gritty voice. Its about 11 a.m. where he is in California, and despite his chipper demeanor, he says, Im just drowsing into consciousness here.
Similarly, his comic foil for four decades and counting, Tommy Chong, still seems like hes emerging from a purple haze when he speaks with Rolling Stone around the same time of day, about a week later. Hey, Ive been waiting to talk to you, man, he says in his signature sweetly stoned lilt and that last word, man, sounds exactly the way hes been saying it since Cheech and Chong became underground breakouts in the early 1970s thanks to their radical, sketch-based LPs.
Almost a half a century has passed since the two comedians met in Vancouver, launching an enduring improv routine that they still regularly perform live on the road. And even now that each is in his 70s, they still seem to have the same spark (pun intended). Their collaboration has earned them a Grammy, four gold records, a fat filmography, millions of fans and bragging rights to having made whats arguably the most iconic stoner flicks of all time, Up in Smoke.
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Now theyve prepared a surprisingly lavish 40th anniversary box-set reissue of the film that includes a new documentary, the soundtrack, a vinyl-sized book, a poster and, naturally, comically oversized rolling papers. Weve heard every story that you can possibly about how people have rolled giant joints with their friends, says Marin of the gag, which the duo first included with its Big Bamb LP in 1972. Its like a communal thing.
That sense of community propelled Cheech and Chong into superstars afterUp in Smoke became a surprise hit when it opened in 1978, its impact reverberating over decades. Ice Cube has said hed hoped his own stoner comedy, Friday, would become a hood classic in the vein of Up in Smoke;rock bands from Soundgarden to Korn have covered their songs; the duo has been name-checked countless times by hip-hop artists. And most recently, their song Earache My Eye, which first appeared on the groups 1974 record Wedding Album and was featured toward the end of Up in Smoke, was sampled on Eminems Number Onecharting Revival album. Cheech and Chong established a social currency with Up in Smoke that Hollywood had severely underestimated a film about a subculture it had been ignoring and, as both critics and audiences embraced it, it helped signal a turning point for comedy.
When Chong watches the movie now, he says hes amazed by the way they were predicting todays cultural conversation, from depicting hippies and non-Caucasians to liberal marijuana use. To commemorate the films 40th anniversary, he wrote some new lyrics for the mariachi-inflected ballad Up in Smoke and recorded them with his partner. One of the better lines, sung by Marin, goes, Some things have changed, and some have stayed the same/Now mota is legal, but Im still illegal, so nothings changed.
For Marin, though, the thing that strikes him when he watches it today is the approach to comedy. What stands out to me is how different it is from comedies being made today, Marin says. It was more of a naturalistic way of filming things. We let the audience decide what was funny, instead of chopping it up with real short edits. Sometimes I feel like a goose being force-fed the cues to laugh.
The duo originally conceived their first feature film as a compilation of its greatest hits (pun still intended) from the records and live shows. And while they managed to squeeze a few favorites in there Earache My Eye and a callback to the eternally brilliant Daves Not Here they eventually decided to focus it on two characters. Marin would play Pedro de Pacas, a lecherous pothead known for driving his tricked-out lowrider and wearing a half-shirt with suspenders (Whats the use of working so hard to have a six-pack if nobody sees it? Marin asks now). Chong played Anthony Stoner a bandana-wearing burnout better known simply as Man.
We had to concentrate on our strongest characters, Marin says.
Those were the two characters with universal appeal, Chong says.
Marin and Chong first met in 1968 and bonded over a love of improv. We started in a strip bar that Tommys family owned in the worst part of Vancouver, Marin says. He wanted to do improv theater, but he wanted to keep the topless element at the same time in order to preserve the audience that was already there. So it became topless improv, hippie burlesque. You had Cheech and Chong and naked girls I dont know if there was a choice of what to look at. He laughs.
As they worked out their routines, they figured out that their aesthetic was to take everyday situations and exaggerate them. Real life in Cheech and Chong is the funniest stuff, Chong says. Thats what drove everything. In Up in Smoke, Cheech peeing in the hamper was a true story. He came home one day drunk and thought hed found the toilet. And the scene where he wakes up with all the kids around him, blaring the television, that was from when Cheech stayed with my first wife and the family. He would sleep on the couch and every morning my kids would turn on the TV real loud.
Eventually, they stumbled on a comedy concept that Chong calls the Most Of rule. You cant just get high, he explains, youve got to be the highest youve ever been. And you cant just roll a joint. Its got to be the most of; Its got to be the biggest joint ever. Thats what people respond to.
They refined their material on the road, and, according to Marin, worked more than 300 days a year. Record producer Lou Adler, who worked with the Mamas and the Papas and co-owned the Roxy venue featured in Up in Smoke, spotted their act and offered to put out albums of their bits. When the time came to make the movie, it was Adler who worked as a producer attempting to sell it to prospective studios. This was 1975, maybe, and Id say, I want to make a movie about marijuana with a Chinaman and a Mexican,' he says. Not a lot of people were jumping at me and saying, Yeah, lets do this. Somebody over at Paramount understood it. I ended up financing it myself and they paid me back. When filmmaker Floyd Mutrux walked away from the picture after failing to connect with the actors, Adler took over the directorial reins as well.
The film became famous not just for its comically oversized spliffs for the comedians sense of improv. In a scene where Cheech and Chong are standing outside in Tijuana and a dog comes up and eats a burrito right out of Chongs hand, the moment wasnt scripted it was just a hungry canine. In some ways, the movie was a precursor to the way that shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm are made with a mere hint of a plot and the actors improvising the dialogue though Chong contests that there was a loose script.
I personally wrote pages on a yellow pad, he says. Ive still got em in my basement. It had a smattering of dialogue. But it was mostly a roadmap.
Cheech and Chong eventually concocted a zany narrative where Pedro meets Man and they go to Tijuana to pick up a van constructed from marijuana. As they try to smuggle it across the border, they witlessly evade a narcotics unit led by a Sgt. Stedenko (actor Stacy Keach) and make their way to a battle of the bands. It was a day in the life of Cheech and Chong, or Pedro and [the] Man, which was much more interesting than a plot, Cheech says. Its, Two guys meet, they decide to form a band together, but first they need a joint. Therein lies your plot.
The movie was relatively easy to make, Chong says, because we didnt know any better. They rarely rehearsed, and Adler allowed the duo to feel scenes out. He had no ego, Chong recalls. If we changed our minds halfway through a shoot, and said, Oh, lets do this instead, hed say, OK, no problem.'
Throughout the picture, they included hilarious glimpses into their real lives. The character Strawberry, Pedros cousin, played by Tom Skerritt, was based in part on the duos lighting guy from its hippie burlesque days. It was snowing, and there was a garbage strike, so these big black bags were piled high, Chong recalls of meeting the real Strawberry. And this redheaded hippie was sitting in a pile of garbage in the snow underneath a street light; he looked angelic. He was bumming for money. I asked him his name, he said, Strawberry, and said he needed a place to stay. Chong hosted him in the strip clubs lighting booth, and he became the duos first critic. When we did a bit that didnt work, hed go, Ah, man. That really sucked.'
Was he a good lighting tech? No, he was terrible, Marin says. Hed miss the cues. Oh, sorry, man. I took some really good acid this afternoon. But it was hilarious. How are you going to get mad at a lighting guy when youre doing improv in a strip club?
They linked up with Skerritt through mutual acquaintances of Robert Altman, whose art director, Leon Erickson, worked on Up in Smoke. For some of the other roles, they looked to their funny friends. Their friend, June Fairchild, played a cokehead partygoer who snorted three lines of Ajax that made her do what sounds like an impression of Donald Duck imploding, and they cast other buddies as extras in the party scenes.
As they bonded with some of the other actors they didnt know, as well, such as Zane Buzby, who plays one of the hitchhikers that accompanies them to the battle of the bands, they heard stories they liked so much that they altered the plot of the film. The Fuck me, Alex bit was really written by Zane, says Chong, referencing a scene where Jade talks about a friend having sex and Chong has a leg cramp in the van making everyone outside think they were getting it on. It was her story about how her roommate would scream when she made love. So we put it in the movie. Thats why the movie changed so much radically when we were making it.
The only plot point they changed outright was Adlers proposed ending. The way it went was it would go back to the scene where the cop pulled us over when the car was all in smoke, and wed roll down the window and itd be Stacy Keach in uniform and it had all been a dream, Marin recalls. I harkened back to when I was a sophomore in high school and our English teacher said, I want you to write a one-page story on any subject you want, and the only thing you cant say is, And then I woke up. Adler eventually relented, and they shot the ending that made it into the film.
The only unrealistic aspectof Up in Smoke was just how much marijuana Cheech and Chong smoked on set: practically none. Although Adler contends the duo was toking up on lettuce, Chong recalls rolling up tobacco, mostly herbs, from India. We got high [socially] but we couldnt do it with dope, he says. We couldnt do those big joints.
Kristen Stewart said she loved Up in Smoke but that were not really acting its just who we are, Marin says of the Twilight actress claim that the duo had to have been smoking pot on set. Well, thank you very much, Kristen, but youre not as dumb as you look either.
We maybe smoked after shooting, he continues, but not when were working. We had to sustain a level of energy, especially making movies. We had long days on set. If we got stoned, we wouldnt get it done.
Despite how the movie was made, Cheech and Chong are proud of how they blazed a trail (pun always intended) for marijuana legalization today if not just by normalizing it in the movies. Chong has gone on to found a smoking accessories company (which landed him in jail for selling bongs in 2003) and he now sells his own cannabis line Chongs Choice in states where recreational weed is allowed. Hes since become an outspoken advocate for hemp and its many uses.
People used to call weed a gateway drug, but the only thing its a gateway to is sobriety. Tommy Chong
Weed has been perfected by nature, God, whoever you want to talk about, over the centuries, he says. You dont need to add anything to it. You just put the seed in the ground, let it grow, wait til its ripe and ready for harvest and use it. You can make rope, fabric, fuel you can do everything with it.
What needs to happen is that the humans who regulate the government have to catch up with the knowledge of what this plant can do, he continues. The plant is done. Its the people now who need to figure out a way to legalize it and put it in the mainstream. Theyre the ones who have to come to grips with themselves and their own greed. All they have to do is Google weed and realize its not only harmless, it helps people, whether replacing sleeping aids sex aids, diet things. Its a magic plant. It also the answer to the opioid crisis. When people are waiting for their dose of heroin, they smoke a joint and they survive until their dose comes in some cases. People used to call it a gateway drug, but the only thing its a gateway to is sobriety.
Although Marin hasnt been involved in weed advocacy the way Chong has, hes still passionate about seeing it fully legalized on a federal level. Its been voted on by the public, he says. you have to grow it in a state you can sell it in, but you cant cross state lines with the same weed. It has many aspects of prohibition, but its quasi-legal. Its like being quasi-pregnant. Hed like to see doctors be able to do more clinical research on it, but he likens the eventual legalization to a lava flow. You cant stand in front of it, he says.
One point where Marin and Chong seem to diverge regarding legalization is with forgiving the criminal records of people who have been convicted of marijuana offenses. Where Marin seems pleased that in Los Angeles theres an effort to expunge peoples records, Chong says people should recognize a conviction as karma. When I went to jail, I could have taken the position that I was unjustly incarcerated, he says. But I said, No, this is a great adventure. I got to see what jail was like for nine months. The I Ching says jail is a place where you go to correct your behavior, so you cant really do a blanket thing just because something that was illegal became legal.
Incidentally, one of the reasons Chong thinks hes got sent away the way he did was for mouthing off to a cop about Up in Smoke. Sgt. Stedenko was a real cop, and he became a legend in Canada thanks to Up in Smoke, he says. He was a real cop that would try to bust us for smoking weed. When I got busted for bongs, I ended up in a room with the arresting officer and I started telling him, You know, theres a chance I might make you famous like I did Stedenko. The cop did not laugh. In fact, the told the judge. I think thats why I ended up being the only guy in the bong business to do time in jail. It was worth it.
Cheech and Chong knew they had a hit on their hands when they held test screenings in three cities in Texas Houston, the hip, liberal city, Dallas, where the conservatives were, and San Antonio, where there was a larger Hispanic population. It killed.
Adler also ran the film by his good friend Jack Nicholson, who gave it a painful thumbs up. He had just had a car accident and had broken or dislocated his shoulder, Adler recalls. He wasnt supposed to laugh, because every time that he laughed, it would hurt him. And I showed him the film, and I was basing it on those [agonizing] uh, uh, uh sounds coming out of Jack. I could judge where the joke hit and not to go over the joke. I heard a lot of ughs and ohs. Yeah. He almost wanted me to stop.
When the film came out, it was an instant success, though Cheech and Chong didnt feel it monetarily. They had a bitter falling out with Adler over the way the money was split, and Chong went on to direct all the films sequels himself (a move he thinks may have led to Cheech and Chongs eventual split in the Eighties). Except for The Corsican Brothers, each of the films continued the mythos of Pedro and Man, even if they stopped using those names. With the third film, 1981s Nice Dreams, they brought back Stacy Keach as Sgt. Stedenko and amped up the surrealism an aspect to their style that Marin credits to watching foreign films and an admiration for filmmakers like Luis Buuel. Marin cites Next Movie and Still Smokin as favorites, but both he and Chong cite Up in Smoke as the apotheosis of Cheech and Chong. You always remember your first, Marin says, underscoring the sexual overtones of that statement.
Marin, Chong and Adler are now all on good terms today. Cheech and Chong still tour, and they appeared with their former producer-director (though not together) in bonus content for the box set. Each is still incredibly proud of the way the film broke through barriers a feat that seems even greater in hindsight.
We were so far ahead of ourselves when it comes to how we showed marijuana and the idea of legalization, Chong says with a laugh. And we showed dreamers [immigrants] on film before anybody else was showing it.
We were just dumbfounded that everybody wasnt doing this defining the high-minded hippie street scene, Marin says. We came right up from the streets with an unfiltered view, but it was what was normal to us. We kept saying, We are middle-of-the-road-dopers. We represent the norm. You just dont realize it yet.'
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