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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.

There are certain things you can't do on television.

And we made a list of them. We're gonna do them all.

Cheech & Chong started

the whole hard-rock comedy craze.

They've set an all-time record for comedy records sold.

And now it's time

for America's favorite daytime fun show,

Let's Make a Dope Deal.

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.

Well, you-- yeah.

You heard about

the new death penalty in California?

You have to stand between Cheech & Chong

for half an hour.

You have been busted.

We got busted for obscenity.

-You did? -Yeah.

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.

Are you a one-joke team?

No, we're two-joke.

Yeah.

Do you have any views on politics?

We're not into sick humor, actually.

No.

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.

Don't you feel that you're contributing

to something illegal in this film?

Uh, I certainly hope so.

We like to contribute to the growth of America

and the stunting of the growth of America.

Cheech, how'd you guys get together?

Hey, man, roll them bigger than this, man.

It's all seeds, man.

I-I think we got ripped off.

- Uh, gentlemen? - Oh.

Uh, well, we got together...

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. -

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.

"Oh, well, follow this train for a little while,

see where it goes."

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.

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.

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?

It was a mix-up

at the Green Card office.

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.

Are you satirizing

- the drug culture? -Whatever.

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.

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.

How tough was it

growing up in Canada?

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."

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."

"Oh, that's what they think of me."

I'm digging this, man. I love the desert.

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.

Okay.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. ♪

♪ Well, do you wanna dance and hold my hand... ♪

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."

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.

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.

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... -No!

Got 'em. I knew they were here, man.

What the hell?

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.

I got the gummies.

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.

How is the fact that

your father was a cop affect your youth?

I learned to duck real quick.

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?

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.

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?"

I took a hit.

The only thing I remember was thinking,

"And what else have they been lying about?"

♪ You don't want me running around... ♪

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.

Never has this dissent been as emotional,

as intense as is the dissent against the war in Vietnam.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ho-ho!

Shit.

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?

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... ♪

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? ♪

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. -

And now a word from Artra. Uh...

"Does Your Mama Know About Me?"

was my first taste of being a songwriter.

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.

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.

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.

It's entirely possible

for a draft dodger, posing as a visitor

or a student, to cross the border

and simply disappear.

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.

Hey, man.

Why do you always drive?

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.

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.

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?

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...

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... ♪

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... ♪

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.

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.

This is Canada's Haight-Ashbury,

an area of Vancouver that houses

Canada's largest hippie population.

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."

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.

And I said, "Oh, you're sort of like a... Hindu." "No."

"Are you a rug rider or what?" You know?

"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.

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.

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.

We were backstage,

and I was looking through the curtains,

and Cheech was with this gorgeous brunette

wearing a full-length mink coat.

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.

Soon as I saw that,

I said, "Well, he's hired."

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.

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.

One, zero.

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?"

They thought I was a narc

- for the longest time, yeah. -Yeah.

And Cheech is sitting there like a little...

Mahavishnu bass player.

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.

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.

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.

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."

And Strawberry would be late with the blackout sometimes,

and we'd be frozen in position and Cheech would go,

"Strawberry. Blackout, Strawberry."

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.

The girls went back stripping.

David had a family,

and he wasn't interested in going anywhere.

The mime artist wanted to go to the woods

to get his head together.

I'd been to the woods. My head was together.

We were the last two left standing.

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."

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.

And the band's all ready to play.

So we did one bit,

got attention.

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.

Right after we got off stage,

the bass player said,

"So, when's our next gig, boss?"

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.

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."

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?"

Richard and Tommy? No.

Chong and Marin? Nah, that's not exciting.

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.

And I said, "Do you have a nickname?"

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."

Cheech.

Cheech & Chong. Cheech & Chong.

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.

That was it. That was the name.

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."

♪ 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... ♪

We got two choices, New York or Los Angeles,

and L.A. is a lot warmer.

It's a little warmer. Yeah.

It's easier to starve in L.A. than it is in New York.

Is that a period

that you had to go through is starving in L.A.?

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.

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.

Who did you know?

Well, nobody. We...

We immediately went to Maxine's apartment.

I showed up with a Mexican.

I wasn't a musician anymore.

And now I'm looking

for a gig as a comedian.

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.

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.

Cheech & Chong.

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?

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

They never had comedy clubs then.

It was just the soul clubs.

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.

Hey, give me some more of that.

I don't feel nothing, man.

Hey, neither do I, man.

Takes a lot to get me stoned, man.

Hey, why don't you turn on the radio?

It's been on, man.

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.

Hello, ladies.

We're doing the Playboy interview.

Let's speak a bit about influence, okay?

- Influences. Okay. - We have two.

Sex and drugs.

Sex and drugs.

What about The Committee?

Oh. Love 'em.

-Yeah. - I love 'em.

They hated us, but I love them to death.

Wh-Why? They said that you

took their routines or something?

- We did. We sure did. -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...

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. -Right.

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.

Herbie!

- Hey, how are you? - How are you?

- 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?

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.

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.

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."

And the essence of his character

was cruising and looking at chicks,

and it was easy from there.

Chinga, chinga, chinga, chinga, chinga.

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.

So few Latins make it into show business,

into the mainstream.

Do you ever feel any heat

because the character is a negative character?

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.

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.

That's where my life with Shelby officially began.

Now, tell me about your lady.

Are you ever gonna get married to this lady?

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?

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.

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."

"Here."

We take you now inside Vietnam.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

And so he said, "Okay, well, what do you need?"

I said, "$1,000," and Lou was ready to write the check.

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...

And signed a deal right then.

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...

...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.

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.

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.

"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...

Who is it?

It's-it's Dave, man.

Will you open up? I got the stuff with me.

-Who? -Dave, man.

- Open up. -Dave?

Yeah, Dave. Come on, man. Open up.

- I think the cops saw me. -Dave's not here.

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.

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.

Okay.

Damn, boy.

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.

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

♪ Badass weed.

Cut.

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.

"Acapulco Gold Filters," take 403.

We spent all our time in the studio

recording the first album.

Once it came out, we went on the road immediately.

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... ♪

He really became the pillar of our success.

It was a beautiful marriage.

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?

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.

Already on the Billboard charts,

the new single from Cheech & Chong.

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.

Please welcome Cheech & Chong!

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.

Everything we did with the record,

you could enjoy with your imagination.

Hey, man, two more cars and we're there, man.

- Tell those guys to be quiet. -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.

The U.S. Open National Masturbation Champion

three years in a row, Harry Palms.

Come on out, Harry!

Tell us, how does it feel?

Sore. Oh.

Well, you get a little fucker about that big.

You get it?

Hey, Margaret, did you see that?

Ah, yow.

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.

It was the Waikiki Bowl in Hawaii.

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.

Oh, now you wish I did.

How do you know that we played it four times?

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.

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?

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.

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?

♪ 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.

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.

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.

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...

So, I mean, you know, really, seriously speaking, man.

I mean, how many... how many people here smoke grass?

How many?

About six.

That's a government survey.

Anybody here on acid tonight?

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.

May I have your name and age?

- May I have your name and age? - Oh, hi, hey.

Uh, uh...

What?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. -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.

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.

- Which is ongoing, you know. - Yes.

We got a, we got a grant from Colombia. -Yeah.

We think we're right.

Only time will tell.

Yes.

There's more verses, but I can't remember 'em right now.

In the category of Best Comedy Recordings,

the nominees are

Lily Tomlin,

Bill Cosby, Cheech & Chong.

"Basketball Jones."

A-one, two, three, four.

♪ 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...

"Basketball Jones."

That started off as a fun ride

with, uh, Jack Nicholson to the Laker game.

Lou invited us,

and Jack Nicholson's an out-of-control driver.

He's got his own rules.

When Cheech gets nervous, he starts singing.

This song comes on the radio

called "Love Jones."

I started going... ♪ Basketball Jones

♪ I got a Basketball Jones.

I immediately start writing the lyrics.

The next day, Tommy said, "Let's record that."

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.

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?"

"Ooh, I'd be glad to."

♪ Basketball Jones

♪ I got a Basketball Jones

♪ I got a Basketball Jones, oh, baby, ooh ♪

♪ Basketball Jones...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

♪ All my friends

♪ Know the low rider

♪ Yeah

♪ The low rider

♪ Is a little higher

♪ Yeah...

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.

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.

Hey, watch out. Coming over. Geronimo!

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.

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?

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.

Kind of grabs you by the boo-boo, don't it?

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.

-Who lives here, man? -That's my cousin

Strawberry, man. He's always got the best smoke.

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. -Pedro's not here.

No, I'm Pedro, man. Open up.

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?

Uh, not anymore.

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. Fuck me, Alex.

- Fuck me, Alex. -Oh, I got a cramp.

- Oh, oh, I got a cramp. - Yeah!

- Ow. Ow. Ow. - Yeah! Yeah!

Oh, yeah, oh!

No. No!

It was one of the funniest

scenes in the movie, and it took a half hour to shoot.

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?

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.

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? -Yeah.

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... ♪

The movie comes out, and it's a giant hit. Giant.

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.

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.

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.

How did you...

- $100. - And $100 and...

A crispy bill.

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.

-$20,000? - Dollars.

-For writing... - To write...

- direct, star and promote. - and direct and to star.

- And promote. - And promote.

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.

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.

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.

Ladies and gentlemen,

please welcome those two fabulous furry

freaks of frivolity,

Cheech & Chong.

- How's everybody? - Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

Oh. We're movie stars now, you know what I mean?

You know what I mean?

So, we really don't have to do this shit, you know?

You know that?

But then again, considering the deal we got,

we're gonna have to do a lot more of this.

But I'm not, you know, I'm not bitter about the deal we got.

Fuck no.

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.

- 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.

- There they are. Cum. - Cum.

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.

Cum. Cum. Cum. Cum. Cum. Cum. Cum. Cum. Cum.

- We've overcome. They've gone. - Yay!

Cum. Cum. Cum.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

How do you like directing?

I love directing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

-♪ Business on the other side... ♪

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?

Oh. Oh, yeah. Oh.

Oh, that. Yeah.

♪ On the other side...

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."

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... ♪

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."

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.

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?

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.

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.

And where is Dave in this whole deal?

Dave's not here.

I've been dying to say that.

That cracks me up, man.

So, is this a documentary or a movie?

I don't know, man.

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.

And, uh, we were in the insane asylum...

♪ Save the whales

♪ Hey, funky mama, save those whales... ♪

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.

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.

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!

My balls itch!

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.

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...

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... Ay...

-CHONG: I found a real doctor, man.

- Says he can help us. - Do you have the key?

I've got the key right here.

Oh, thank God.

Stick out your tongue.

There's the key.

You have Dr. Timothy Leary in the film.

-Yeah. -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!

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.

What are you doing?

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.

There. Got it.

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?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh...

It's been, um...

brewing from the last picture that I directed.

'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.

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!

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."

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.

Thanks.

Hey!

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?

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.

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.

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.

He got an ego

out of proportion to his actual talent.

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep...

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.

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.

...zero.

The movie was focused on him.

And I did that purposely

because it-it was a trade-off.

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.

- No, you never... - See, that's a lie.

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--

This isn't really worth going into.

Mine. Mine.

Mine, mine, mine.

- Mine, mine. - Ow!

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!

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!

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.

After we wrapped Corsican Brothers,

I went back to Los Angeles.

My marriage to Rikki was unraveling at that point.

And that's when Cheech

really pulled away from me.

He was in a very transitional time of his life.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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?

I'm not doing this anymore.

Cheech. Cheech. Get back in the car.

How you get the hell off this trailer?

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?

- Oh, fuck. - What's the matter?

My knee, my knee.

How'd you do that?

Shit. Jumping off that rig.

Well, what did you do that for?

-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.

Hey, Cheech.

What?

The Joint.

Yeah.

How's your knee?

My knee's good.

Hey, you know what I was thinking?

-Hmm? -That idea you had

about the marijuana wind farm?

Yeah?

How would that work?

Well, it's a great idea because the wind is free.

Yeah. We could work on that.

How much you think we can grow?

-Thousands of acres. -Yeah?

I mean, sky's the limit.

Everything's changing.

We got to prepare for the future.

Well, okay.

Will you grow your mustache back?

No.

No, seriously.

No.

Is that Dave's bike?

I don't know.

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.

The guy's so high,

he doesn't even know that's Dave.

Homer. Homer?

Homer's not here, man.

-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...

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. - Oh!

-Om... - Hello? Hello?

- 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.

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.

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?

Cheech & Chong, ladies and gentlemen,

Cheech & Chong!

Weren't they great? Cheech & Chong.