Cheech & Chong
Also see: Richard Cheech Marin & Tommy Chong
09.09.2005 Cheech & Chong War Escalates
Tommy has continued his Cheech smear campaign. In yesterday's edition of the New York Post, Chong calls Cheech a "sellout" and a professional Latin.
By professional Latin, Tommy is referring to the fact that all of Cheech's projects are related to Hispanic culture. These projects include the Latinlogues play, Chicano Visions art exhibit and his directing of the Spanish version of Dracula.
This is the second such article in recent weeks. Tommy mentioned Cheech being a sellout during an interview with the Los Angeles Newspaper Group. He goes on to say that he's a sellout for playing a cop on Nash Bridges.
From what we can gather, Tommy is upset that Cheech has forgotten his comic roots.
Ironically, Tommy was a guest during a Nash Bridges episode.
We've yet to year Cheech Marin's side of the story. We hope to have some comments from him next week.
09.08.2005 Film=Cancelled
The Cheech and Chong reunion film has been cancelled.
All Cheech says is that something happened.
Cheech goes on to say they might do something together, but it won't be a film.
08.30.2005 Reunion Film On Hold Indefinitely
The long awaited Cheech and Chong reunion film is put on hold. Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong loved the original script, but the powers that be (the film studio) did not. The film studio, New Line Cinema, has since left the project. The original director, Larry Charles, left the project to work on an unrelated television project.
In a recent article, Tommy Chong hinted that tensions may be heating up again between he and Cheech Marin.
A revised script is or was being penned by Tommy, but Cheech only agreed to make a cameo. He character would be replaced by Pedro's son.
Any Cheech and Chong movie without both Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong would be an atrocity.
source cheechandchong.com
Feb 13, 2005 - Cheech and Chong Deny Smoking - ASPEN, Colo. — Cheech and Chong may have joked about marijuana in their movies, but the comedians say they didn't touch the stuff when the cameras were rolling.
"We tried one time and we wasted so much film," said Tommy Chong, recalling a scene in "Up in Smoke." "We were in the car waiting for the cue,
you know. And the camera's rolling and we're sitting there, you know, and neither one of us heard the cue."
Chong and former partner Cheech Marin appeared together for the first time in 20 years at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival.
Chong said he isn't ashamed of introducing millions of Vietnam-era kids to marijuana. "When you think of how many kids died drinking alcohol,
I feel I've saved millions of lives," he said.
Marin said their humor was appreciated by an unexpected group: "Cops were our biggest fans. Because they dealt in what we were dealing with everyday,
but in reality… they saw the essential humor and they laughed."
Marin and Chong, who recently completed a nine-month sentence for trying to sell marijuana pipes on the Internet, said they are writing two new films,
"Grumpy Old Stoners" and "Lord of the Smoke."
Richard "Cheech" Marin and Thomas Chong were one of the most popular and succesful comedy teams of the 1970s. In much of the same way WC Fields had made alcohol the focus of his comedy act, Cheech and Chong championed and made fun of the pot culture of the seventies.
They are undeiably counterculture heroes and their comedy defined an era.
Looming over the horizon, an aging ice cream truck with a grinning clown's head on top bounces over the rise and into view.
The bearded, bespectacled driver has the look of a Tibetan explorer who took a wrong turn halfway to Shangri-La. His short, wiry seatmate sports a Zapata mustache and a gaze that leaves no passing female fully clad.
They are Cheech and Chong ... and to those fans for whom they've come to stand for counterculture shock, they have done the unforgivable. They have signed on for a steady gig ... as ice cream vendors.
Worse yet, they have milked the sherbet trade for a fortune.
And since no one has ever done so well by dispensing popsicles -- nor done it with such glaring good humor -- certain people are getting suspicious. Especially the L.A.P.D
Cheech & Chong in 'Nice Dreams'
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"Cheech & Chong's
'Nice Dreams - it rhymes with "ice creams'
This is the third outrageous outing for the screen's Number One comedy duo. Directed by Thomas Chong from a screenplay he wrote with his partner, Cheech Marin, the Columbia Pictures release takes the uninhibited pair to their next cinematic plateau. |
In their first movie, "Up in Smoke," Cheech and Chong were out of work, deep in debt, and hustling for a buck by doing anything the law disallowed.
The film -- frantic, funny and free -- was the runaway comedy hit of 1978, and established the pair as their generation's answer to Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello and Martin & Lewis.
'The Corsican Brothers' |
'Still smoking'
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'Up in Smoke' |
The picture's enormous box office success, in fact, made them the screen's most successful comedy team of all time.
In their next movie, prophetically titled "Cheech & Chong's Next Movie," the pair flirted with solvency, thanks to Cheech's go-fer job on a movie studio backlot.
Again the box office boomed, until the combined total of both Cheech and Chong movies passed the $160 million mark.
Clearly the scrambling, hustling, conniving, duping duo hit the mark with young moviegoers. "It was like there was this great nerve running through everybody," recalls Cheech, "and it was where we were."
But how did they get that way ... Cheech of the peppery stream of chatter, Chong of the laidback lunacy?
When they first burst into prominence back in 1970, each had followed his own offbeat path to a nightclub in Vancouver, British Columbia, where they found they played well off each other.
source: Nice Dreams press kit, Columbia Pictures
Cannabis Coffeeshop 'Nice Dreams' in Amsterdam (early 1990s)
CHEECH AND CHONG CONTINUED TO WORK TOGETHER ON FILMS AND ALBUMS THROUGHOUT THE LATE 1970s AND EARLY 1980s. THEY RELEASED THEIR FINAL LP, "GET OUT OF MY ROOM" (FEATURING THE HIT "BORN IN EAST L.A.") IN 1985. THEY MADE THEIR FINAL FILM APPEARANCE TOGETHER IN THE MARTIN SCORCESE FILM "AFTER HOURS" IN 1985. IN 1986, CHEECH AND CHONG WENT THEIR SEPARATE WAYS. CHEECH MADE HIS SOLO FILM DEBUT WITH "BORN IN EAST L.A.", WHICH CAME OUT IN LATE 1986. CHEECH HAS VENTURED OUT BEYOND DRUG HUMOUR AND CARVED OUT A NOTABLE FILM CAREER FOR HIMSELF OVER THE YEARS. HE'S ALSO BEEN DON JOHNSON'S SIDEKICK ON THE CBS-TV COP SHOW "NASH BRIDGES" SINCE 1996. CHONG GOES ON COMEDY CLUB TOURS AND APPEARS IN A STAND UP COMEDY ACT WITH HIS WIFE, SHELBY. CHONG STILL EMBRACES DRUG HUMOUR AND CULTURE AND HAS MADE ONLY ONE FILM ON HIS OWN ("FAR OUT MAN" IN 1990). IN THE LATE 80's and EARLY 90's THERE IS ALSO A 'NICE DREAMS' COFFEESHOP IN AMSTERDAM.
THE TWO WERE BRIEFLY REUNITED AROUND 1997 WHEN CHONG MADE A GUEST APPEARANCE WITH CHEECH ON THE "NASH BRIDGES" TV SHOW. MORE RECENTLY IN THE YEAR 2000, THEY REUNITIED AGAIN ONCE MORE FOR THE ANIMATED SHOW "SOUTH PARK" ON COMEDY CENTRAL. IN THE YEAR 2002, RHINO RECORDS RELEASED A NEW COMPILATION ALBUM TITLED "WHERE'S THERE SMOKE, THERE'S CHEECH & CHONG". 31 YEARS AFTER THEY RELEASED THEIR FIRST ALBUM, CHEECH & CHONG ARE STILL MAKING NEWER AND YOUNGER GENERATIONS OF FANS LAUGH UNTILL IT HURTS!
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