It was almost half a century ago that Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong joined for the first time on the screen and told a cheerful story about two friends to smoke marijuana on a road trip.
Over time, the 1978 film “Up in Smoke” became a cult classic that transformed the two comedians and actors of hippie outsiders to comedy icons.
Now, Cheech and Chong fans for a long time or those who want to know more about them can see Marin and Chong gather on the screen on “The last Cheech & Chong movie”, released to Nationwide Friday. Directed by David Bushell, the documentary weaves images never seen before Marin and Chong when the two make another road trip, this time it covers five decades of their finally successful races that cover platinum albums and box office fame.
“They found the essence of Cheech and Chong. And it is worth exploring that in itself, because there is a Cheech and Chong in all,” Chong said about the documentary in a set video interview with Marin. “That is who we are; we are all out there. And that’s why people can relate to us.”
For many fans today, Stoner Comedy invites them to playful spaces that use humor to blur or soften social limits. “Up in smoke” helped create and popularize a sub -grain of subsequent successes such as “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”, “Friday”, “Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle” and “Pineapple Express”, among many others.
But when he first came out, Cheech and Chong “Up in Smoke” were certainly not a success for everyone.
“Any movie that asks you to destroy you before seeing that you should have something really bad to hide,” said movie critic Gene Siskel about his award -winning film review program “Siskel & Ebert.”
Siskel picked up “Up in Smoke” as a “dog of the week”, his choice for the worst film, and criticized his dialogue, saying that they were “80 minutes of two morons that say nothing more than ‘Hello man'”.
However, those two casual words, “Hey Man”, would resonate with many fans and indicate a generational change in conventional culture.
“In their form of sleep and without razor, Cheech and Chong constitute a visual affront to the direct world simply walking on Main Street,” said a revision of the New York Times of 1978. “However, it is a revolution without danger, because, as the popularity of the film shows, this particular revolution has already won. The true eccentric are no longer cheech and chong, but the nitwits of clean Police in ‘Up in Smoke’, who persist in their attempts to defend repressive traditions. “
Frederick Luis Aldama, a scholar of pop and Latin culture that is the president of Jacob & Frances Sord Mossiker in the humanities of the University of Texas, Austin, he said in a telephone interview that “if you really distil it, the comedy Stoner is a great equalizer. Saza the door for all so that everyone usually enters that place in that place. And it is a time for a time and a time where you can
Aldama remembers having seen “in smoke” with his maternal “grandmother” (grandmother). He remembers “laughing laughs” throughout the film, which also made him laugh.
He also gave him a sense of pride as Latin, he said. Marin grew in eastern Los Angeles, son of Mexico’s parents; His father was a veteran of the Navy of World War II and a Los Angeles police. Chong grew up in Calgary, son of a Canadian mother with Scottish and Irish roots and a Chinese father.
The comedians, said Aldama, brought elements such as the culture of American Mexican lowrider to the mainstream, for example, but “they did it in a way in which he was not asked to judge or laugh at it, but simply enjoy and laugh with that. And this put a positive focus on our communities, our neighborhoods.”
Marin and Chong’s childhood separated by more than 1,500 miles, and different circumstances would finally gather them in an unexpected way.
Marin dodged the Vietnam War by moving to Canada. And Chong, who had been Bobby Taylor & The Vancouvers guitarist, said he lost his job in Motown.
“I was just trying to recover my life. And Cheech was trying to live with the fact that I had to live in Canada. And then we met,” said Chong, 86. “We realized that we had this understanding.”
The seed for its understanding was planted in a nightclub in Vancouver topless where Chong was a co -owner and had formed a Comedy Comedy Burlesca. Marin would join the group as a writer. And then, the duo continued to develop its Stoner act even after the company bent.
After years of success, the two followed their own paths, and have some free discussions in the documentary about their relationship.
When asked if the comedy could still be transgressive, Marin says he can, as long as there is an authentic connection between the comedian and the public.
“It depends on the correct comedy and if it is a truthful comedy. It is not the comedy that wants to please everyone. We want to please ourselves. And in doing so, [we] Do something that is relevant to people, “said Marin, who is 78 years old.” I think that will continue to happen absolutely. ”
But for comedy to succeed today, Chong said, it cannot simply repeat what was done in the past.
“We are living, as, in a travel diary,” he said. “We are no longer in the 60s, the 70s or the 80s or 90s. Now we are. And so, to stay relevant, you have to recognize what is happening now. Because we are alive and we are still breathing, we can still think about it.”
When asked if this was really his “last” movie and what would gather them again on the screen, Marin said: “Very easy, money!”
“No, we are going to continue hammering until the cold and warm bong of my hand took me,” Chong said, while the two men laughed.
