There would be no Cheech & Chong without San Francisco. This documentary reveals why
If it wasn't for one night Tommy Chong spent in San Francisco, the comedy team of Cheech & Chong might never have happened.
As Chong remembers it in the new documentary ' Cheech & Chong's Last Movie,' he was touring with a band in the 1960s and had intended to see comedian Lenny Bruce at the Hungry I in North Beach before he realized he couldn't afford the ticket. Fortunately, he stumbled upon a small venue nearby hosting Second City Improv, the famed Chicago-based experimental theater troupe, and was able to get in.
One sketch, in which all the performers acted like dogs, crawling around on all fours and sniffing each others' rear ends, cracked up Chong so much he was inspired to start his own experimental troupe in Vancouver, where the Canadian-born Chong was living and owned a club.
Soon, he met an American draft dodger from South Central Los Angeles, Richard Marin, who joined the troupe. The rest is history, with Marin adopting his childhood nickname Cheech for the act. They even stole the dog-sniffing skit.
Directed by David L. Bushell, 'Cheech & Chong's Last Movie' is a nostalgic ride through the lives and careers of one of the most successful comedy teams of all time. During the 1970s and early '80s, their stoner-themed live act drew sold-out crowds, their records climbed the Billboard charts and their movies were box office gold.
But it wasn't just hippies. I remember summers growing up in Indiana going to their movies with my mother, laughing so hard we became fans. If two shaggy haired stoners, one an L.A. Chicano, the other Canadian-Chinese, can be loved by conservative Hoosiers, they can truly cross all cultures.
Evidently we weren't alone. At a special 420 screening of the documentary at the Alamo Drafthouse's New Mission Theater at 4:20 p.m. on 4/20, the crowd was from all walks of life, a mixture of older and younger, with a roughly even split between male and female. Many likely became fans when I, a non-stoner by the way, did. Younger enthusiasts discovered them later, perhaps when catching Marin as Don Johnson's co-star in reruns of the 1990s San Francisco-shot ' Nash Bridges ' television series.
'Cheech & Chong's Last Movie,' which opens nationally on Friday, April 25, has loads of archival footage that are tied together by an interesting framing device, in which Marin, now 78, and Chong, 86, drive through the California desert. During the roadtrip, they discuss their lives and the people they met along the way — some of whom, cheekily, magically appear in their car, including both Chong's former and current wives, and the producer who helped push them into the stratosphere, 91-year-old Lou Adler.
It generally works, but the parts where they discuss their professional and personal fallout that broke up the act in the 1980s seem rehearsed. It's good that they address it; Chong at one point says, 'Man, we got to put this behind us,' but it's obvious that they already have.
The documentary is the first Cheech & Chong movie in 12 years — since 2013's 'Cheech & Chong's Animated Movie' — and only the second in four decades. If this truly is their last movie, it's a good time to stop; they're still a great team, but with a softer familiarity that has worn off the edges.
Times have changed. Few would have believed that a half-century after the rise of this then-wild stoner act that marijuana would be mostly legal in the United States. Now they are part of the establishment, beloved legends whose first film 'Up in Smoke' (1978) has been preserved by the Library of Congress and added to the National Film Registry in December. More recently, the duo received a career achievement award at CinemaCon in Las Vegas earlier this month.
'Cheech & Chong's Last Movie' provides a perfect coda, man.
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