It is always a blast getting to talk to someone who you have been listening to for years. I grew up with the comedy of Cheech & Chong. They came about at a time when comedy was reinventing itself and becoming more reality based.
Cheech & Chong rewrote comedy by tackling the taboo. They gave the Woodstock generation a chance to laugh at themselves.On the eve of their Australian tour, I spoke with both Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin. Cheech I will bring you next, but first, here is the Undercover interview with Tommy Chong (and thank-you Rae Dawn Chong (Tommy’s daughter and well-known actress) for doing throwing me a few questions.
Paul Cashmere: Welcome to Tommy Chong. Hello from Australia and it is good to have you back. When were you here last?
Tommy Chong: Back in the 70s. ’76 or something.
Paul Cashmere: So this time we will have the elder Cheech & Chong. How will the shows compare?
Tommy Chong: We are funnier actually.
Paul Cashmere: And will our old favourite characters like Alice Bowie still be there?
Tommy Chong: Yeah, Alice limps around, doesn't jump anymore and is a little heavier.
Paul Cashmere: Do we still have Let’s Make A Dope Deal?
Tommy Chong: Oh, we are doing that. That is our second bit.
Paul Cashmere: But I hear Basketball Jones is not coming to Australia.
Tommy Chong: No, Basketball Jones, we are having contract disputes with him. He wants more than we are willing to give him. He wants to bring the whole choir and we just want him. We are dealing with that.
Paul Cashmere: I hope that works out for you.
Tommy Chong: It will turn out great. We are also doing a concert movie before we get to Australia. We will have a concert movie coming as well.
Paul Cashmere: The Cheech & Chong movies are now classics. Will you also do another movie movie?
Tommy Chong: Absolutely. We are talking to the movie moguls as we speak. We have got our people talking to their people.
Paul Cashmere: What will the elder Cheech & Chong get up to in a motion picture in 2009?
Tommy Chong: I have a pretty good story line coming up. In fact, my wife had a name for our next movie. She wants us to call it ‘Grumpy Old Stoners’. That says it all. So that will be the working title.
Paul Cashmere: I hope that wonderful automobile that was in ‘Up In Smoke’ makes a comeback. Is the car coming back?
Tommy Chong: It will be coming back but it won’t be the same car. Cheech & Chong are really automobile comics. We do a lot of comedy in the car so we are going to be in the car but we will bring it up to date. It is going to be very funny.
Paul Cashmere: That car, as far as I am concerned, was your Batmobile.
Tommy Chong: Yes it was the Batmobile.
Paul Cashmere: You’ve had a lot of well-publicised troubles with the United States government. Is that resolved now?
Tommy Chong: Yeah, my butt is still sore. It was a journey. I wrote a couple of books about it and I turned it around. It started out as a bummer but I turned it into a plus. And I will tell you the truth. I quite enjoyed the experience. It is not often a writer gets the chance to do the research right in the joint.
Paul Cashmere: So for this new Cheech & Chong show, are you sourcing from those days and using it as material?
Tommy Chong: Oh yeah. Absolutely. Well thanks to the Internet we can go on Wikipedia and YouTube and see what we used to do and see our old act in the flesh. There was a couple of bootleg tapes on Cheech & Chong so we watched them and that is how we got our show back together.
Paul Cashmere: Thanks to Wikipedia and YouTube, brain-cells are no longer necessary.
Tommy Chong: Yeah, that’s right.
Paul Cashmere: Do you ever watch the old Cheech & Chong movies?
Tommy Chong: Yes, we had a 30-year reunion for the old ‘Up In Smoke’ movie. We saw that together. It was really weird. It was like watching your kids in a movie. We were so young.
Paul Cashmere: ‘Up In Smoke’ is probably the classic movie. Would that be fair to say?
Tommy Chong: Yes, although my son likes ‘Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie’. He thought that was the best of the lot. Personally, I like ‘Up In Smoke’ because it was our first and we didn’t really know what we were doing.
Paul Cashmere: What about the albums? I had a particular affection for the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ album.
Tommy Chong: Really? Isn’t that nice. I loved that album. It was our concept album. We had a lot of good times doing that. We broke a lot of new ground and we were innovators when it came to that. All we actually did was put the stoner touch into the old radio techniques that they used to use in the 40s.
Paul Cashmere: Knowing that you were coming in to do this interview, we asked the studio audience to send in a few questions ...
Tommy Chong: Sure.
Paul Cashmere: And we’ve got one here from a Miss Rae Dawn Chong.
Tommy Chong: You are kidding.
Paul Cashmere: Do you know her? She certainly knows you hahahaha. Here are Rae’s questions. Are you going to settle on a permanent Vegas venue after this tour?
Tommy Chong: Yes we are as a matter of fact. We are going to do two movies first and then we are going to find a home in Vegas.
Paul Cashmere: You’ll be the new Celine Dion. That could mean living in Vegas for the next five years of your life.
Tommy Chong: No problem. We will just work weekends and still live in Los Angeles.
Paul Cashmere: I was going to say, what is harder, five years in the slammer of five years in Vegas?
Tommy Chong: Hahahahaha. It would be cheaper in the slammer. As long as you don’t gamble you are okay. Vegas can be great. I love the desert.
Paul Cashmere: I’m going to continue with the Rae questions. She has done a marvellous job of research for me. She also asks will Shelby (Chong) be part of the live Cheech & Chong act.
Tommy Chong: Oh yes. Until she gets too big for the act and starts going out on her own. But until then she is definitely part of the act.
Paul Cashmere: How is the response to her?
Tommy Chong: Incredible. You know, she had to earn it. That is one thing about comedy. You can’t just walk out there just because you are beautiful and everybody is going to love you. She had to go up there and show the world that she is funny. She did it and the response has been great.
Paul Cashmere: So you will probably understand this question better than me. Rae asks “is it better for you at home now that “Lucy” is there”?
Tommy Chong: Hahaha. She is talking about Lucy and Ricky Ricardo from the ‘I Love Lucy’ show. Shelby is like Lucy. So it fits really well. You know who really responds to Shelby is Cheech. He enjoys having her on the road.
Paul Cashmere: He has had a remarkable career over the last few years with television in ‘Judging Amy’ and ‘Nash Bridges’ and with movies like ‘The Lion King’ and ‘Cars’.
Tommy Chong: Oh yeah, he is all over the place.
Paul Cashmere: So why did Cheech & Chong break up originally?
Tommy Chong: There were a couple of reasons. We kind of grew out of the act. Cheech wanted to get away from the Stoner/Chicano guy. I could have done it but the truth was that we had played our string out. We came to the end. It was like Rocky 6. He should have stopped at Rocky 3. Cheech & Chong did six movies and seven albums and that was it. So, when we took a break I learned to become a stand-up by myself and then I got my wife into it. And Cheech went on to act in all the movies. So when we got back together it was like a brand new act and we had more abilities to do other thing. I now do a lot of stand-up in the act that I never did before and Cheech has the acting part that we never had before so it all worked out well. The reason we broke up was that we had just gotten tired of each other.
Paul Cashmere: And didn’t getting back together come about as a result of South Park?
Tommy Chong: South Park got us back but we never worked together. Cheech came in one day and did his bit and I came in the other day. That was the first time that we had been together for 20 years. It broke the ice. Yes, we can give South Park the credit.
Paul Cashmere: The tour kicked off last year and has been a remarkable success across the USA.
Tommy Chong: It has been incredible. We have been selling out all over.
Paul Cashmere: When you look into the audience, who do you see?
Tommy Chong: A little bit of everything but a lot of 30-40 year olds, around that age. They are not students. There is such a wide range. Cheech brings in a lot of television watchers. I bring in Canadians and the white people. It is quite an eclectic bunch. In fact, our audience is a lot like my son. My son is in his 30s and he has been around a lot of rock concerts and rap concerts. He said our audience actually scares him.
Paul Cashmere: It will be interesting to see the Australian crowd.
Tommy Chong: It will be a lot of old surfers, a lot of old puffers.
Cheech & Chong’s Australian tour starts April 15 in Sydney.
Dates are:
April 15, Enmore Theatre, Sydney
April 16, Enmore Theatre, Sydney
April 17, Palais Theatre, St Kilda
April 18, (5pm) Palais Theatre, St Kilda
April 18, 9pm), Palais Theatre, St Kilda
April 20, Royal Convention Centre, Canberra
April 21, Win Entertainment Centre, Wollongong
April 22, Enmore Theatre, Sydney
April 23, Enmore Theatre, Sydney
April 24, Festival Theatre, Adelaide
April 26, Riverside Theatre, Perth
April 27, Riverside Theatre, Perth
April 30, Concert Hall, Brisbane
May 3, Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre, Gold Coast
