Year 18, Day 201 - 7/20/26 - Movie #5,381 - SQC DOC BLOCK FILM #20
BEFORE: Well, I tried to land this one on Cheech Marin's birthday, which is July 13, but I missed it by a week. I also missed 4/20 by three months, but that's another story. I'm 40% through the Doc Block after tonight, there's still such a long way to go. But I covered sex, and now the drugs, so you know what comes next, right? It's politics, and THEN back to rock and roll. Johnny Carson carries over from "Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story" - we're at the point in the Doc Block where the talk show hosts take over as the links, they're all kind of rising up through the ranks but Bill Murray is still on top, at least for a while.
I struggled to assign a U.S. state to this one, because these guys are SO Hollywood and SO California - what's more Cali than filmmaking and weed? What they shot for this movie features the comedians driving through the desert, and I assume it's the California desert and I can find no evidence to suggest otherwise. Their backgrounds are complicated but also not helpful, because Cheech was born in East L.A., as the song goes, and Chong's originally from Canada, though he spent time in Detroit making records, and then California making movies. Again, not helpful because I've covered those states already.
I've got a tenuous link tonight because of Chong's fourth (or maybe fifth) career doing guest spots on TV shows, and the most notable one was on "That 70's Show", where he played a 1970's burn-out character - typecasting! - and that show was set in Wisconsin. So there it is, today's "Get to Know a State" profile, to help celebrate America's birthday, is WISCONSIN.
State Fish: Muskellunge
State Dance: Polka
I have been there, the first time we went to Chicago we drove up to Milwaukee as a side-trip. We visited the Miller Brewery and had butter burgers, which are just what they sound like, regular hamburgers with a thick slab of butter on them. Served with cheese curds, probably. Anyway I move up to 17 states visited out of 20. Look, I don't know if either Cheech or Chong has ever been to Wisconsin, but considering "That 70's Show", I bet if Tommy Chong goes there, he's not going to be paying for his weed.
AFTER: Exploring their 5-decade career performing stand-up, making records, and starring in hit films. It covers their lives, comedy partnership and lasting influence on pop culture.
I think what we've proven during this Doc Block is that everything has to come to an end sometime. Or in Devo's case, the beginning WAS the end. But, you know, an ending can also be the beginning of something else, like it was for Cheech and Chong. Their working relationship ended a long time ago, when they each went off to do different things, each was tired of the "Pedro and The Man" routines that they explored, plus they were both fighting for creative control of their franchise. You can't have two people with "artist brain" working on the same projects, because they're not always going to agree. And as we've seen with any relationship - whether it's a marriage or a band or a comedy team, eventually those arguments take place, the losing side carries resentment, and then really, what do you even have together at that point?
The two comedians have different backgrounds, which really is the best part of the film here, learning who they each were in the before times, and how they came to be in the same place at the same time is really quite fascinating. Cheech Marin (of course it's pronounced Ma-REEN, so we've all been saying it wrong, I think) grew up in Los Angeles, first in a black neighborhood where he was lighter-skinned then everyone else, and then in a white neighborhood where he was darker-skinned, of course. So he got bullied a lot and when he couldn't fight back, he learned to make bullies laugh. He was working as a potter when Vietnam hit, and he headed straight for Canada to dodge the draft.
Tommy Chong was half-Chinese, half-Canadian, falling in love with jazz music and, here's a shocker, marijuana. So he dropped out of school to be a musician, and had some minor success with bands like the Shades and Little Daddy & The Bachelors and then hooked up with Bobby Taylor, who'd been signed to Motown and formed the Vancouvers and his back-up band. Tommy wrote the minor soul hit, "Does Your Mama Know About Me" and they toured Chicago with the Jackson 5 as their opening act. But Chong had ambition, he didn't just want to work for Berry Gordy, he wanted to BE Berry Gordy. Meanwhile Tommy had married young, and was raising two daughters when he fell for another woman in Vancouver who moved to the same block, and he kind of started a second family at the same time. I mean, if you're a musician you always have a back-up gig, right, so why not a back-up family?
Chong also ran nightclubs in the Vancouver area with his family members, and there were jazz acts, strippers and improvisational comic groups that took the stage on various nights. One night the draft-dodging Cheech Marin checked out the improv comedy, and thought that he could do that too, and so he got hired by Chong to write sketches for them. Somewhere in all the times they appeared together on stage, playing various characters and doing weird improv humor, they created their comedy act and the two famous characters they later played in movies. Yeah, so they're probably both a lot smarter than those characters, but while doing comedy live in stadiums opening up for bands, people really didn't care, they just thought Cheech and Chong were hilarious. It also took a few years of trying out comedy bits to learn just what audiences in the 1970's found funny, but landing on drug humor was probably a no-brainer.
Without getting into two many details about the awkward way they started making movies (you can watch the damn doc yourself) really they really only made hit movies for six years, from 1978's "Up in Smoke" to 1984's "The Corsican Brothers", and well, generally they hit big and there was a gradual decline in quality, let's just say. They broke up as a duo in 1985, but in some ways they just never really finalized the divorce, if that makes sense. Cheech made the comedy "Born in East L.A." as a solo act, and then got a lot of movie and TV roles, while Chong made his own movie in 1990, "Far Out Man", and then didn't work much until playing that supporting character on "That 70's Show".
They almost reunited as voices of hyenas in "The Lion King" in 1994, like Cheech was cast and they were saving one for Chong, but he backed out so they had Whoopi Goldberg take over. It's kind of like how the Beatles kept talking about getting back together but they never really did it, because they were all so busy with their solo albums or making movies or counting their money. Chong also got into a bit of trouble for selling drug paraphernalia over the internet, I think he had a business making glass bongs or something.
Anyway, they've gotten together again, 40 years after the first break-up, to appear in this documentary where they pretend to drive across the desert, encountering various people who helped or hurt their career (or both) while they take bickering and fighting to a whole new level. Like they don't just fight, they fight over whether they fight, which, umm, is fighting. Or the other one would say they're just disagreeing. They re-hash old arguments from 40 years ago, over who should direct what and who should get credit for this or ownership of that. Honestly I can't tell if they're doing a bit or not, are they really fighting or just pretending to fight for the cameras? They're not really driving, they're being pulled on a trailer, of course, but are they similarly pretending to disagree about, umm, everything? It's like watching two older dads argue over custody of their, umm, comedy routines.
Post-reunion tour, Chong appeared on "Dancing With the Stars" in 2014 and then on "The Masked Singer" in season one, singing Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" - I told you, everything here at the Movie Year is connected to everything else, we just need to seek out the connections and we will find them. Cheech, meanwhile, made cameos in films like "Tin Cup" and "Christmas with the Kranks" and appeared on TV shows like "Nash Bridges" and "Lost" and then franchise films like "Cars" and "Spy Kids". Then he won some money for charity on "Celebrity Jeopardy!" in 2010, his second time on the show. Hey, it's a great, big beautiful world of entertainment and maybe they just needed to figure out how to divide it up after the divorce. Well, they should know a thing or two about divorces, Chong's on his second wife and Cheech I think is on his third.
I can't really say the format of this doc makes a whole lot of sense, unless you believe that symbolically we're all just driving through the desert of our lives, without any real solid idea of where we're going. Well, you might as well travel with a partner, at least for a time, and you might as well share some snacks and gummies, unless you've got something harder. At least it's an innovative format I haven't seen before, and at least these guys are still entertaining. I'd certain watch this again over "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", which uses a similar device.
Directed by David Bushell (producer of "The Minus Man" and "The Banger Sisters")
Also starring Tommy Chong (last heard in "Zootopia 2"), Cheech Marin (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Lou Adler (last seen in "Echo in the Canyon"), Thomas K. Avildsen, Shelby Chong, Maxine Sneed
with archive footage of Milton Berle (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Howard Brown, James Caan (last seen in "What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?"), Dick Clark (last seen in "Madonna; Goddess of Pop"), Ornette Coleman, Anderson Cooper (last seen in "Paul Anka: His Way"), Ed Sullivan (ditto), Don Cornelius (last seen in "Earth, Wind & Fire"), Walter Cronkite (last seen in "Music by John Williams"), Roger Ebert (also last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Edie McClurg (ditto), Gene Siskel (ditto), Peter Fonda (last seen in "We Blew It"), Berry Gordy (last seen in "Diana Ross: Supreme Situation"), Diana Ross (ditto), Virginia Graham, Merv Griffin (last seen in "Devo"), Paul Reubens (ditto), George Harrison (last seen in "Being Eddie"), Bob Hope (ditto), Michael Jackson (ditto), Dustin Hoffman (last seen in "Adam Sandler: Funny Guy"), Elton John (also last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Jimmy Kimmel (last seen in "Pamela: A Love Story"), Billie Jean King (last seen in "Chris & Martina: The Final Set"), Carole King (last seen in "Luther: Never Too Much"), Timothy Leary (last seen in "How the Beatles Changed the World"), Groucho Marx (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Jack Nicholson (also last seen in "Devo"), Keith Richards (ditto), Bruce Springsteen (ditto), Billy Preston (last seen in "The Beatles: In the Life"), Geraldo Rivera (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Telly Savalas (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Dinah Shore (last seen in "Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive"), Tom Snyder (last seen in "Lorne"), Bobby Taylor, Toni Tennille (last seen in "Tina"), Aisha Tyler (last seen in "Balls of Fury"), Orson Welles (last seen in "Billie"),
and the voices of Dan Castellaneta (last seen in "Fantastic Four" (2015)), Ginnifer Goodwin (also last heard in "Zootopia 2"), Alex Trebek (last seen in "The Fog" (2005))
RATING: 6 out of 10 comedy singles (aka novelty records)
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