CHEECH MARIN- July 10, 2006

GUY MACPHERSON: Looking at your career, you've done it

all: music, comedy, drama, voice work, children's

stuff, art, Jeopardy! champ, cooking. What haven't you

done?

CHEECH MARIN: Oh, let me see... What haven't I done?

Any gay roles.



GM: (laughs) Is that a personal choice?

CM: Well, actually I have done gay roles. Never mind.

Forget that. I've done everything. There's nothing

left for me to do. Just wallow in my glory. (laughs)



GM: It's amazing you never got typecast as a stoner

from your Cheech & Chong days.

CM: Because I didn't just keep playing stoners.



GM: Was it difficult to get casting agents to see you

as something else?

CM: Sure. Absolutely.



GM: How did you get past that?

CM: How do you turn a supertanker around? It doesn't

stop on a dime and go 180 in the opposite direction.

It's a big long arc. And you have to have a

persistence and kind of a vision of what you want. And

you have to learn to eat shit until it tastes like

caviar.



GM: (laughs) And then it becomes caviar, too, I guess.

CM: And it becomes caviar (laughs).



GM: So what was your vision leaving Cheech & Chong?

Did you have a grand vision or did you just take it

one project at a time?

CM: I just took it one thing at a time. That's kinda

been the hallmark of my career: just do the next

thing. You're presented with choices or go after

choices. You know, it's a lot like fishing. You don't

say, "Well, I'm going to drop the line here and I'm

going to get a halibut." You get whatever bites on the

line. "Ooh, that's a big fish. Can I eat this? Yeah!

I'll try!"



GM: Are there roles or parts that you wouldn't play?

CM: Not so far, no. (laughs)



GM: Not so far. Whatever comes your way, huh?

CM: There hasn't been a fish that I can't eat (laughs)

so far. Ugly though they may be, I mean, they're

edible.



GM: It's funny that in this political climate, you get

to be this children's performer given the Cheech &

Chong days, especially when you think that Paul

Reubens can't do anything as Pee Wee Herman anymore.

CM: Yeah, well I didn't have my dick out in a movie

theatre. You know, the thing is, the public is very

smart. They have instincts. They know who's for real

and who isn't. The public will give you a lot of

leeway that the people in charge - the decision-makers

- won't. It's all a Catch-22, getting beyond the

harbour police and out in the open sea.



GM: You were doing pot jokes with Cheech & Chong, yet

your dad was on the LAPD?

CM: Yeah.



GM: How did he like your humour?

CM: He actually loved it. Cheech & Chong were

extremely popular with young people and he was in the

juvenile division, so it was his entree into the

community. He'd say, "Hey, you guys know Cheech &

Chong?" "Yeah, we do." "Well, he's my son. Come over

and talk to me." And so he'd get a lot more

cooperation than they had before. He wasn't seen as

just Oscar the dirty juvey, you know?



GM: So it actually helped him.

CM: It actually helped him. Not that he's thanked me

for it!



GM: And maybe it helped you on occasion?

CM: Yeah, could be. Police were our biggest fans all

the time.



GM: Really! Why is that?

CM: Because they had a great sense of humour. Because

they were dealing with the same thing we were dealing

with, it's just that we were doing them on a very

benevolent, cartoonish level. And they saw that. They

were dealing with the real stuff everyday. And police

tend to have a gallows sense of humour. So they

immediately identified with Cheech & Chong, these two

bumbling idiots. They saw what we were poking fun at.



GM: They never saw the act as more of an extension of

you two?

CM: No. The police thought it was an act. You know, we

were on stage.



GM: Just characters.

CM: Yeah, exactly. They thought we were funny. You

know, Walt Disney had a great thing to say. He said

there are two emotions you can't fake: fear and

laughter. Either it's funny and you laugh or it's

scary and you get scared, or it's not, you know? When

you make people laugh, it kind of dissipates a lot of

things.



GM: You moved to Vancouver as a "political refugee".

CM: Yeah, there you go.



GM: That's what I read.

CM: Yeah, sure.



GM: Was it easy to return, then, to the States?

CM: Yeah, you just had a phony ID and came back.



GM: (laughs) But at some point, did you get clearance?

CM: What goes around, comes around. See, I got drafted

illegally and so when I came back, I came back

illegally. And then my case went to the Supreme Court

and got thrown out. So the government did something

illegal, they were caught at it and they were told,

"Don't do that again." Well, "don't do that again that

way." They tried to redraft me at that point, which

was three years later. But in the meantime I had

broken my leg skiing and I got 4F'd out of the army.



GM: Thank God for breaking your leg.

CM: (taunts) Na-na-nana-na.



GM: When did you first get the name Cheech?

CM: Right when I was born. I was born and my uncle

looked in the crib and I was this curled-up little

baby and he says, "Oh, he looks like a little

chicharron." The chicharron is a deep-fried pig skin,

you know? And I looked like this little curlycue, like

a curly fry. And he said, "Oh, he looks like a little

chicharron." So that became my family name,

Chicharron. And that got shortened to Cheech.

Actually, that's my middle name. My first name was

Fuckin'. Every time I'd go out it'd be, "Hey, it's

fuckin' Cheech."



GM: Does anyone ever call you Richard?

CM: Uh, my mom.



GM: When you met Tommy Chong, were you doing comedy in

Vancouver?

CM: No, I was delivering carpets. Which had its own,

kind of, sense of humour. Yeah, I was delivering

carpets at the time, but I was always a musician all

my life. And then he wanted to start an improv

theatre. And I had seen improv theatre so I improv'd

that I had been this improv actor. And he bought it.

So it must have been a good improv.



GM: And this was the topless improv?

CM: Yeah, which was as much fun as a boy could have.



GM: Yeah. You don't see that much anymore.

CM: Not as much.



GM: How close was that improv to the kind we see on

Whose Line Is It Anyway? on TV?

CM: Not very close at all. You know, improv theatre

companies, groups that have a kind of set deal that

they do and make it look like improv, very little of

it is actually improv because it's like watching

somebody write. Sometimes they write good and

sometimes they write not so good. Generally what you

want to see is the product after they've written a lot

and edited it and polished it and then presented it to

you. Watching actual improv is witty, but you know, it

doesn't go anywhere. Sometimes it just flops.



GM: So it was more like sketch?

CM: Yeah.



GM: You guys stopped performing as Cheech & Chong in

1985, correct?

CM: Could be, yeah.



GM: What precipitated the break-up?

CM: Uh, you know, we had come to the end of what we

were going to do for that time period anyway. And

you've been together for so long and you get tired of

hearing the other guy's opinion. The thing for a

comedy team to be successful, what people don't

realize is that it involves a great deal of

compromise. And the most successful comedy teams - or

any kind of teams - are teams that have two very

strong personalities. And when they clash is where the

real creativity takes place. Lennon-McCartney, Keith

Richards-Mick Jagger, you know, two very different

personalities and strong the same way.



GM: It's interesting that we don't see many comedy

teams anymore.

CM: It's the hardest thing to do. You have to give up

so much. And it just comes along once in a while

because you have to have two parts that fit perfectly

together. And very rarely do they find themselves

together. It only really happens once a generation.



GM: It's funny, but performing the night before you

get here is one of the longest-lasting comedy duos,

the Smothers Brothers.

CM: Oh, now see, they have a... I just played golf

with Tommy Smothers a couple of weeks ago. And they

have a good thing going. They've managed to, over the

years - and I think all groups do - over the years

groups either disintegrate or they kind of figure out

a way to manage their anger at each other or the

relationship. I was talking to Tommy Smothers and he

said they went to counsellors after a while. It's kind

of like, how [do we] maintain this without killing the

goose that laid the golden egg?



GM: It's kind of like a marriage, then, isn't it?

CM: Oh, very much like one. It's exactly like one.



GM: I read you were a Laurel & Hardy fan growing up.

CM: I love Laurel & Hardy. I loved Amos & Andy, too.



GM: Oh really! You don't hear too many people saying

that anymore.

CM: I loved Amos & Andy. They were hilarious. Tim

Moore ["the Kingfish"] was just hilarious.



GM: They don't fly anymore, but...

CM: Well, you know, what can you say? It wasn't the

black people who shut them down, it was the white

people.



GM: That's probably right, isn't it? It's always that

way. It's those fearing for what others might think,

when the others might not think anything bad at all.

CM: Right.



GM: You had a bit of a reunion with Chong in 2005 at

Aspen.

CM: Yeah.



GM: How did that go?

CM: It went well as long as it lasted. (laughs)



GM: For like 90 minutes or something like that?

CM: No, for those two days.



GM: And then after that nothing?

CM: And after that nothing. We tried to get it

together. We had a movie deal going, and then Tommy

got busted and then went to jail. We tried to revive

it after that. And it's just... you know, it's two

real strong personalities that clash. If we ever want

to do anything else, we have to figure out a way

around that clash. But at some point it's just not

worth the trouble.



GM: You were in this recent documentary on him [a/k/a

Tommy Chong], weren't you?

CM: I believe I said something.



GM: Did you see it?

CM: No.



GM: No interest?

CM: Uh, well, you know, the guy... Actually, I did. I

saw a version of it. Yes. They sent it over to me.



GM: You guys aren't that close, is what I'm getting.

CM: No, not really. You know, if we weren't a

partnership... We don't really have anything in

common.



GM: You're this art collector as well. Largest private

collection in the world?

CM: Of Chicano art, yeah.



GM: How did you get into this?

CM: At about the same time Tommy and I broke up, I

discovered Chicano art. And the more I collected, the

more I saw this big picture emerge and the picture was

of, through art giving the experience of being

Chicano. And I've always been interested in art all my

life. I was self-educated from a very early age. I

couldn't do it so I learned about it. I went to the

library and took some books out on art and seeing what

the deal was and acquainted myself with world art so

by the time I got to the Chicano art, I knew what good

painting was. And I started collecting the work and

one thing led to another.



GM: But you say you don't do it yourself. You're not

an artist?

CM: No. I know my limitations.



GM: And now you're presenting these Chicano comics to

a Vancouver audience that doesn't see a lot of them.

CM: Yeah, exactly. I was the only Chicano in Canada as

far as I knew! (laughs)



GM: You probably were!

CM: Yeah, everyone thought I was Indian.



GM: Tell me about the four comics you're presenting:

Al Madrigal, Marilyn Martinez, Joey Medina and Carlos

Oscar.

CM: You'll love 'em. They range from very polite to

extremely rude, which is nice.



GM: Did you know them before?

CM: Yes, I did. I knew all of them before.



GM: Is there a Latino comic community?

CM: I guess there is. It's just kind of, I don't know,

happenstance that I got involved.



GM: You're the name. If it was just the four of them,

some people might go, "We've never heard of them so

we're not going to go."

CM: Yeah. That's the draw. They come to see me and see

my other guys as well. My disciples.



GM: Do you do standup now?

CM: No. I never had a standup act. I mean, I was in a

two-man acting troupe and we were always in character.

But what I do now is I do a lot of music from Cheech &

Chong that people haven't seen before. And they like

it. In between introducing the comics I do stuff from

the musical Cheech & Chong library.



GM: So you bring out your guitar.

CM: Yeah, and I have a little band and away we go.



GM: You have a band with you?

CM: Well, I pick up a band. I'm like Chuck Berry; I

pick up the band where I go.



GM: You say people haven't heard these songs before.

So how are they in the Cheech & Chong library?

CM: Well, they haven't heard them live before. Most of

them.



GM: So you're back in your old character.

CM: Yeah. In a way, yeah.



GM: Are you comfortable being the poster child for

this pot movement, if, in fact, you are?

CM: Hey, it beats work.



GM: Exactly right. What about comics like Carlos

Mencia? I hear some controversy about him not really

being Latino. Is that right?

CM: He's Latino. He's Honduran. His real name's Ned

and he's Honduran, yeah. I love Carlos. I think he's a

great guy. I think he's very funny, very edgy. I like

his whole approach. I also like George Lopez. Both of

them are good friends of mine. I support them all the

way. Latino comics, just like other comics, there's

enough room for everybody. Comics tend to be really

competitive with each other. I've never been that way.

I've never hung out with comics, first of all, because

they're a dangerous breed. And second of all, because

I'm not threatened by other comics. Hey, the more the

merrier.



GM: Paul Rodriguez is another one.

CM: Paul's an old friend of mine. I love all those

guys. There's enough room for everybody.



GM: It's also interesting that you were the first

celebrity Jeopardy! champ.

CM: That's right.



GM: Here's this old stoner getting up there showing

that his neurons are still firing.

CM: (laughs) That's it.



GM: Did you think that the questions were, uh, ...

CM: A little dumbed down?



GM: Dumbed down.

CM: Not much. No, actually, they were kind of

fairly... It was about at the high school level rather

than the college level.



GM: Who did you beat out?

CM: Some other dumber guys. Some other dumb white

guys. They're not as smart as they look.



