ON GOLDEN BONG

Grumpy Old Stoners Cheech & Chong Are Back On Tour And Unrepentant

When Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong attempted to reconcile their
professional differences earlier this year, the meeting degenerated
into a bickering session over who had written the best routines
during their heady days as cultural icons. Chong went home and told
his wife Shelby that Cheech had a bad attitude and was acting weird.

"You guys should call your next movie Grumpy Old Stoners," sighed
Shelby Chong, "because that's what you've become."

It seemed impossible back in the spring, but with the help of skilled
managerial mediation, and wifely common sense, the grumpy old stoners
buried their hatchets. Light Up America, their first tour in almost
30 years, starts Sept. 5 with two shows at the National Arts Centre.

"It came down to what we can argue about the least," says Cheech, in
an interview from Malibu. "A short time ago we had a row and were
calling each other every kind of motherf----- that there is and
everyone around us was looking at us like we're crazy. So we've
decided to be friends and it's as friends that we can go forward and do this."

The two or three previous efforts to recreate the old Cheech and
Chong spark had ended in similar fashion -- fighting over
past-perceived injustices and reviving old resentments. Like most
successful show business duos, they had grown so close the friction
became unbearable. They were part competing brothers, part old,
bitter married couple.

During the 1970s, the pair rocketed from scuffling for gigs at seedy
comedy clubs on Vancouver's Eastside to multimillionaire stars with
six movies, six best-selling albums and access to excess. Their
shtick was dope and daftness but what made them rich was also the
artistic wedge that drove them apart.

"Tommy and I have always had a love-hate relationship," says Cheech,
now 62. "We love each other a lot and get perturbed by each other a
lot. Put that together with a long stretch of being with each other
24-7 and you want a break. So we took a break -- a long one. Being
part of a comedy team demands so many compromises and sometimes you
want to do what your creative juices tell you what to do and
sometimes that's in conflict with the other guy."

Dope became the point of creative conflict between the two. Cheech
wanted to move on and, artistically speaking, try other things.

"For me the dope thing became a dead end," he says. "I thought we had
exhausted the subject. I didn't want to change radically, just head
in a different direction."

Tommy Chong was skeptical but agreed to give it a try. The result was
their sixth and only drug free movie The Corsican Brothers, released
in 1984 to tepid reviews and indifferent audience reaction. And so
the two parted -- Cheech into a reasonably successful second career
as a dramatic actor, stand-up comic and avid golfer and Chong into
various ventures including a stand up routine with Shelby, his wife
of 33 years, and an online dope paraphernalia enterprise that landed
him a nine-month jail sentence five years ago.

Chong, now 70, has just published his "unauthorized autobiography" of
Cheech and Chong -- unauthorized, he says, because his partner didn't
collaborate. While it might not be a total tell-all book, it offers
an insight into how an impoverished, alienated American draft dodger
(Cheech) and an older down-on-his luck Canadian Motown musician
(Chong) became one of the hottest acts in show business.

Chong was born in Edmonton to a Chinese-Canadian truck driver and a
mother of Scottish descent who eventually moved their family to
Calgary. Cheech, son of a Los Angeles policeman, fled to Vancouver in
1968 and lived in Canada for three years before returning to the
States to successfully fight what he said had been an illegal attempt
to draft him.

Even though it's 50 per cent about him, Cheech hasn't read the book
and doesn't seem too interested in doing so. "I don't read
unauthorized material," he says.

In a separate phone interview, on his mobile phone in between other
interviews, Chong says he wasn't sure the public would respond to
news of the North American reunion tour but ticket sales suggest the
two were gone for more than a quarter century but not forgotten.

"I guess it's timing," he says. "We parted at the top of our career.
It wasn't like we spent too much time at the party. We left at the
right time so hopefully we'll be welcomed back."

Chong told the judge in his criminal trial five years ago that he'd
given up using dope by learning to dance salsa -- a revelation that
skeptical prosecutors doubted, given that police had found a pound of
dope at his house when he was arrested.

Today, he seems unrepentant.

"Pot has been on this planet since the beginning of time," he says,
"and has been used in religious rituals way before Christianity. It
has been used in every culture as a spiritual aid. I come at it from
that angle. There are negative effects, but there are negatives in
any substance. I focus on the positive.

I think when people make great discoveries; they should be tested for
pot. I went to jail for my beliefs. I was a political prisoner so I
see it as a badge of honour."

The two grandfathers, still hippies to their tie-dyed cores, did a
dry run at a comedy club a few weeks back and clicked immediately.

"Neither one of us knew how much we missed each other until we
started working again," says Chong.

Cheech admits to being surprised: "We haven't worked together for 27
years," he says, "and if felt like a week. It's a strange
relationship. We are each other's biggest fans and are fiercely loyal
to each other, but can still piss each other off at the drop of a hat."

Their concert will be a mix of greatest hits -- comedy routines and
songs -- and much improvisation: "A lot will depend on how each
audience reacts," adds Chong, suggesting that a little participatory
chaos among the ticket buyers might bring them to the top of their game.

Cheech says he has little doubt that the tour will be a hot ticket --
thanks mostly to new technology that has emerged since their break up.

"Our audience is growing," he says," mostly because of the movies.
People are watching them on video. People rent the movie, call for a
pizza, get stoned and watch them over and over again. I have the same
feeling about this tour that I had when we made our first movie (Up
in Smoke). If we had filmed it in Japanese with subtitles running
backwards we would have got the audience because we had been looking
at them across the footlights for so many years."

And dope, he says, is "as current as any topic in American comedy can
be. The use of it has tripled, quadrupled."

But Cheech is quick to point out that although dope is the duo's
calling card, it's never comprised more than 15 per cent of their stage act.

"It's a vehicle like Dean Martin had his drinking," he says, "but
when people come to the show they get a lot more. We were always
precise commentators on all aspects of culture."

The two seem at odds over what might happen after the tour, which
will be mostly fly-in-fly-out (on private jet) weekend gigs to allow
them spend the bulk of the week resting at home.

Is the tour the start of a big Cheech and Chong revival?

"I don't know," says Cheech. "I have to see how the tour goes and how
we get along. But as far as this tour is concerned, I am really
looking forward to it even though the travelling part doesn't thrill me."

Chong is looking further ahead.

"There will be movies, TV shows and even a Cheech and Chong grill,"
he laughs. "It's going to be called Up in Smoke."

Cheech & Chong play the NAC on Friday. Tickets & times at
ticketmaster.ca or the NAC box office.