THEY HAVEN'T GONE TO POT

At Least Not in the Retirement Sense. Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong
Are on a Mission With Their "Get It Legal" Tour

In a puff of smoke, they were gone for 25 years. But on Tuesday (4/20
to fans of pot culture), Cheech and Chong, those aging icons of
stoner comedy, will be everywhere - in theaters, video on demand,
DVD, even on iTunes, PlayStations and Xboxes.

Did that just blow your mind?

"They're always looking for new methods of how to look for an
audience," says Cheech Marin, 65, of the Weinstein Co.'s
multiplatform release of the duo's new concert film, "Cheech and
Chong's Hey Watch This." Though the film will play theatrically just
the one day, it's the home entertainment segment that is the key
attraction. "In a dwindling market for DVDs, we're doing very well,
the initial reports say. Big orders," Marin says.

Sounding equally businesslike is Tommy Chong, 71: "And we couldn't be
with a better company, Weinstein. They have a history."

"And they pay in advance," Marin adds.

So, there it is. The deans of doobies have done their bit, making
nice about the movie taken from their 150-plus-date "Light Up
America" tour of 2009. For the rest of the conversation - in a
Weinstein Co. conference room surrounded by still-viable pizzas,
doughnuts, chips and all manner of other munchies - it's perfectly
clear that when you've been around as long as they have (their first
album was released in 1971) and been as successful as they have been
(their spokesperson says the recent reunion tour grossed "in the
mid-seven figures"), you can say whatever you want. Especially if, as
Chong declares, they're going to quit the road after their 2010 tour.

"We'll retire to our country estate," Marin says with a smile.

"We'll keep working but I'm at the age now where, 'Oh, this is my
last one...,' " says the remarkably fit-looking Chong.

"This is our 17th annual retirement tour," Marin jokes.

Chong turns serious, which he does more frequently than his
round-faced partner: "I really want to get off the road. I want to be
able to spend a whole weekend in my house without having to pack."

Marin sneezes. But rather than excusing himself, he explains, "That's
my bull detector."

The longtime partners can't be blamed for wanting to immerse
themselves in their fans' adoration for the last year and a half on
tour. The two parted ways in the '80s because, as Marin puts it, they
"ran out of stuff" after years of touring, recording and making
movies, and besides, each generation has its comedians. As evidenced
in the film, however, devoted fans of a wide age range seem to lose
their minds at the sight of them reunited.

"There's a rock 'n' roll element to what we do," Marin says. "We're
not cerebral - although we can be - we're loud and boisterous and
visceral and physical. Sometimes comics will open for us and say,
'How do you get 'em to scream like that?' 'You play those three
chords loud!' We should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame."

And they're more than happy to give the people what they want,
performing largely improvised variants of the sketches generations
have grown up with in smoky basements - Blind Melon Chitlin and Alice
Bowie, anyone?

"It was the birth of a stoner class," Marin says of their cultural
impact. "It was a whole pot generation and we embody that sense of
humor. It's an international language."

Chong describes their humor as "juvenile" but adds, "If you can speak
Cheech and Chong, skateboarders will accept you, guys in prison,
rappers will accept you, white guys - the Gothic kind, anti-social -
a lot of cops are big fans because we're in their world."

Marin says, "They used to send us to prisons all the time - San
Quentin, Folsom, Soledad, Chino, San Luis Obispo - they used to send
us in when they had an uprising, a racial war going on, to calm the
natives. Those are tough places. But everyone can come together over
Cheech and Chong."

Chong became a member of that kind of captive audience after a 2003
bust for his connection with the manufacture of drug paraphernalia;
he served nine months at Taft Correctional Institution.

"What I came across is why pot definitely should be legal," says the
defiantly non-corrected Chong. "There are so many growers in there;
there are growers doing 30 years because they had a shotgun in their
room - on a farm, where you need guns. The laws are so one-sided."

Therefore, the comics are men on a mission on their current "Get It
Legal" tour. Despite the Obama administration's repeated rejection of
legalization, the highly hopeful Chong is not discouraged.

"I understand Obama, I love the man. He's so brilliant, it makes my
eyes water. Like he did with healthcare, he's playing the Republicans
like a sheepherder with a cattle prod," he says, laughing. "On one
hand he's saying, 'Marijuana will never be legal.' But on the other
hand, he's telling his attorney general, 'Stop arresting people [who
use it] for medical purposes.' That's all it takes."

"If we can't get it legalized with a brother in the White House,"
says Marin, as they both laugh, "... come on, please."

"And look how close we are," says Chong, eyes glinting.

"My prediction is within three years," Marin says.

"Arnold might. That might be his last act in office," says Chong,
saying he has spoken with California's outgoing chief executive on
the topic. Gov. Schwarzenegger has, after all, reportedly
acknowledged using marijuana in his pre-political days and said last
May that its legalization and taxation deserved debate. "At the time
he smoked pot, he was the healthiest man in America. That was the
only thing he'd put in his body - he wasn't doing chicken skin; he'd
take that off. He wouldn't touch a drop of liquor, he wouldn't touch
any sugar, but he'd smoke a joint."

"So there! And he got to be governor!" Marin chimes in, adding that
by that standard, Cheech and Chong should be "super-governors!"

"I want to be drug czar," Chong says. "I tell you one thing, I've got
the research in."