It’s been nearly 30 years since the last official “Cheech & Chong” movie, featuring the comedy stylings of Richard “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong, who parlayed their personae as affable stoners into a series of classic comedies like Up in Smoke, Nice Dreams, and Still Smokin between 1978 and 1974. Although the duo went their separate ways, they’ve reunited here and there for episodes of “Nash Bridges” and “South Park” and their 2008-2009 reunion tour.
Now they’re back on screen in their first full-fledged comedy in decades, Cheech & Chong’s Animated Movie, which brings them to life in cartoon form, acting out some of the classic routines from their Grammy Award-winning comedy albums, and we got to talk to them about their storied careers because sometimes – just sometimes – things aren’t tough all over.
CraveOnline: It’s been a long time since a proper “Cheech and Chong” movie. How did this come about?
Tommy Chong: Well, it’s an animated movie, and we’ve animated our old record bits, and we’re very pleased with it. The color came out really good, and in focus…
Cheech Marin: We look really skinny.
Tommy Chong: Yeah.
Cheech Marin: [Laughs] And young, and hairy.
Was this your idea or was this pitched to you as an idea?
Tommy Chong: It was friends of my son’s, the Chambers brothers. They approached us with the idea, actually four years ago. They put it all together, and they brought it to completion.
Was there ever any talk about original content together for this, or was it always to highlight your favorite bits?
Tommy Chong: The original content was the way we put it together into a movie. What we did, we strung all the bits together with the help of this little character called “Les Morpion,” or “Buster the Body Crab.” We kind of copied Ice Age, the way they used the little squirrel. We used a little body crab.
Cheech Marin: There’s an original soundtrack that comes with the movie too. We recorded that. So all-new tunes in the soundtrack.
Where did the idea to use the louse come from? Was it really from Ice Age, just, “Hey, that’s a good idea?”
Tommy Chong: Yeah, more or less. The Chambers brothers came to me and asked me how can we string the movie together, and they showed me Ice Age, and then I said, “Well, we got this little Buster the Body Crab,” and they said, “Perfect, perfect.” Because, you know, in animation you make that little guy fill the screen and it just worked out really well.
Cheech Marin: We’re taking you to the underworld of underwear.
Were you given control over how you were going to be represented in animation? Did they show you different versions of yourselves, and you got to pick one?
Tommy Chong: They did, they did, but I think the Cheech and Chong characters had existed in, I think it was a Universal promo thing. There was a couple characters that had been… Someone had drawn us before. Was it Universal?
Cheech Marin: They basically took our characters from when we were in the movies, kind of these Up in Smoke…
Tommy Chong: Oh yeah.
Cheech Marin: Because those were the most popular guys.
I don’t know if I’m alone on this, but my favorite Cheech and Chong movie is The Corsican Brothers.
Cheech Marin: Oh really! [Laughs]
Tommy Chong: Wow, thank you! [Laughs]
That was kind of a dramatic shift from your previous movies. Was that hard to get off the ground?
Tommy Chong: No, actually Cheech, when we got offered The Corsican Brothers, he had felt that we’d run our course with the stoner movies, and that we should try this one without going to the obvious dope thing. Yeah, it worked out pretty good.
Was there ever any plan to go in other directions as well? Did you ever want to do other Cheech and Chong movies that weren’t dope movies, that didn’t get off the ground?
Cheech Marin: Cheech and Chong and Zombies. But it wasn’t much of a shift.
Tommy Chong: [Laughs] Actually, we broke up around that time. Cheech, I remember you saying you didn’t want to do “Abbott & Costello vs. The Wolfman.”
Cheech Marin: [Laughs]
Tommy Chong: I said, “No, no, we’re not going to go there.” No, Cheech, well he can speak for himself, but he went off into the serious movie realm with Tin Cup.
