Light Me Up

In those early days you had a bunch of characters in your act, not just the two stoner dudes. There were blues singers, game-show hosts, nuns and rednecks. Are you bringing out any of these characters in the upcoming stand-up tour?
Cheech: Absolutely. We have an incredible amount of characters, over 100. A lot of our fans, especially the ones who've seen the movies but haven't listened to the records, have no idea. But these characters still live on YouTube. Before we knew what video was, people were filming our stand-up act back in the '70s and now some of that is online.

You mentioned "Cheech & Chong's Next Movie." That was my favorite. It had such a surreal vibe.
Cheech: Pound for pound I think it's our funniest movie, and definitely our weirdest.
Chong: I'm very proud of that one. It was the first one we did after we left Lou Adler, who discovered us. We directed, wrote, and starred in it, and we did some innovative filmmaking. There's one scene that they actually teach now in film school: the unemployment office scene. It has five different things going on at one time. It's become a classic.

But you guys have never been a critical darling. Does critical acclaim mean anything to you?
Chong: Well, the really good critics have actually always gotten us. Pauline Kael wrote glowingly about us. The secure critics loved us. Criticism is by nature, well, critical. The only really fair criticism they could lay on us about the movies was that we were in every shot. But the people who went to our movies didn't care. All they knew is they laughed hard for the entire movie. It was funny, that's what mattered.

That sounds like when critics tried to pretentiously analyze why "The Honeymooners" was so popular, and Jackie Gleason responded by saying, simply, "It's funny."
Chong: I sat with Audrey Meadows (Alice on "The Honeymooners") for dinner one time and she told me the secret behind that show was that Jackie would never rehearse, but she was a trained actress and would learn all the words and points, and when Jackie got stuck, he'd just say "You know what I'm gonna do to you Alice?" and she'd get him back on track.

Is that pretty much how you guys worked?
Cheech: Yeah, it was effortless, and that was the secret of our comedy. We didn't exert any energy or have to remember anything. All the good stuff just came naturally. Our comedy has always been improvisational. It's like jazz. You know a few of the chords and the tempo, and then you just jam.

Cheech, you've had a successful acting career, you're a serious art collector, you were the first winner on "Celebrity Jeopardy." You've worked hard to show your diverse talents. What will this reunion do to your image?
Cheech: The character from the Cheech & Chong movies is part of my image, a part I can never get rid of, and I've never tried to. It's in my DNA. Some people get it and some don't. When I made "Born in East L.A.," I showed an early cut of the film to a prominent newspaper critic in L.A., and as he interviewed me he just kept staring at me. I asked him why he was staring, and he said, "You don't speak with an accent." It was unbelievable. I mean this guy should have known better. The lowrider character I played is so cemented in everyone's minds. You don't leave that and go off in 180 degrees. You take small incremental steps. My strategy with my work since Cheech & Chong broke up has basically been to do anything that didn't have a big joint in it.