Historically High - Cheech and Chong's 4/20 Special

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

You know them, you love them, but what do you know about them? For a very special 4/20 episode we're taking a look into history's favorite dope duo. You won't find a better way to start your special day, so wake, bake and take a listen. Support the show Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Good? We're good. So, if you were to write a TV show nowadays, and you were going to put in a stoner character, who would be the first on your list? Like an old wise stoner? Yep. You know who it's going to be.

It's going to be Tommy Chong. You've got to be Tommy Chong, right? I think Tommy Chong is even more so now. Because Cheech kind of went away from it for a little while. Tommy's always kind of been in that lane. That's always been synonymous with Tommy Chong. Like Cheech, you can say, and we'll get into that more, but Cheech had branched down, done other stuff not related to, you know,

weed comedy and stuff like that. But if you're making a movie or a show and you want an old stoner character, there's no one else. There's one number in your Rolodex, and then there's just everybody else. Yep. And it's Tommy. You're only calling Willie Nelson if Tommy's busy.

Tommy's the guy that you would call no matter what. And everybody else is like, well, Tommy couldn't do it. So we have to get somebody else. You almost want to call and Tommy's like, I can't do him, man. He's like, is Willie with you? Can you just pass the phone? Can you pass the phone and see he'll do it? And Tommy is just the way that he's had the staying power.

Cheech is back in full effect. He went and did some odd career choices, but I'm sure they were lucrative. But Cheech was born in 1946 in L.A. He's 76 years old right now. It's so crazy to think that he could be that old. And Chong born 1938, he's a Canadian. He was born in Edmonton. But Chong's in his 70s or Chong's in his 80s, Chees is in his 70s.

For the longest time, I thought Tommy Chong was Mexican, too. Really? The last name. Well, no, it's Chong, so technically, because he's of Asian descent, right? Yeah, he's Asian, he's Native American, he's white, he's kind of a mix of everything. But, yeah, two guys that have just stood the test of time and staying power and realize that their lane is just so lucrative for the both of them, because they just have the two most iconic roles that you could have. they brought it main they brought weed mainstream yeah in in a in a way that hadn't been done before anything else prior to them always seemed to have done in a negative way it was so dangerous

it'll turn you into a burnout you'll go crazy on it you know lose everything this was the first time that there'd ever been like a portrayal or a movie like up in smoke and i mean they did stuff before up and smoke like with their skits and everything but like up and smoke I don't know how much if it was a hit considered like what dollar amount it had to but if we're talking how much it cost to make and how much it made it was huge

oh yeah it was made for like $2 million made like $44 million but it introduced like these characters to such like a wide audience that they could be those characters for the remainder of their career and make a living off of it and be successful at it

yeah their stage show I mean, they kind of cool how they met. Chong ran away from the draft, or Cheech ran away from the draft. Yeah, went to Canada, tried to get away from the Vietnam draft. Cheech high-tailed it out of there. Chong was working up in Vancouver. Working's probably sort of a loose term, but I think he was trying to make it as a comedian, and they just kind of ran into each other, and it really clicked.

They had something there. So meeting in the late 60s, they then just traveled around. Did you see Vancouver? Yeah, Vancouver. They traveled around and did stand up all over Canada, all over America, and really kind of made a name for themselves in this two-man show that. They started dropping comedy albums, and then they did a couple, like, low-budget films that weren't, like, released, like in theaters.

Probably just getting their feet wet, trying it out, seeing what they could do. What worked, what didn't work. And yeah, 1978 is when up in smoke was released. And that was pretty much everybody's introduction to Cheech and Chong. I'm sure, yeah, there was a lot of people that saw their stage show and would go and see them as you do comedians. They weren't top the heat.

If you're in the area that they're performing, like everyone else that was outside of an area would they be performing, this is how people found out about them. Yeah. Unless you lived in Canada or made them national or international. and up in smoke, I still believe to this day, just like we were talking about for the pot and pop culture episode, it is kind of like the stoner movie to me. And for me, it's withstood the test of time. It's the OG. It's the OG movie.

Yeah. Yep. And it was done well. It followed all. I don't know if done well. For what it was. It's hilarious. It's so light and it never takes itself too seriously. the fact that he pulls out that fucking doom. And he's like, what the fuck is that? And he's like, what does he say? He's like, is the lead zeppelin. And then he's smoking it. And he's like, I've never spoke to anything like this.

I've never smoked to anything like this. He's like, what is it? Well, man, it's... Mowoo, Maui and some Labrador. Labrador, man, has the Labrador? Oh, my dog ate my stash. So I had to follow him around for three days until I got it back. Really freak the dog.

don't get me. And it was just them. It's the epitome of their stage show, just all the little jokes and all the little quirks. And they did such physical comedy that you could see kind of how it translated. The whole, um... I never realized how fucking ridiculous,

like Cheech's outfit. Oh, yeah. Who that whole fucking movie is? He's wearing the red bean. He's suspenders like the crop top. He's got to cut off crop top. Everything. Cheech was in good shape, though.

Yeah. Like a skinny guy? Like he was in, in good shape. But, and then I text you toward the end of it and talking about the stage show. And I was like, oh, man, they failed because Chong was so fucked up and everything. And then it pumps in all of the fucking. Just like Popeye and his spinach.

All of the smoke into it and the fucking band kills it. Easily one of my favorite, and maybe it's just the kid in me and just the absolute man. But when he eats the mystery meat down in Mexico, and he's doing the penguin. to the bathroom. You're trying to find it in the drug lab. And he's talking to himself the whole time. He's like, come on, cheeks. Stead together.

Cheeks. Just the same repetition of the line and just everything. You seem talking to the boss and he's holding his ass with one hand and like pointing to stuff. It's just such solid physical comedy and they would do that on stage. They they would set up more recently as they've kind of come back together and we'll get to it. But they will get on stage with like two chairs and they'll have a video screen behind

them and they'll play out the scene and the lowrider, the whole scene of how they meet and everything like that on stage. And it's still removed from the movie just as funny to hear the lines and see the way that they play it and the voice inflection and everything. It's just, it's like watching the movie over again on stage and you can put yourself right back into it. It's so weird when you think about it. So when they did up and smoke, how old was Cheech, born in 46, and they did up and smoke in 78, 32? 32. Yeah. yeah so he was 32 and what kind of 32 year old had some mustache like that well and then a beard like like they there it's one of those situations where like like you say

how old they are now and you're like shit wasn't he like 40 something when up in smoke came out yeah the the big aspect of just kind of their comedy was kind of the absurdity of the characters and just like in their sketches that sketches that we watched uh fucking And the Japanese wrestler was Ichiniti or... Itchy, scratchy. Itchy scratchy, yeah. It was always to play up the characters to the nth degree. So, of course, Cheech being the Latino that's in L.A.

is going to have the most absurdly large, funny mustache. He's going to be wearing the beanie. They play into the tropes so much that it's just... He's so classically the right person when you see the way that he's dressed and you see his facial hair. they followed up up in smoke it was called Cheech and Chong's next movie good sort of forgettable in 1980

the rate of time that they turned these movies out and seeing the quality of them it kind of makes sense but between 78 80 and 81 they made three movies man they were putting a Bond movie out every year or every other it might have been every year yeah for like a span of like 10 years maybe not 10 I think during the span of the Roger Moore almost they were almost

every year and then a couple of them were spaced out by two and now I guess like they were doing but we're not talking quality when it comes for Roger Moore movies that wasn't the issue quality wasn't the issue but I guess nowadays when you think about like some of the superhero movies

it's a Christmas release every year or right around the same time every year like Harry Potter was it seemed like but those movies are like 100 million dollar budgets these are just star like just

the rate that they put them out nice dreams as we talked about the one that you got to watch next is just so classically funny and absurd they own an ice cream

truck that they sell weed out of Stadanko Sergeant Stadenko the guy that's trying to bust him up and smoke gets wind of this new marijuana that is turning humans

into reptiles and in order for him to understand it and bust them, he has to start smoking the marijuana that turns you into a reptile. So he slowly has this fun transformation over the whole thing. Into a lizard person?

Just a solid... Does it turn them into an actual lizard or a lizard person? You got to see it. Okay. I'm not going to give that away. Oh, darn it. They just had such a skill to make these movies and to really put out just the funniest lines and a lot of

it was born out of their sketches and you can kind of not blame them to see how chop some parts of the movies are because they're trying to fit these things in and mold them into a movie. And mind you this whole time, Chong's doing most of the writing for these movies. So it's not like a big group of writers, it's bouncing ideas. When Cheech met him, he was like a decent director, I think already. He'd been writing previously. Yeah, so he definitely had a knack for it.

Here's the thing that's so crazy about it is listen to these guys talk while they're not in character. And what's hilarious is Tommy Chong still has the same voice. Yeah, he'll never be able to shake it. He still has the same voice, but what he's, it's weird because you listen to what he says, you're like, that's a really poignant or that's a really intelligent, like, point, or what he's talking about, like, advocation or, like, decriminalization, all that kind of stuff. But it's Tommy Chong's voice, so you're just waiting for him to end it with, like, yeah, man. And sometimes he does.

And that's what's crazy about it is these guys as characters are, like, the ultimate, like, burnouts, like, stupid. You wouldn't expect anything out of them. but that just goes to show you how good of actors they were as well to make those characters so believable that that was like what people thought their dominant persona was. Yeah, to think that Chong in real life would accidentally give Cheech the most acid that he's ever seen a human take and make him swallow it

and then realize that that wasn't what he was supposed to give him. Like, that character is so played up that when you hear Tommy Chong speak, the only thing that ties those two people together is just the way that the voice is. Yeah, exactly. He makes very salient points. He still gets out there, which I like. He's, I don't know how he views religion or anything like that, but he's majorly philosophical. He answers a lot of questions.

Like, he's, I don't think I've ever heard Chong give a yes or no answer to any question. There's always explanation. There's always meaning behind what he says. It's a story. Yeah. And he tells some good ones. He's, he's kind of been in like a, the forest gump of Hollywood. Like, he's been around and met.

everybody in every sort of weird position. He's like a Chinese Canadian, Morgan Freeman. And that wise, like, kind of a sage, yeah, an old sage stoner that's seen a lot of shit. He actually directed four of their films. And he co-wrote and starred in seven of them. Yeah, they, all in total,

they did seven comedy albums, so CDs that was their stage show. They did ten films together officially. They were kind of off and on. They would do stuff. In 85, they released their last album, and it was called Get Out of My Room. And the actual, like, bonus to it was, um, there was the lead into Born in East LA, the song. And it got turned into a motion picture in 1987.

It was kind of Cheech's first solo venture off into the world. Very good movie. It definitely, I think, is a little bit underrated, but it's kind of just one of those classics. and after all that time, they finally just realized that they, I don't know if it was a break, they needed some time apart. It's kind of interesting the way that they interacted

because I've seen in different, like, interviews, that Chong said that him and Cheech weren't, like, friends. They weren't buddies. Really? They had sort of like the same business aspirations, and they got along really well. Their chemistry was incredible, but they weren't, like, boys.

They didn't have that. personal relationship. It was a business, a very successful, well-working business relationship. So after a while... That's kind of a bummer. Yeah, I mean, I think now they've kind of had a lifetime to look back at how their careers were together. It just kind of the appreciation for a road dog that you're traveling with all the time and that you shared basically everything that you can with that person. Like, whether they like it or not, whether their friends or not, their lives are so greatly intertwined that there can't be like a mutual respect and a love that has. to be there. Well, wasn't it? So it was after born in East LA, that's when Cheech kind of

separated himself from kind of that drug-inspired act, and that's where he started like going after like other roles, right? Yeah. And they, they definitely went in diverging directions. They're both, their IMDB lists are just incredible how many things that they've been in as far as like one-off episodes and all that kind of thing. Oh yeah, one-off episodes. I think Chong has been in like 22 movies, but that's not counting how many just like pop-ups he's had in you know how many shows him being the squirrel master and half baked exactly just he shows up he gives out

10 15 lines and that's all but they came together to do some voice acting I think it was 1982 and it was in something like return to fern gully no it was 92 how dare you

1992 fern gully yeah I'm sorry 19992 fern gully the last rainforest you never saw ferngully I don't even know what it is oh my god Furn Gully was this movie where it took place in a... Is it the one where the dog is friends with the fox?

That's fox and the hound, man. Oh, okay. No, this one takes place in the, like, Amazon or, like, in some, like, rainforest, because it's called Furn Gully, the last rainforest. And basically, this guy that works for, like, a logging company, they're coming through deforesting this area. And one of the guys gets, like, there's, like, fairies or some little animals that live like in the rainforests is like the nature spirits there's a fruit bat in there that's like the crazy guy robin williams voiced him um but i want to say who did they play they played stump they played stump Tommy played root so they were characters and that was the first time they'd worked together for a long time you've never seen this movie no it's the one where they cut down the tree and the ooze creeps out of it like the evil like pollutant that they trapped and then it takes over the construction equipment and tries to

to like destroy the rainforest. Good God, man. I would say watch it, but it's going to get completely lost on you because it's not an adult movie. But that was a very scary childhood movie when the pollution took over, like the machinery. It was going to destroy everything. Thank God. Cheaton Sean were there. Just hearing you describe that doesn't seem like something that they would really jump at.

Yeah, but I mean, this was at the time when voice acting for like Disney movies and stuff like that was probably getting big. I mean, you had Christian Slater voicing one of the people in here. Bob Williams, Tim Curry. Come on. I'd rather live action. But Cheech was in The Lion King. Yeah, he played one of the Hydeans. I did not remember that.

Yeah. That was shocking to me. Chong was supposed to be in it, but he refused to work for Disney just because he didn't feel like he should be somebody that was working for Disney. That might not be a. a bad call there. Yeah, probably right. Yeah, he pleaded the hyenas with Whoopi Goldberg and I can't remember who the other one was. No shit. I guess I just had only seen it when I was a kid. But I can't get away from Nash Bridges, man. Yeah, that to me is just shocking. The numbers for these, I was very surprised. Joe Dominguez.

Yep. So Inspector Joe Dominguez, he was up for a hundred and twenty episodes on Nash Bridges. Jesus. And Nash Bridges, the melding together of Don Johnson and Cheech Marin just makes no sense to me whatsoever. How in the world did they do 120 episodes of like a, it was like a cop crime show? Yeah, it was like a police. I don't think it was like a procedural, but I think it was like, I don't know,

like a weird Texas Walker, Texas Ranger meets old Miami. but I don't know. Doesn't make any sense. No, but I mean, this was at a time probably when you were still trying to play off the old Danny Glover, Mel Gibson, White Cop, Ethnic Cop, Formula. Still, though, 120 episodes. That's an incredible career for most people. That's probably how some people only know Cheach.

Yeah. Oh, I hope not, but you're probably right. Yeah, there's probably an entire sect of people. Because guess what I'm going to tell you right now, anyone who's watching Nash Bridges, the Don Johnson-led program, probably isn't going on their next to watch list and watching Born in East L.A. or up in smoke. You think after Nashbridge's got canceled,

they're like, that Joe Dominguez guy was a really good actor. I wonder what else he did. Yeah, let's go back to his early career. What the fuck is this? Oh, Joe, no. Don't. Joe, that was dog shit. Don't smoke that dog shit.

On the flip side of it, Chong, 65 episodes on that 70s show. Leo crushed it. See, and that's a great, That's an awesome role. Like, that role is so memorable. Yeah, Leo worked at the photo hut. He just, he was like Hyde's surrogate father.

He probably should have taken a lot stronger role in Hyde's life based on what we know now. Yeah. But. Hyde, man. No means no, bro. Yeah, they span such different careers as far as that goes, because Chong just kept playing himself. Yeah, Chong never strayed. from it and he seems to have done pretty well except for February 2003.

Do you know what the operation was that he got arrested as part of? Uh-uh. It was called. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, God, I don't remember what it was called, but just the saddest shit in the world, man. The last guy, I feel like when we do these episodes, I say, man, a whole lot more, just because I feel like I got a little Chong voice, but. Operation Pipe Dreams and Operation Headhunter.

They were a American investigation. I'm trying to think, I would assume ATF, no, DEA. Tried to trace drug traffic and users through businesses selling drug paraphernalia, mostly bongs. And that was what Tommy Chong happened to have been into, was glassware. And 2003, I think it was, he was arrested for paraphernalia sales in February 2003, went to prison in September 2003, and served nine months in federal prison. And this was sort of an interesting case. And I've heard him talk a couple times about what he feels that happened. And in the Tommy Chong way, if he makes some points,

it's also just so bad shit crazy to think. Because one of the reasonings that I heard was he said that it was right after they had gotten into Iraq. And Bush was looking for a way to try to divert attention from that war. so he went after drug dealers and he ended up Tommy Chong fell into his crosshairs. This isn't even drug dealing though. He was charged for his part in financing and promoting Chong Glass slash Nice Streams. It was a company started by his son Paris.

Yeah. The case never went to trial. Basically, he admitted to distributing 7,500 bongs and water pipes on the internet through nice streams. That's just the paraphernalia. Yeah. And that's not shipping out drugs or anything like that. So I can see how the law is going to come down on that, no court or anything like that, because it's devices intended for the smoking of an illegal drug.

But at the same time, like, it's, that's not what the drug is. No, and they have these weird rules set up, I'm sure, for cases like this in order to get more money in commerce and all that shit. But there are certain states in the country that you can't order drug paraphernalia into. I know. And so once it crosses state lines, it becomes the felony. So that's what was going on, and that's where all those counts racked up to, was he was distributing bongs through his company. And I think the place that ended up finally getting him was it was into Pennsylvania, I believe.

And once he broke that interstate commerce traveled that he couldn't send that shit into there is when they cracked down on him. So he ended up taking a deal for the nine months in federal prison because they wanted to prosecute. his wife Shelby and his son Harris. Yeah. So he bit the bullet for both of them and he ended up doing that nine months in federal custody. So it's a place called Taft

Correctional Institution. It was a low security federal prison for male inmates in California. This is this sounds like, and I'm not saying prison in any way, shape, or form is exactly that it's prison. It's taken away your freedom. This sounds like a pretty like rich white collar prison

based on who has sell made. was. Who's his cellmate? His cellmate's a little known man who goes by the moniker of the Wall Street. It was Jordan Belfort, which... Can you imagine that? Like, what do you think? Because

Tommy Chong didn't come in and was like, hey, man, you're Jordan Belfort. No, not at all. No. Think of it from Jordan Belfort's point of view where he's like, Belfort, you're getting a new roommate. And they open the door and he's like, hey man. You're just like, are you fucking with me right now?

Thank you, God? Yeah. What just happened? This is fantastic. Surprise? John said that during his time when he was locked up, they were sending people in to try to get him to get high in prison. Because they were drug testing a whole bunch to extend his essentially violate whatever terms of stipulations and keep him in there longer. So I don't know how true that was, but it's.

does seem like the way that he went down and got arrested, they were looking to try to legitimize it a little bit more. So I'm not saying that that's not possible. But how awesome is that the conspiracy theory that Chong brings up in his own brain? Like, that's not just prison where people do get drugs in all the time and get high while they're in prison. If you're going to get drugs into this prison, this is the prison you're going to get drugs into. Yep. Yeah, you're smuggling that in pretty easily. Or Jordan Belford even came out and said that credits Tommy Chong for encouraging him to actually write his memoirs, and they've been friends ever since.

That's a combination. Chong and Valfour are hanging out together. Jordan, you should really write this down, man. What did you do? You did how much cocaine? You know, it would be cool if you jumped up on the desk and you started stomping as you were screaming out the numbers. After he got out, I think that they just did so much stuff.

They did, got back together for another comedy tour. They did the Light Up America tour that was in 2008. In 2009, they did Light Up Australia. And the most memorable part of Light Up Australia is there was actually a raid that took place outside of the concert where I think it was like 50 police officers arrested like 22 people going into the show. And they found weed on like four of them and paraphernalia on a couple of them. and it was like the police department in, I don't think it was Melbourne, but it was somewhere odd.

Adelaide or Sydney or some odd place like that. But I guess I only say odd because all of Australia is weird to me. But yeah, not a town that's... Fosters. It jumps off the map. But they like used it as a sting operation because they knew the people that were going in to see Cheech and Chong were most likely holding.

They'd actually been the ones to actually place the call to be like, you guys should come down here. They're giving away free tickets. But besides that, they've really kind of just stayed together and stayed friends. 2012, Chong beat prostate cancer, which is cool. Do you know after that, he actually got colorectal cancer and beat that? Really? Yeah.

God, his downstairs was so beat up then. That sucks. Wow. I think in 2019 is when he officially said he was cancer-free. Yeah, that wouldn't make sense because him and Cheech started the Cheech and Chong Cannabis Company in 2020. And they... How do you not do that earlier? Well, that's where I was talking about were a lot of these guys that got shit in the beginning, like Ricky Williams and stuff, have now come through on the back end.

Yeah. I guess that was last episode. But they put in so much legwork in the beginning that this was just like the most money-making venture that they did. could have. It's not a shock that Ricky Williams has his own strain of weed and probably his own weed company. Mike Tyson, that I forgot to mention before. My actually might be a little bit of a shock that it's something as mild as weed. Yeah. Yeah, he does seem a little higher strung than that, but there again, they capitalized on their name based upon their body. I'm just saying it makes so much sense for it to have taken this long. I mean, Seth Rogan has had house plant for at least double that time.

Yeah, probably. But this had to be a situation too where both of them were getting approached at all times by every company being like, we'd love to have you on board to do this. And they're like, let's just do one ourselves. Yeah. It makes sense. Yeah, and I don't know if it was a licensing play and they had some people come to them and say, hey, we want to sort of weed company. We want to use your name. We'll make you partners or whatever.

But it really was just like the ultimate move. I can't think of any real other kind of. I mean, Snoop's stuff would probably be great. Wizcalifa stuff would probably be great. But if just the old lover of up and smoke to me, Cheech and Chong weed would have to be the weed that I would get. You need to find some. Yeah.

Yeah, that would be a nice. Fact-finding mission. We're going on a quest. Oh, I watch Your Highness. No, still, it's so good. It's hilarious and everything like that, but still just not a, I was given another chance in a better frame of mind, and it still just didn't. All right, guys.

Well, thanks for joining us on this little bonus episode on Cheech and Chong, basically the pioneers of modern marijuana pop culture. They fit the story so well with just everything that they did and how they kind of followed their own career path, but also basically just blazed a trail for everybody else. Did you do a pun there? Blaze the trail I'm so high

I couldn't even Didn't even realize it But yeah they They were the pioneers These guys Paved the way For everybody else They

They lit it up And burned it up And left the bowl ash For everybody else But everybody else Is somehow Repacked that bowl And continue to smoke

Because Yeah I have to say That they would Probably be The grandfathers Of all the Weid comedies

That we see now All right guys Well, thanks again for joining us, and we'll see you next time. Happy 420. Peace. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining us for another episode. If you like what you heard, hit that subscribe and like button. Follow us.

If you didn't like what you heard, still hit that anyway, because we'll probably cover something in the future that you do like. Please follow us on our social media. Adam, hit him with it. Our Instagram is historically high pod, historically high POD. And we are on Twitter at Historically High. That's historically H.I. All right. And if you guys want to send in any feedback suggestions, hit us up on those two or you can even do it on Gmail. It's historically high podcast at gmail.com. Thanks again. Peace.