Hey, Read This

Of all people to age gracefully, you wouldn’t expect Tommy Chong to do so.

But Canada’s favourite alternative-lifestyle comic and activist (see: Up In Smoke) is back touring with partner Cheech Marin, and they’re still high-energy and quick-witted enough for hilarity to ensue.

Even offstage, with no adrenaline, Chong is fun and relevant — from pretending to be clueless about social media (“I’m on Myface — Spacebook? Facebook?… Facebook, yeah”), to saying he has stop himself from spending all day on it.

He spoke to us promoting Hey Watch This, a live recording of a 2009 San Antonio, Texas show for Cheech and Chong’s Light Up America tour. Many Cheech and Chong faithful hail from San Antonio because Cheech proudly displays his Mexican-American heritage in songs and skits.

However, the audience’s electricity in the DVD can really be accredited to the tour being the first time Cheech and Chong had performed together in almost 25 years.

“That’s why the people are there — they’re there to see the old icons,” Chong says. “We were literally the first sounds of hip-ness in people’s year.”

And from that starting point, Chong says, it’s “a world of comedy that stays with them the rest of their life.”

Subsequently, the DVD features material that’s mostly classic, but it has some that’s new, and all goes well received.

“Oooh,” Chong exults, a sound of genuine satisfaction, “they love it.”

The success could have much to do with smart, light-hearted attempts at modernity. Classic character Alice Bowie, who is a blind blues rocker, now inches on stage with a walker. Chong describes another skit (not in the DVD) where Cheech, on his knees, points a gun at Chong and says, “Come over here! Come over here!” Then he puts his arm out and says, “Help me up.”

Chong laughs hard at retelling that skit — like he’s telling it for the first time. It may actually feel like that due to a certain herb he loves, but Chong does talk vividly about the past.

“I looked at the old films of us and I can see it now, I’m totally different from what it was then,” he says. “I love that old energy… now we’re not in a hurry.”

The slower, current style proves great for Chong’s left-wing activism, but when it comes to comedy, it’s the youthful classics that still hit home.

And those classics are exactly what Chong will be capitalizing on in the future. Cheech and Chong have an animated film coming out, portraying their young selves doing old skits (“Coming sooner… or later” says the trailer). Additionally, they’ll be innovating on the success of Up in Smoke with an unofficially named Up in Smoke II, which Chong says he hopes will be released by the end of the year.

“It’ll probably be better business than anything ever seen before in the history of movies,” Chong says dryly, leaving it up to you to decide whether he’s serious or not.

That’s why you need to see Hey Watch This to figure it out for yourself. It was released on April 20 (4/20, of course) and Cheech and Chong will also be performing at Just For Laughs in Montreal this summer.  

It’s all worth seeing because Cheech and Chong are never ones for low moments. In fact, they bring the opposite in so many ways.•

Photo 
Courtesy of Alliance Films