Chong Blasts Cheech for Shaving Off Trademark Mustache
Cheech and Chong are back together again. The ‘70s stoner comedy team has drifted apart over the years, but they’ve reunited for a new buddy-comedy-slash-documentary, Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie. Not all the hard feelings from their 1980s break-up are gone, however, at least not in a new movie clip that debuted on Entertainment Weekly.
The clip features the two comics on a road trip, recreating a visual motif that ran through Cheech and Chong movies like Up in Smoke. One big difference? Cheech Marin’s trademark mustache is missing.
“You still won’t grow your mustache back,” Tommy Chong complains as they drive through the desert revisiting their comedy career. “You made such an imprint with that character, and then to have you not doing that, you know, it’s really hard to accept it.”
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Like Charlie Chaplin or Groucho Marx, Cheech and Chong had a signature visual look that was easy to capture in caricature or on a movie poster. Chong wasn’t happy that the whiskers were missing for their reunion movie. “Your mustache is so important for the Cheech character,” he argued. “That’s your trademark, and you refuse to do it.”
Marin had a logical explanation for why he’s gone clean-shaven. “I didn’t want to wear a mustache because I was doing other roles,” he said. “And also it made me look older, and I didn’t want to look older.”
But “you’re not Cheech,” Chong protested.
Exactly. He wasn’t Cheech “of Cheech and Chong,” his partner replied. “I’m Cheech of Cheech Marin.”
“Yeah,” Chong grumbles. “Well, that’s the difference.”
Cheech wanting to establish a career as Cheech Marin is the simple explanation behind the breakup of Cheech and Chong. Chong also wanted to break free of the stoner comedy stereotype but was typecast in that persona. “He was stuck,” Marin told the New York Post in 2017. “He just couldn’t do it, but he still wanted to cling onto me and control me, and that wasn’t working.”
The duo broke up after making 1987’s Born in East L.A. but reunited — occasionally — in the 2010s. ”There was still a lot of animosity, and it persisted for a while. But eventually it kind of waned,” Marin said. “I think when health issues come into play, you do another assessment. He was sick for a while. He’s fine now. But it took a while to get there.”
In 2017, Marin vowed the two would never make another film, but that forecast proved untrue as their documentary (or comedy, the two can’t seem to decide) releases on — when else? — 4/20. You can guess what time the first screening is scheduled for. Marin’s prediction about their comedy future parallels a truth about both Cheech and Chong partnership’s and Marin’s mustache.
“Nothing lasts forever, Tommy,” Marin explained to Chong. “You know, nothing lasts forever.”
