Still Smokin’

By Kirk Baird

Friday, March 30, 2001 | 8:50 a.m.

Want to quit smoking? Tommy Chong's got the answer and, not surprisingly, the Bush administration isn't going to be pleased.

"I quit smoking cigarettes with pot," the comedian said in a recent phone interview from a hotel room in Houston.

"Every time I felt like a cigarette, I'd smoke a joint. And so my cigarette intake just disappeared. It works. What you do is you get hooked on pot, and you can quit (pot) any time."

Maybe the surgeon general's office should listen.

After all, who knows more about inhaling than the 63-year-old Chong? A man who, along with former comedic partner Richard "Cheech" Marin, recently received a Lifetime Stony Achievement Award from High Times magazine for the duo's counterculture (read: drug-themed) comedy albums and films.

As the Abbott and Costello of the stoner set, with Chong playing a loveable and spaced-out hippie to Marin's hyper and paranoid Chicano, the two managed to find the perfect blend of slapstick comedy and tripped-out wordplay.

These days, however, Chong's act appears a bit different. Since he and Marin parted ways in 1986, Chong has been on his own. That is, until January of last year, when Chong officially announced that his actress-wife, Shelby, had taken the role as his new comedy partner. The two perform Saturday in Club Madrid at Sunset Station.

"She's not really the 'Cheech,' she's the woman the real woman," Chong said. "Before, Cheech would play a woman (in some skits) and I'd play another guy, andnow we've evolved our act into a version of ourselves. And that really cuts through a lot of stuff, cuts right to the heart. Because when you do have a Gracie Allen and George Burns or a Lucy and Desi, that's a gold mine. She's really come into her own."

But as well received as the new pairing may be, Chong realizes he's forever linked to his days with Marin.

"I call myself Chong, of Cheech and Chong," he said. "It's a title; it's not an identification."

And in the first few years after the split, that "title" wasn't an easy one to carry.

Chong said during that period Hollywood had no interest in him as a solo act, and no one in show business would talk to him unless Marin was part of the project. The situation got so bad, in fact, that he went to Marin to see if they could perform together again.

But his former partner resisted a reunion.

Marin had grown weary of Cheech's low-rider image -- something he had never been comfortable with, Chong said -- and he wanted to take his career in a new direction.

"I actually hired Cheech to be Cheech, and I gave him partnership. But when we moved into movies, I was the director," Chong said. "He looked at it and said, 'You know what? I'm more than that. I'm more than an actor. So, I'm going to go out and show everybody that I am.' And that's what he's doing.

"In retrospect, if I'd said Cheech and I are both directors, we would still be together. It was the movies, really, that broke us up."

It was a movie career, ironically, that Marin focused on after he left Chong, starring in "Born in East L.A.," which he also directed, and later films such as "Tin Cup" and "From Dusk Till Dawn," and as the voice of the villainous hyena, Banzai, in "The Lion King." He's even in a new children's movie, "Spy Kids," opening today.

Perhaps it's as Don Johnson's sidekick, police inspector Joe Dominguez, on the CBS show "Nash Bridges," however, that people most associate Marin without Chong.

Coincidentally or not, it's also the role that gives Chong the most pleasure, as he always manages to work in barbs about the show and Marin's part in it into his routine.

"Is Cheech going to have more lines than before? Or, is Don going to hog the screen like he always does? Will Cheech be sent out to buy Don new tires for his car? Tune in next week," Chong laughs, while reciting some of his material.

But he's quick to insist that all the jokes are in good fun.

Both he and Marin are still friends and occasionally talk, he said. The two were even featured on a recent episode of Comedy Central's "South Park" animated series, although the parts were recorded separately. (Chong wasn't aware until he saw the episode that Marin was even in it.)

Chong has also been busy post Cheech and Chong. He's appeared in films, such as 1990's "Far Out Man," which he also wrote and directed, and has a recurring role as a stoned-out hippie, Leo, on Fox's "That '70s Show."

As for a reunion, Chong said there was a discussion several years ago, but it didn't work out because Marin wanted to tour stadiums, while Chong wanted to first play smaller clubs, polishing the act in the process, and then play larger venues.

"Then he got 'Nash Bridges,' after that," Chong said, "and that was the end of that.

"Whether we get back together depends on the financial situation. If 'Nash Bridges' stopped playing and he was out of a job long enough, I think he would be interested."

Meanwhile Chong still fondly recalls his time with Marin and is proud of the work they did.

"I love Cheech and always will," he said. "We're closer than brothers. We're like two old married people. We really are."

Who would have thought: Tommy Chong preaching family values.