Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong talk about their new documentary “Cheech and Chong’s last film”.

It was almost half a century ago when Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong teamed up on the screen for the first time and told a carefree story about two pot-smoking friends on a road trip.

Over time, the film “Up in Smoke” from 1978 became a cult classic that transformed the two comedians and actors from Hippie outsider into comedy icons.

Now long -time Cheech and Chong fans or those who want to know more about them can be reunited on the screen in “Cheech & Chongs Last Movie”, which was published in the nationwide on Friday. Directed by David Bushell, the documentary, which has never been seen before, are Marin and Chong, while the two of them are another road trip company die times over five decades of their ultimately widespread career, which extends through platinum albums and cash on cash.

“You found the essence of Cheech and Chong. And it is worth it to be explored because there is a Cheech and Chong in everyone in everyone,” said Chong about the documentary in a video interview with Marin. “That’s what we are. We are all out there. And that’s why people can refer to us.”

For many fans today, Stoner Comedy invites you to playful rooms that use humor to blur or soften social borders. “Up in Smoke” helped to create and popularize a subgenre of later hits like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”, “Friday”, “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” and “Ananas Express”.

But when it came out, Cheech and Chong’s “Up in Smoke” was certainly not a hit with everyone.

“Every film that asks you to be smashed before you see that it has something really bad to hide,” said the film critic of Chicago, Gene Siskel about his award-winning TV show “Siskel & Ebert”.

Siskel took “Up in Smoke” as “Dog of the Week” – his choice for the worst film – and criticized his dialogue. It was “80 minutes of two idiots who said nothing but” Hey Man “.

But these two casual words, “Hey Man”, would still be in touch with many fans and signal a generation change in the mainstream culture.

“In their sleepy, Unhaven -Weg, Cheech and Chong form a visual affront to the straight world by going along the Main Street,” says a review of the New York Times from 1978. “However, it is without danger because this special revolution, as the popularity of the film shows, has already been won. But the clean nitwits, such as the police officers in “Up in Smoke”, which in their experiments exist to preserve repressive traditions to repressive traditions. “

Frederick Luis Aldama, a pop and Latino cultural scientist who is the Jacob & Frances Sanger -Mosker chair in the humanities at the University of Texas, said in a telephone interview: “If you really distill it, Stoner comedy is a call from equalizer.

Aldama remembers that he saw his maternal “Abuelita” (grandmother) “in Rauch”. He remembers her “laughing” throughout the film, which also made him laugh.

There was also a feeling of pride as Latino, he said. Marin grew up in East -los Angeles, the son Mexican -American parents; His father was a veteran of the Navy of World War II and a police officer in Los Angeles. Chong grew up in Calgary, the son of a Canadian mother with Scottish and Irish roots and a Chinese father.

The comedians, said Aldama, brought elements such as Mexican -American Lowrider culture into the mainstream, but “they did it as if they were not asked to judge or laugh about it, but simply enjoy it, but laughed at our communities, our neighborhoods, a positive spotlight, our neighborhoods.”

The childhood of Marin and Chong was separated by more than 1,500 miles, and various circumstances would ultimately bring them together in an unexpected way.

Marin evaded the Vietnam War by moving to Canada. And Chong, who had been a guitarist for Bobby Taylor & The Vancouvers, said he had lost his job in Motown.

“I just tried to bring my life together again. And Cheech tried to live with the fact that he had to live in Canada. And then we met,” said Chong, 86. “We found that we had this understanding.”

The seed for her understanding was planted in a Topless night club in Vancouver, in which Chong was a partial owner and had formed a hippie Burlesque comedy group. Marin would join the group as a writer. And then the duo developed its Stoner Act after the breakdown of the troop.

After years of success, the two went their own ways and have some open discussions in the documentary about their relationship.

When asked whether the comedy could still be transgressively, Marin says that as long as there is an authentic connection between the comedian and the audience.

“It depends on the right comedy and if it is a truthful comedy. It is not the comedy that everyone wants to like. We want to please ourselves. And do something that is relevant for people,” said Marin, who is 78 years old.

So that comedy is successful today, it cannot simply repeat what has been done in the past.

“We live in a travel report,” he said. “We are no longer in the 1960s, in the 70s or in the 80s or in the 90s. We are now. And so to stay relevant, you have to acknowledge what is going on now. Because we are alive and we still breathe, we can still think about it.”

When asked whether this was really her “last” film and what she would bring together again on the screen, Marin said: “Very simple, money!”

“No, we will continue to hammer until they take the cold, warm bong out of my hand,” said Chong when the two men laughed.