Cheech And Chong Up In Smoke Music

[Armanda Kicks]

CheechChong had been a counterculture comedy team for about ten years before they started reworking some of their material for their first film. Most of the film was shot in Los Angeles, California, including scenes set in Tijuana, while scenes set on the Mexican border were actually filmed at the border in Yuma, Arizona.

Anthony "Man" Stoner, an unemployed, marijuana-smoking drummer, is told to either get a job by sundown or be sent off to military school by his parents. Man leaves the house and later becomes stranded on the highway. Man is picked up while hitchhiking by the equally enthusiastic stoner Pedro de Pacas, and the two share a large joint, which is revealed to contain Labrador feces after the dog ate Man's supply. When Pedro freaks out and seems to have trouble breathing, Man accidentally gives him an extremely powerful dose of LSD. The police find their car parked on a traffic median with them in it, discover that they are high and arrest them. At trial, the pair are released on a technicality after Man discovers that the judge is drinking vodka.

In an attempt to procure more marijuana, they visit Pedro's cousin Strawberry, a Vietnam War veteran. During the party, a lady snorts a couple of lines of Ajax set up by Man, under the presumption it was cocaine, despite Man trying to warn her. They narrowly escape a police raid on Strawberry's house while Strawberry has a flashback and thinks the police are the Viet Cong, but are soon deported to Tijuana, by the INS, along with Pedro's relatives, who actually called the INS on themselves, so they could get a free ride to a wedding in Tijuana.

The film concludes with Pedro and Man driving in the former's car and dreaming how their future career will pay off. Man then lights a small portion of hash and gives some to Pedro. However, it falls into his lap, causing him to panic and swerve the car while trying to put it out; Man attempts to put the hash out with his beer. During the scuffle, the car swerves down the road and smoke billows out the windows.

The screenplay was written under the title The Adventures of Pedro & Man.[5] Paramount Pictures provided the budget of $1 million but refused to provide the additional $800,000 needed to complete the film after studio president Michael Eisner saw a rough cut, so Lou Adler used his own money to complete it.[6]

As this was the comedy team's first film, Paramount wanted the initial screenings to be filled with their most ardent fans.[7] Cheech and Chong also came up with the novel (and ultimately successful) idea of advertising the film through comic strips, which they left on bus benches.

The film had test screenings in August 1978 and opened in nine theatres in Texas in early September, grossing $344,785 in its first 10 days.[6][7] The film went on to become a huge success. Prior to its official release date, the film had grossed $1.7 million, and by the end of the first month of release it had grossed $20 million[6] and went on to gross $76 million at the domestic box office and over $104 million worldwide.[3][8]

The film was banned in South Africa during apartheid. Censors in the country said that the film "might encourage the impressionable youth of South Africa to take up marijuana smoking".[10] It was also banned in Colombia.[3]

On April 10, 2018, a 40th Anniversary Edition set was released, which featured the movie on Blu-ray and DVD, and the album on vinyl record and compact disc, as well as a 7-inch picture disc vinyl record single featuring the songs "Earache My Eye" and "Lost Due To Incompetence (Theme From A Big Green Van)", with an image of Cheech from the film on the A-side and the "YESCA" license plate image on the B-side.[11]

The 40th Anniversary Edition CD featured two bonus tracks, a previously unreleased version of the song "Up In Smoke" with an additional Spanish verse by Cheech, and a newly recorded "2018 version" of the same song.[11]

The soundtrack album was released in 1978.[12] Allmusic gave the album a score of 3 out of 5 stars.[13] In 2017, Billboard named Up in Smoke as one of the 10 best stoner film soundtracks.[14]

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 47% based on reviews from 19 critics. The site's consensus reads, "Oft-quoted but undeniably flawed, Up In Smoke is a seminal piece of stoner cinema thanks to the likability of its two counterculture icons."[16] On Metacritic it has a score of 57% based on reviews from 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[17]

Pauline Kael of The New Yorker compared the film favorably to The Groove Tube, writing that Up in Smoke was "also crudely done but is more consistently funny." She added that "Cheech and Chong are so gracefully dumb-assed that if you're in a relaxed mood you can't help laughing at them."[23][better source needed] Art Harris of The Washington Post wrote that the film "may give you a buzz, but don't count on it to keep you high. Like, you know, the film suffers from a bad case of burn-out, leading one to nod off between jokes and wonder why producer Lou Adler bothered to attempt a Doper's Delight in this post-Woodstock age of Clean Living."[24] David McGillivray of The Monthly Film Bulletin observed that the film "looks, unfortunately, as if it were more fun to make than it is to watch."[25]

In December 1978, Rolling Stone published an article stating that Cheech and Chong had "seven scripts waiting in the drawer" which included one for an animated film, and one for a sequel to Up in Smoke.[12] No sequel was ever produced, and Cheech and Chong's Next Movie, released in 1980, did not feature the characters of Pedro and Man, although the characters they played had personalities and character traits that were virtually identical to those of Pedro and Man.

The Grammy Award Museum in Los Angeles features an Up in Smoke exhibit which displays the master tape for the soundtrack album, the annotated original script, limited-edition 40th anniversary "smoking devices," and part of Marin's collection of "Blazing Chicano Guitars."[5]

In 2021, an officially licensed graphic novel entitled Cheech & Chong's Chronicles: A Brief History of Weed was released by Z2 Comics. Written by Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, and Eliot Rahal, the graphic novel acts as a sequel to the Up in Smoke film, as it features Pedro de Pacas and Anthony "Man" Stoner as the main characters of the story.[26]

Perhaps Mr. Martin was my gateway stoner comic, preparing me for the two wild and crazy guys (Mr. Cheech Marin and Mr. Tommy Chong) who would soon guide me fuzzily into my nerve-wracking, hormone-ravaged teenage years.

When Star Wars was released in May of 1977, it was all the rage. Especially among the pre-tween boy population. As a member of that group, it was essentially a requirement to see the film. It was hard to maintain friendships without being able to talk Luke, Lea, Obi-Wan, Han, Chewbacca, R2D2, and Darth.

I had no intention of watching Star Wars again. When we arrived at the theater, I quickly scanned the listings for what else was playing. The only film with a start time close to Star Wars was Up in Smoke.

I made sure that I had an aisle seat, and once Star Wars began, I took off. Luckily, Up in Smoke was the next theater. I nonchalantly strolled in and took my seat in the back row, my stomach jumpy from the excitement, from the rebelliousness of it all. What the hell was I about to see?

The movie starts with Cheech hungover and waking up to his three small children making a racket. He gets up and mistakenly pees in the hamper instead of the toilet. Cut to Chong, who somehow is the son of extremely wealthy parents who yell at him to get a job. He ignores them, makes a smoothie, and then drives off in his VW Bug filled with his drum set.

The next 80 minutes were a mind-bending blur. Most of the references in the film were beyond me, but in general, the humor was aimed not much higher than the pre-teen boy brain. And the stoner adults. Needless to say, Up in Smoke is filled with tons of pot smoking, drug-taking, sex, and over-the-top hijinks.

When I left the theater to head back to my friends watching Star Wars (which thankfully was a half-hour longer than Up in Smoke), I felt like I was stoned, even though I had never actually been stoned.

These iconic cars were actually an evolution of the traditional Mexican paseo, where young men and women would gather in town squares to eye each other and mingle, and the more determined men would arrive on horses decked out like parade floats.

I was eleven when Cheech and Chong\u2019s R-rated film, Up in Smoke, was released. In the U.S. you had to be 17 or accompanied by a guardian to see an R-rated movie (and this is still true).

So, I did as I was expected and\u2026.I dunno. I liked it okay, but I was mostly bored. I was not a sci-fi kid. I didn\u2019t care about outer space, I didn\u2019t read any J.R.R. Tolkien or Arthur C. Clarke.

I loved music, TV, baseball, and collecting baseball cards. My collection contained mostly baseball cards, but I also had a hundred or so football and basketball ones too. In addition, I owned a full set of Charlie\u2019s Angels trading cards. (Kelly was my favorite.)

Star Wars was still dominating the box office well into 1978, and my best friend Howard Lasser wanted to go see it again for his 11th birthday. Fulfilling his son\u2019s wishes, Howard\u2019s dad drove a half dozen sugar-coated sixth-grade boys to the AMC Theaters Cineplex at the Oaks Mall.

3a8082e126