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Cheech & Chong: The Unauthorized Autobiography | 
| Author: Tommy Chong
Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
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Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 289901
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Simon Spotlight Entertainment Hardcover Ed
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.1
ISBN: 1416953450
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.430280922
EAN: 9781416953456
ASIN: 1416953450
Publication Date: August 12, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Dave's Not Here, ManBut America's favorite stoner comedian, Tommy Chong, is back and funnier than ever as he takes us on a nostalgic trip through his career with partner Richard "Cheech" Marin. Over the course of their decades-long partnership, Cheech and Chong performed to sold-out crowds across the country, made nine hit albums, starred in eight blockbuster movies, and created memorable and iconic characters that still resonate with fans today. But the good life didn't just appear in a haze of smoke. It all started during the late 1960s in a strip club in the fragile heart of Vancouver's Chinatown, where Tommy was winding down his career as a Motown recording artist and starting an improv comedy troupe, and Cheech was a draft-dodging, pottery-throwing, underground music reviewer. Together they came to define the hippie-era counterculture, and theircelebrated movie debut, Up in Smoke, remains one of the highest-grossing Warner Bros. films ever. In his very own unauthorized autobiography, New York Times bestselling author and pop culture hero Chong reveals his unique relationship with Cheech and recalls the inspiration for their most beloved bits. He introduces famous guest stars like Peter Sellers, John Belushi, Jimi Hendrix, Dan Aykroyd, John Lennon, Diana Ross, and Jack Nicholson, and examines the influences that had the greatest impact on his comedy -- from R&B musicians and Redd Foxx to Lenny Bruce and (of course) marijuana. Finally, with keen insight and utter candor, he explores the rift that has separated the legendary comedy team for more than twenty years. From pot smoking to politics to the universe at large, Cheech & Chong: The Unauthorized Autobiography is the closestyou'll ever get to sitting in a van made entirely of marijuana, trading stories with an unlikely legend, and feeling...well...funny.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Unless you're a diehard... May 23, 2009
TGordon (Pennsylvania)
...and I mean DIEHARD Cheech and Chong fan, unless you have instant recall of all the bits and movie scenes he talks about, skip this book.
 Interesting,could have been better. March 8, 2009
HS (SCOTLAND)
All in all a fun read, but I couldn't shake the feeling this could have been a lot better written.Mind Bomb
 Smoking is Back January 7, 2009
Benjamin Castanier (Ann Arbor, MI USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
With the re-emergence of pot-smoking based humor in mainstream America as seen in such box office and T.V. hits as Pineapple Express, Harold & Kumar go to Guantanomo Bay and The70s Show, one can only help to remember when Cheech & Chong literally blazed the way with their weed-smoking antics on-stage and on film. In the past few years a recent trend has appeared all over the best-seller list; recovering drug addicts baring their souls in tell all memoirs that talk of regret, pain, and death (One Million Little Pieces by James Frey, The Night of the Gun by David Carr, Broken by William Cope Meyers).
Tommy Chong's recent release of The Unauthorized Biography of Cheech & Chong definitely doesn't fit into the recent mold of drug memoirs but is more of an entertaining flashback that takes the reader on a journey from the roots of the entertainers to the triumphant days of Cheech & Chong and finally to the separate individuals Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong as most of the younger generation of America knows them by currently.
Tommy Chong delivers (Cheech Marin doesn't provide any input) of an autobiographical story of the two comedians passage from weed pioneers to wealthy and famous celebrities complete with the inevitable scandals and conflicts. Chong relives the improbable fairy tales where the two were without a dime in their pockets and relegated to performing in dingy clubs for payments in cheap bar food to their eventual explosion onto the Hollywood scene in which marijuana humor became their staple.
Although for the majority of the book, the reader is regaled with the fun-loving, pain free pot-toking memories of the past; this autobiography of the happy go lucky potheads isn't without intimate moments. Cheech decides that the one-sided marijuana comedy act that brought them into national stardom wasn't his thing anymore and mainstream acting would be exactly where his career should lead (Nash Bridges). This attitude coupled with other disagreements between the two begins the rift that eventually leads to their split. Tommy Chong continues to concentrate on stoner humor and eventually gets sent to prison for the exact thing he became famous for, pot.
In Cheech & Chong:The Unauthorized Autobiography, Tommy Chong explores the best and worst of times of the already unforgettable pothead duo of Cheech and Chong. This memoir has been released just in time for...wait for it...the REUNION of Cheech and Chong. The two are on a nation wide reunion comedy tour that will stop by in Detroit on September 20 at the Fillmore
Good bio but I want more, plus the final chapter! January 6, 2009
A. Thompson (Wyoming)
I was given this book as a Christmas present from my brother, who, like myself is a Cheech and Chong fan. I was unaware of this book's existance, actually - and of the stack of books I was given this Xmas, decided to read this one first.
I was not disappointed... with just a couple of exceptions...
-Maybe a few more stories regarding the recording of the albums and/or the movies would have been nice.
-Tommy talks about his marriage, plus his simultaneous dual-life girlfriend, both of which bore him children around the same period of time, but didn't go into the nitty-gritty of maintaining those two relationships and as to whom exactly knew what was going on with the others. I'd have liked to know how that balancing act actually worked (or didn't work).
-The other thing... I know (now) that after this was written, Cheech and Chong FINALLY reconciled and decided to tour "in character" revisiting some of their greatest sketches of the past. I'd have liked to have read the story of how that finally occurred, and the publication date of 08/08 made me hope for at least some of it... but the reality of publication vs. the date of writing means that the final chapter(s) of the Cheech and Chong story are yet to be written.
Still what remains is a fairly good biography. I think Chong did a very good job of telling his own story all the way back to his early days, plus touching on Cheech's story enough to give you something of a handle on his character. I give him credit for stating near the end that he wasn't going to continue Cheech's story after the point where the two of them split as a team, as that should be Cheech's to tell. Unstated, of course, was the fact that Chong was not there to witness that story to be able to tell it. However the story he tells up to that point is one he was there to witness. And, despite the clouds of pot smoke hovering in the background, Chong somehow mangaged to hold on to enough memories to tell some nice tales of the Cheech y Chong story.
Perhaps unlike another reviewer, I thought Tommy's mentions of Cheech's strengths were quite complimentary and not perfunctary. I also got a pretty good feel for the "effect" that occurred when the two of them create and perform together. What I'd really like is an "authorized" version, ie.. having Cheech's side of the story, as well as coverage of the events leading up to and following their reconcilliaton. But as that is, at the moment, still ongoing, I will have to wait for that story.
Disappointed fan December 22, 2008
Paul
I have been a C&C fan since my teenage days, and I find myself wishing I hadn't read this book. The first third or so of the book has nothing to do with C&C, but rather Chong's time as a blues guitarist in Canada and the U.S. While mildly interesting, it's not the reason most fans will pick up the book, and could have been significantly condensed. If you want to skip that part, leaf in about 75 pages and begin reading there.
Chong seems to set out to cast Cheech in the most negative light possible from the outset. While he pays him some compliments (voracious reader, photographic memory, very intelligent), Chong implies that he practically had to drag Cheech along on their journey to fame and fortune, claiming the lion's share of the duo's creative output for himself.
Chong apparently fails to see the contradictions in his own behavior and attitudes. He makes a point of saying he wrote the title song for "Up In Smoke" by himself to prove a point to Cheech and the movie's director - "I write alone." Yet, he complains that Cheech did the same thing on "Born In East L.A." In another passage, he says he turned down a role in "The Lion King" with no regrets due to his "hippie code," yet a few paragraphs later (on the same page, if memory serves), Chong complains about an assistant trying to use Chong's Rolls Royce to impress girls. Last I checked, hippies and materialism were not synonymous. Finally, he wraps up the book by recounting a recent meeting with Cheech, where he says he realized he can't work with him anymore - clearly written before the current reunion tour was scheduled.
I am still a fan, and C&C's albums and movies hold a special place in my heart. Chong makes a good point about meeting those you admire when recalling an encounter he had with Jack Nicholson, and I think it applies here. He says that it's risky meeting your idols, because they may end up disappointing you. That was definitely the case with this memoir. I would love to see a similar book from Cheech, if only to hear his side of things. The truth, as they say, probably lies somewhere in the middle.
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