Career
The duo released many successful comedy record albums, and starred in a series of low-budget films, becoming a successful comedy team. Some of their best-known comedy routines and songs include "Earache My Eye", "Basketball Jones", "Santa Claus and His Old Lady", and "Sister Mary Elephant". Perhaps their all-time most famous line is "Dave's not here", from their self-titled debut album.
Their early success culminated with the release of their first feature-length movie, Up in Smoke, in 1978. Relatively successful, it became something of a cult classic and was successful enough to warrant a sequel, Cheech & Chong's Next Movie, in 1980, and Nice Dreams in 1981. These were followed by Things Are Tough All Over (1982) and Still Smokin' (1983). The pair attempted to shy away from stoner comedy with 1984's Cheech & Chong's The Corsican Brothers but the film was universally panned by critics and fans alike.
Tommy Chong directed four of their films, while co-writing and starring in all seven with Cheech Marin.
They also appeared in smaller supporting roles in Graham Chapman's Yellowbeard and Martin Scorsese's After Hours.
In 1985 the duo released their album Get Out of My Room, which included the novelty hit song, "Born in East L.A." (based on Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A."). This song would later serve as the basis for the 1987 film of the same name, in which Cheech Marin played the starring role. Immediately following the release of the album, Cheech Marin separated himself from the pair's drug-inspired act by working on a solo career.
Chong also appeared in the hit sitcom That '70s Show as Leo, the owner of the Foto Hut.
Read more about this topic: Cheech & Chong
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)