Cheech and Chong Made ‘Horrible Deal’ on Their First Hit Movie
Cheech and Chong’s first movie, Up in Smoke, was an unexpected blockbuster and invented a genre that continues to make money to this day — the stoner comedy. Unfortunately for the comedians, however, the hit movie was more of a rags-to-rags than a rags-to-riches story.
“The movie comes out, and it’s a giant hit,” said Tommy Chong in Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie, as reported by Deadline. “Nobody thought Up in Smoke was going to do anything but a bust. But the problem was, we had a hit movie and both Cheech and I were literally broke, cash poor.”
How is that possible? Blame a “huge, horrible deal” for the duo’s empty pockets. While the film earned more than $100 million in profits, the comics had to split $50,000 for their efforts. Even by 1978 standards, that was a pittance for writing, directing, starring in and promoting a feature film.
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Not only did the comics receive puny paychecks, but their other revenue streams dried up as well. “Our income depended on our live performances,” explained Chong. “And all the time we shot Up in Smoke, we stopped touring on the road. We had no income. We started looking very closely at the contract that we had signed with our lawyer. That was a huge horrible deal for us. The 90-10 split.”
The structure of the contract is unclear, other than its terms were bad. “We got a pair of lime-green shoes out of the deal,” groused Cheech Marin. “And a hundred dollars.” To make matters worse, according to Chong, that lopsided contract obligated them to six more movies for Paramount.
When they set out to make the comedy, Chong told Cracked, “it never dawned on me that it would be a real movie. We were both big Robert Altman fans, and that’s the way he made movies — very improvisational.”
That spirit provided another financial bonanza for Paramount. Due to Up in Smoke’s loose structure and the comedy team’s well-practiced rapport, “we came up with a movie that we shot in less than a month, and it cost less than a million.”
Those days of living poor still resonate even as the comics are well past retirement age (Cheech is 78 and Chong is pushing 90). That’s why, even though their latest venture is called Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie, there is one motivator that could get them back together again.
“Very easy,” Marin told NBC News. “Money!”
