Cheech & Chong: The Unauthorized Autobiography (Hardcover)

by Tommy Chong (Author)
Key Phrases: nice dreams, first acid trip, Los Angeles, Lou Adler, Rae Dawn (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Dave's Not Here, Man

But 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.

About the Author
Tommy Chong is a sixty-eight-year-old writer and director, best known as half of the legendary comedy duo Cheech and Chong. The pair found a wide audience through their stand-up routines, comedy albums, and popular films about the hippie, free-love, and (especially) drug culture movement. A father of five, Chong lives with his wife, Shelby, in California and performs with her at comedy clubs across the country. This is his first book.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment; 1st Simon Spotlight Entertainment Hardcover Ed edition (August 12, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416953450
• ISBN-13: 978-1416953456
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #487,349 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good reading for C&C fans, September 23, 2008

By	John C. Card "J Card" (Visalia CA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Chong provides a very interesting walk through his life and career and tells some good "behind the scenes" stories, but I would have liked more detail in certain areas. More info on how they made the movies and albums would have been nice. It would also have been interested to hear Cheech's side of some of the stories, but it is understandable why that isn't in there. Still, it is a very entertaining read overall.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tommy's Cheech and Chong, December 10, 2008

By	Andrew P. Kluka (Chicago) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Written by Tommy Chong, one half of the famous, rather, infamous, duo of Cheech and Chong...this book is a nice concise history of the pair. Naturally, being written by Tommy, it gives a fairly complete description of his start with Motown records and his ultimate progression to standup comedy, first with a troupe, and finally in colloration only with Richard, "Cheech", Marin.
Being a fairly short work, it covers the evolution of the group, rather than dealing with too any specific events...but it DOES succeed in providing a fairly complete picture of Cheech and Chong's career together. Well worth the read for any fan of Cheech and Chong.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Smoking is Back, January 7, 2009

By	Benjamin Castanier "Bsegalz" (Ann Arbor, MI USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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 ½ (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