Cheech Marin

From Seventies Smoke to the Nash Bridges Office

Richard Anthony Marin was born in Los Angeles in 1946 but ended up in Vancouver to dodge the draft for the Vietnam War. There he met Tommy Chong. They started out doing sketches at a strip club run by Chong's family, and that chance encounter changed American comedy forever.

In 1978, Up in Smoke hit theaters. The movie cost barely $2 million to make and ended up grossing more than $100 million at the global box office. Critics tore it apart, but young audiences turned it into a cult favorite because it spoke their language without moral filters or condescension.

And the gamble paid off.

For a decade, the duo recorded comedy albums that won Grammy Awards and made sequels with minimal storylines. Marin played the barrio Chicano with an electric energy that contrasted with Chong's laid-back style. But the formula of cannabis humor began to wear thin in the mid-1980s.

The breakup came in 1985.

Cheech Marin wanted to show that his career didn't depend solely on jokes about illegal drugs. In 1987, he wrote, directed and starred in Born in East L.A., a biting satire about the wrongful deportation of American citizens of Mexican descent. The film was shot on a tight budget of $5 million and became a surprise hit that proved his ability as an independent filmmaker.

The Man Who Preserved Chicano History

In the mid-1990s, his career took a turn few in Hollywood expected. Don Johnson called him to co-star in Nash Bridges in 1996. The police drama ran for six seasons and helped Marin shed his image as a stoned hippie, allowing him to play a San Francisco police inspector.

It was a masterstroke.

That period of financial stability allowed him to deepen his passion as an art collector. Marin began buying canvases from Chicano painters when no one at the major New York galleries paid them any attention. In art circles, people said he was crazy to spend so much money on unknown artists (or ones ignored by the system).

But time proved him right once again. In 2022, the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture opened in Riverside, California. The museum houses more than 700 pieces from his private collection and is the first center of its kind in the entire United States. The value of the works he bought for a few thousand dollars has multiplied a hundredfold over the past few decades.

His voice also became ubiquitous in animated films. In 1994, he voiced the hyena Banzai in The Lion King, and later became a recurring collaborator with Pixar on the Cars franchise, playing Ramone. These roles gave him a steady stream of income and a direct connection with new generations who knew nothing of his beginnings in nightclubs.

In 2023, he appeared in the movie Champions alongside Woody Harrelson, directed by Bobby Farrelly. Filming took place in Winnipeg during a particularly harsh winter. The production had a budget of $25 million, and Marin played the owner of the basketball court where the lead team trains.