Cheech Marin - The Artful Dodger

 

 

I used to be a Cub Scout. [audience chuckle] I was a Boy Scout. I was an altar boy. I sang in the church choir. I was a straight-A student all through school. When I graduated from high school, I won the religion award. I was the product of a Catholic education, and I was prepared for anything that happened here in the 12th century. [audience laughter] 

 

My father, Oscar, was a cop. 30 LAPD. [audience laughter] He was a World War II vet, was in the Navy, saw combat in the Philippines. He never talked about it, except once he talked about it and then I understood why he never talked about it. It was horrific. He only had one rule, Oscar. And that rule was my way or the highway. We didn't get along really great. [chuckles] But it wasn't just because of that. It's because he worked me to death. 

 

I'd wake up in the morning, “All right, make your bed. All right, make your bed again. Those corners aren't right. Go out there and cut the lawn now. Edge the lawn. Now, come in and vacuum. Now, wash the car.” “The dad, come on, man.” “Hey, listen, you're a Chicano, and you're always going to have three jobs. [audience laughter] So, get used to it.” “Oh, man.” So, when I went off to college, man, I was ready for anything. Get me out of here. So, I worked. 

 

One night, I came home from work and my roommates had a little party going on. There was music, and there was laughter and the lights were low. It was really smoky in there for some reason. [audience laughter] And out of the blue, somebody handed me this little hand-rolled cigarette and well, I'm here to try anything. So, I took a hit and I heard my dad's voice, "If you ever smoke marijuana, you're going to turn into a heroin addict and you're going to steal out of your mother's purse." [audience laughter] So, I took another hit. [audience laughter] Looked around and what else have they been lying about? [audience laughter] 

 

For those of you who didn't go to college in the mid-1960s, boy, you missed it, because it was happening. There was a revolution going on. There was a very unpopular, unjust, immoral war going on. They were sending thousands of young men over there to die in the jungles of Vietnam. They lied to us every step of the way. My college was a hotbed of radical activities. A string of speakers came in and riled us up. There was Floyd McKissick from SNCC. There was Reies Tijerina from the Chicano Land movement. There was Timothy Leary and his LSD became a good friend of mine. [audience chuckle] "Turn on, tune in, drop out." 

 

Two weeks before he was assassinated, Robert Kennedy spoke at our university. Martin Luther King had been killed just before that. Now, Robert Kennedy. They were murdering our leaders. But there was one person that came to school, and he made the most impact on me. He wasn't the most fiery, he wasn't the most bombastic, he was actually the quietest. His name was David Harris, and he was the leader of The Draft Resistance Movement. He had a very simple message. "If you're not registered for the draft, don't register. If you're registered and they call you up for physical, don't go to the physical. If you've gone to the physical and they ask you to step forward to be inducted in the army, don't step forward. Refuse to be a part of this machine."

 

It's the only thing that made sense to me during this whole period. So, that's what I'm going to do. So, I handed in my draft card, I gave it to David Harris himself. And then, he put it on a collage that accompanied him and his new wife, Joan Baez, on a speaking tour throughout the United States. It was on the cover of Time magazine. And if you looked real closely in the corner, you could see my name. I was a revolutionary now. I was going to make a change. I was fearless.

 

Until about two weeks later, General Hershey, who was the director of the draft at the time, issued this proclamation that anybody who burnt their draft card or turned it in, or demonstrated in front of the draft board, would be immediately reclassified, drafted and sent to the front lines of Vietnam. And that was his fix. And I thought, it doesn't seem like it's quite so legal. But anyways, that's what he did. 

 

So, I went from revolutionary to a little scared revolutionary. But another miracle happened at that time. I discovered that I was an artist. I couldn't draw and I couldn't paint and I couldn't sculpt. But I took a pottery class my last semester in school. And my Mexican genes came trotting out. [audience laughter] They said, "Hey, Holmes, where you been? Come on, man, let's get on the wheel. We're back ordered, let's go." [audience laughter] 

 

I made pottery. From the time I woke up till the time I went to bed, I was a pottery-making fool. And that became my life. I found my calling. I was going to be a potter. I was going to go out and I was going to dig in the ground and make clay and make pots for the rest of my life. And then, I got another notice that I had been reclassified 1A, ready to go. I was in school. I had a 2S deferment, but they reclassified me because of my political activities. I'm like, “Oh, jeez, what am I going to do now?” 

 

So, my pottery teacher, who was kind of hip to what I was going through, said, “You know what? I have this ex-student of mine who's a Canadian and he's very successful. Maybe you could be his assistant.” Well, that's all it took, man.” I get up, gathered all the money I could, which was 80 bucks, [audience chuckle] bought a bus ticket, got ready to leave. And before I left, I wanted to say goodbye to my mother. And my father happened to be there at the house. They were getting divorced at the time. He learned about my plans, and he said, "You know what? I don't believe in what they're doing over there, but if they called me, I would go." 

 

Well, that's the difference between us, isn't it? I have the strength of my convictions. Didn't sit well with him. So, we didn't part on really good terms. But I was on the dog north. The last stop we had before we crossed over the border into Canada was Great Falls, Montana. We pulled into Great Falls late at night. I got off the bus bone weary, went to check into those hotels. And in the corner, there was a bar with a bunch of cowboys having a good time getting drunk. One of the cowboys looked up, "Hey, that looks like a draft dodger. You a draft dodger? You going to go to Canada? Well, you better not, because we're going to be here in the morning. We'll take care of your ass." 

 

So, I didn't spend quite so restful a night, and I came downstairs quietly early in the morning, looked around the corner and there were no cowboys there. I guess hangover trumped patriotism. [chuckles] So, I got back on the dog and entered Canada. Now, I had a picture of what I thought Canada was going to be like. It was going to be Sergeant Preston of the Yukon with a team of dogs and igloos and Nanook of the North. Man, went into Alberta, looked like Bakersfield, [audience laughter] except really cold. 

 

So, I met the guy, Edra Hanchuk. He had won this bicentennial exhibition award the year I got there. He was a famous potter. I became his assistant and I went to work right the day I met him. He said, "Okay, go start cleaning those bricks." And so, I worked my ass off cleaning those bricks and I worked my ass off every day. I did everything a potter should do. I dug clay, I wedged clay, I pugged clay, I wrapped clay, I just never threw clay because that was his job. I had to work my way up to it.

 

Eventually, I found a little cabin to live in by the river. It had electricity, had a pot-bellied stove. It didn't have any gas, it didn't have any running water. So, every day, I had to go down to the river for my water and I had to chop wood every single day. Chop wood, chop wood, chop wood. One night after work, I was out there chopping wood. It was already dark and I said, "Oh, man, this is bone weary." And out of nowhere, the northern lights appeared. They were aurora borealis and they surrounded me. I was standing in the middle of a cathedral of light with red, blue, yellow, green, orange, violet. And I thought, my God, I'll never be closer to nature than at this moment.

 

I went back to chopping wood, because that's what I did every day. It was the coldest winter in Alberta in 80 years. And there I was, 20 below, chopping wood. I realized at that point that I can survive anything, but I can always support myself, because I know how to work. I know how to work because I was taught how to work by-- So, I went back to chopping wood. So, I met a couple guys in town and they said, "Hey, you ever been skiing? Oh, yeah, we used to ski all the time in South Central, [audience laughter] they had some of the best hills around. Okay. Well, we're going to take you to Banff. We're going to teach you how to ski."

 

So, we rented some skis, went up on the hill, pointed me in a snow plow and said, "Okay, this is how you turn. This way for left, this way for right" and pushed me, right? I’m picking up speed. "Hey, this is cool, man. I look like the brown blur." [chuckles] This cool. The only thing they didn’t teach me how to do was stop. I’m going, I hit a bank, came down and broke my leg in half. [audience aww] In half, just like that. A compound fracture and I was in the hospital for a month. I was in a full-length cast with crutches for six months. 

 

So, when I got out of the hospital, my same friends said, "Hey, why don’t you come to Vancouver with us? It’s really cool there. That’s where we’re from." So, what the fuck? [audience chuckle] They had such good advice in the first place. [audience laughter] So, I went to Vancouver. It was like San Francisco of the time, except without the drumbeats of war and the protest. It was just peace and love and sex and girls and flowers and butterflies in Stanley Park and I had a ball. And sooner or later, I met this other guy that I had gone to school with. He was in Vancouver for the same reason. 

 

And he said, "You know, there’s this guy in Vancouver. He’s running this weird thing. It’s an improv company in a topless bar [audience chuckle] in Chinatown. Skid Row. You guys would have a lot in common." [audience laughter] So, that’s how I met Tommy Chong. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

He had come off the road with his band, and he had seen improv theater and that’s why what he wanted to do. But he wanted to keep the topless girls at the same time, you know, because we needed customers. And so, we started doing topless improv. [audience chuckle] What it was, hippie burlesque. That’s what we’re doing. We owned the club, so we could do anything. We did four hours of naked improv every single night. [audience laughter] 

 

So, at the end of nine months, the troupe dissolved because all the members wanted to go to the hills to get their head together. My head was together. My pocketbook wasn’t together. So, I said, "Well, we got to make a living doing this. So, why don’t we just compact what we’re doing in this troupe into two guys, and we’ll go be a comedy team and we’ll go conquer the world." "Yeah, sounds good. We could go to LA, where it was warm. I knew everybody and it would be fun. Only one problem. I was wanted by the FBI at the time. [audience laughter] They were always coming around my mother’s house, according to her, seeing if I was there.”

 

Oh, God, how are we going to get back into the country? "Hey, I got a brilliant idea. I’ll just borrow a phony ID. Can you imagine that [chuckles] doing that today?" So, I did. I borrowed my friend Bill Nora's driver's license with a picture of Bill Knorr on it. [audience laughter] So, I went up to the immigration guy at the airport. "Hi" and I held it up like that. "Hi, I'm Bill Knorr. I'm going down to LA to do some interviews." He looked at the picture and looked at me. We were both dark. He says, "Well, welcome to the US." And I was in. [chuckles] Wow.

 

But still, I was still wanted and they were still coming around. So, I said, "What am I going to do?" Every time we go on stage, Tommy would say, "Hey, you know he's wanted by the FBI." [whispers] "Shut the--" [audience laughter] He's just kidding. That's not funny. And then, another miracle happened. There was an announcement in the paper that my case, along with 600 others, went to the Supreme Court. It was a class action about that illegal drafting. The case got thrown out. And so, now we're not-- [audience applause] 

 

We were not felons. So, the government tried to redraft me the next day, [audience chuckle] three years later. They sent me a notice for physical. [sighs] So, I sent a Banff for my X-rays and went down to the induction center to stand in my underwear with my X-rays, along with a bunch of other guys. The doctor comes out smoking a cigarette, looks at me. "Hey, you with a leg. Come over here." Takes me into his office. "These are X-rays?" "Oh, yeah.” “Well, you have about a 13-degree distortion in your leg. This is going to come as bad news, but you're not fit to be in the Army. [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

 

I know it probably breaks your heart, but you're 4-F'ed. Lucky break." [audience laughter] That's what the doctor said. [chuckles] Lucky break. And yes, sir, it was a lucky break. So, now I was free. I got free to do anything I wanted to do. Went to see my mom. "How you doing? Everything--" but had one last chore. I had to go see my dad. So, I took my buddy along with me for moral support, and we drove over to his house where he was living with his new wife.

 

I walked up on the porch. Before I knocked on the door, I could see him in the kitchen. He was in there and he was cooking, towel over his shoulder. I stood there for as long as I could until he saw me outside. "Mm, come in." He hadn't seen me for three years or we talked. Not one word, not a letter, nothing. So, I walked in there and he looked me up and down for a long time. "So, you hungry?" "Yeah." "Mm. Sit down." So, he sat down and then he didn't say another word for a long time. He looked at me and said, "So, what have you been up to?" "Oh, you know, just working." "Yeah." "Well, you know how to do that." I said, "Yeah, I do. Thanks." [chuckles] Thank you.