Smokin’ Hot: Cheech Marin on Film, Art, and Life
What pops into your mind when you hear the name Cheech Marin?
The sidesplitting humor of a stoner smoking the biggest doobie you ever saw? Inspector Joe Dominguez cruising San Francisco in Nash Bridges’ über-cool, lemon-yellow Hemi Barracuda? Or do you chuckle at memories of Cheech as the debonair Ignacio Messina chasing Tyne Daly around the “Judging Amy” set?
It turns out there is much more to Mr. Marin when the smoke clears. Always a man whose creative energies are on “vibrate,” he has two new books out:
Papel Chicano Dos: Works on Paper from the Collection of Cheech Marin (October 2016), is both a book and a traveling art exhibit. It presents 65 artworks by 24 established and emerging Chicano artists. Their work demonstrates a myriad of techniques from watercolor and aquatint to pastel and mixed media and dates from the late 1980s. The publication showcases iconic imagery with influences ranging from pre-Hispanic symbols and post-revolutionary nationalistic Mexican motifs to the 1960s Chicano movement and contemporary urban culture.
Cheech Is Not My Real Name . . . But Don’t Call Me Chong! (2017) is the long-awaited autobiography for fans eager to read all about the twists and turns of this highly idiosyncratic, talented man of Hollywood. Reviewers from Publishers Weekly to Anderson Cooper reveal mainstream appreciation for an entertaining story well told:
Bookended by looks at his youth growing up poor in South Central Los Angeles and his development as a now well-known collector of Chicano art, this memoir is a fun, wacky look inside Marin’s imagination. — Publishers Weekly
I still can’t believe I lost Celebrity Jeopardy to Cheech Marin! Had I read this book first, I would have known that besides being funny, he is smart, thoughtful and wicked fast on the buzzer. — Anderson Cooper
One lesser known fact about Cheech Marin that drew me to interview him is that he is a man high on art. Throughout his years as an actor, comedian, musician, director, writer, and producer of salsas habañeras, he has been a serious connoisseur of Chicano art, with more than 300 pieces in his private collection. In 2005, he inspired and created Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge, a highly acclaimed art exhibition that introduced a broader cross section of the American public to this unique school of art, demonstrating its dazzling interpretations of classic techniques and its more inclusive aesthetic of the human condition.
More than an estimated 1.2 million people viewed the exhibition—and I can testify it was radiant, filled with life, and emblematic of a culture rich in history and heart (see selected images below). Marin’s collection blends what is quintessentially Mexican with a dash of North American seasoning and a splash of Latin attitude. The art that arises out of this heritage is as vibrant, as biting, as a fresh pico de gallo with extra jalapeño. As Marin puts it, “Chicano art is an experience, not a style.”
From its birth in the hot, sweaty grape fields of central California, where Carlos Almarez painted signs for the United Farm Workers, to the GRONK retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1993, Marin says, “the Chicano school of painting has always been about reinterpreting a culture. It is at once diverse yet unified, profane and spiritual, traditional and avant-garde.” Many of the early artists have evolved from a strictly political agenda to work reflecting more personal concerns.
