11 minute read
Cheech Marin Shines Light on Chicano Art
Cheech Marin, courtesy of the Riverside Art Museum
The Cheech Marin Museum of Chicano Art and Culture opened on June 18, 2022
Richard “Cheech” Marin (Cal State/Northridge ’68) fondly remembers his Phi Sig days on the campus of what was then known as San Fernando Valley State College. The Xi Pentaton Chapter started as a local fraternity, Sigma Phi Beta. The group wished to join a national organization and felt Phi Sigma Kappa would be a good fit.
Most members of the chapter came from one of two high schools in the area and were part of the same car club. At the time, they asked themselves, “What do we call a car club in college? Well, we’re a fraternity,” he joked. “Do we still get jackets?” He enjoyed the brotherhood within the group and still stays in touch with some members, especially since he also attended high school with them.
“I keep running into guys who were either Phi Sigs nationally or from my own house, and it’s really a good feeling to have those people still, in a small way, part of your life and still keep in contact. It makes for a great fraternity.”
He started as a political science major because his father wanted him to be a lawyer. However, he switched majors after a year and chose English. He was an avid reader and writer and thought an English degree would cover a “multitude of sins. You can go anywhere from there.”
Brother Marin’s father was a police officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, and he attended a Catholic high school. He said he was pretty sheltered, but his roommates were from LA, so “they were hip to the jive.” When he left for college and encountered the social aspect, he realized that “off the leash was good.”
He remembers the parties—he felt the chapter threw the best parties because they had a hot house band The Leaves, with a hit song, “Hey Joe.”
“All of the fraternities and especially the sororities wanted to come to our parties. We had a hot band that had a hit record on the charts.” He also said the chapter was well-rounded and good in both academics and athletics.
He said from the age of 11 or 12 he wanted to be in show business, but not necessarily a comedian. He is an actor, director, writer, musician, and art collector. He is a multi-generational star.
The Xi Pentaton reunion featured a book signing by Brother Marin.
With his partner, Tommy Chong, Brother Marin built a successful career in stand-up comedy in Vancouver, Canada. Up in Smoke, however, was the catalyst to the duo’s fame. They had been a counter-culture comedy team for about 10 years before they started reworking some of their material for their first film. The movie is now considered a cult classic.
Widely acknowledged as a cultural icon, Brother Marin notes, “Isn’t that interesting how the counterculture became the culture? Tommy and I used to say we were middle-of-the-road dopers. We just didn’t know what middle-of-the-road was. Marijuana cuts through every single segment of society.”
The pair met in the late 1960s and performed stand-up shows. Before they were Cheech and Chong, they performed with a small improvisational theater in a topless bar. With the group of comedians and strippers, he says it was classic burlesque, which could have been described as “hippie burlesque.”
The duo then released many successful comedy albums. Some of their best-known routines include “Earache My Eye,” “Basketball Jones,” “Santa Claus and His Old Lady,” and “Sister Mary Elephant.” Six of their albums went gold, four were nominated for Grammys, and Los Cochinos won the 1973 Grammy for Best Comedy Recording.
They made the transition to movies, starring in several together, the first being Up in Smoke. Brother Marin has appeared in more than 20 other films, including Tin Cup. He also made appearances in several sitcoms before joining Don Johnson on the CBS drama Nash Bridges.
In the 1980s, the pair split over creative differences and spent years on separate career paths. Brother Marin’s Born in East L.A., a parody of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A., was a huge hit. He jumped on the chance to write, direct, and star in a movie based on the song.
He never regretted his career choice, but at times asked himself, “How can I have a big hit and then can’t get arrested?” After Born in East L.A., Brother Marin started turning down offers from studios because they weren’t the type of movies he wanted
to make. He asked himself, “How do you reinvent yourself in order to be palatable for a bigger audience? The answer was animation. I started getting offered animation jobs. That was the turning point.”
He compared his relationship with Tommy Chong to Sonny and Cher. “How do you become anything other than Cheech in Cheech and Chong? How do you become anything other than Sonny and Cher? How did she do it? How did she just become Cher? Took any job, took any job that didn’t have Sonny in it, first of all. And I took any job that didn’t have a big joint in it.”
He says “animation was the perfect spot. And I started working with Disney.” He said Tommy Chong had no desire to work for Disney, so he thought, “OK, I’ll do Lion King on my own.” He has provided his voice to Tito the Chihuahua in Oliver & Company, Banzai the hyena in The Lion King, and Ramone in all three Cars movies, along with several other productions.
Brother Marin said he always knew he would work with Tommy again. There was a “clash of egos,” so he never thought they would do a movie, but stage work was a definite possibility. With stage work, “They either laughed, or they didn’t laugh. If they laughed, it was funny, it stayed in the show. If they didn’t laugh, see you later. That was the only thing we didn’t argue about.” It wasn’t easy because “there was still a lot of resentment” on both sides.
“As soon as we got on stage, all of that disappeared.” Without even one day of rehearsal, they performed perfectly when they reunited in 2008, after more than 20 years apart.
Of Brother Marin’s accomplishments, he is particularly proud of the June 18 opening of The Cheech Marin Museum of Chicano Art and Culture, a public-private partnership between the Riverside Art Museum, the City of Riverside, and Brother Marin. Cheech is one of the world’s foremost collectors of Chicano art. Since the mid-1980s, he has amassed a renowned private collection of Chicano art, the largest in North America. “The Cheech” will be the center of Chicano art, not only for painting, but for sculpture, photography, and video arts.
The center will provide a permanent home for more than 700 paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures by artists including Patssi Valdez, Sandy Rodriguez, Carlos Almaraz, Frank Romero, Judithe Hernandez, and Gilbert “Magu” Lujan. A significant portion of this collection will always be exhibited and can continue to be toured at venues across the nation and throughout the world. The square footage of the building is 66,420 feet — he says that obviously, “it was meant to be.” He is grateful “to have this illustration of the creative soul of Chicano culture for everybody to see in a beautiful setting. If you wanted a place to absolutely showcase every one of these paintings, this building is it.”
Students and faculty from five local colleges and universities will research and learn about the finest private collection of Chicano art in the country.
Brother Marin is self-educated in art from a very early age. He had a group of cousins who were successful in academics, and they were each assigned a subject to learn about and bring back to the group. He became very knowledgeable in western art. He started going to museums. He says, “You have to see paintings in person. When you see paintings in person, you get it.” He then got into a position where he could buy art and he knew what to look for. At the same time, he discovered Chicano painters. He wondered why they didn’t have shelf space in museums and used his celebrity to bring these artists to a broader audience.
Brother Marin said he had always been a collector of something — marbles, baseball cards, stamps, matchbook covers, etc. He had a method of gathering and codifying items even before he started collecting Chicano art. He discovered that many of the masterpieces of Chicano art were still available. He began purchasing and was so dedicated that at times he was even paid in Chicano art.
Much of his art had been in storage prior to the opening of the museum. “You’re not really a collector until you have storage.”
Many friends told him that he had to start displaying his art. He then went through the process of gathering sponsors. It was very political at the time because no museum director wanted to put themselves out there to officially sanction Chicano art. There was a debate among some that Chicano art could only be political art.
Americans of Mexican descent popularized Chicano art—which came to be known as “the art of struggle, protest, and identity,”—in the late 1960s, according to the museum. The Chicano movement heavily influenced artists, who were often civil rights activists. Artists used their works to advocate for a number of human rights’ issues, including political representation, farmworker rights, and education reform.
Brother Marin enjoyed time with Roberto Lemus (Cal State/Northridge ’06) at the chapter’s reunion last fall.
He persisted because he wanted Chicano art to be recognized in mainstream circles. He solicited sponsors and Target and Hewlett Packard provided the seed money for a tour. The first show was in San Antonio and his collection has been shown in more than 50 museums since then. That accomplishment is unheard of in the art world. Most museums do not want to show private collections.
Brother Marin was the first Celebrity Jeopardy champion in 1992. He played in the Million Dollar Celebrity Invitational in 2010 and defeated Anderson Cooper and Aisha Tyler. He said Cooper “was so rattled by that. He came in at the break and looked like he had just been hit by a truck.” Over the years, he has admitted that he “underestimated me and who would have thought this low-rider doper would kick my ass?” Cooper has been a good friend since then. Cheech eventually lost in the final to Michael McKean.
Brother Marin attended a Xi Pentaton reunion last fall and was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the chapter. The plaque pronounces the award is presented to Cheech “For his lifetime dedication in the local Los Angeles Community and serving as a role model for many young first-generation college students attending California State University, Northridge.” The award is proudly displayed, along with the Medallion of Merit he received from the Grand Chapter in 2005.
When asked what advice he would give to current undergraduates, he said, “Have your activities together and have them well-attended. Make them fun and contribute to the university at the same time. That will go a long way to working with the university. Consider it like the city that you live in. Anything you can do to bring help, focus, bring programs to the city, in this case, the university—participate in that process. He also advised having good parties—“How else are you going to meet girls?”
Who are Today’s Students?
Today’s students come from all walks of life, bringing unique strengths and needs. They are parents, working adults, veterans, online students, and first-generation college-goers, following new pathways through higher education. They need a system that is flexible, affordable, and responsive to their needs.
Quick Facts on Today’s Students
Get up to speed on who today’s students really are with these need-to-know data points.
Attendance
Adult Learners: 34% of today’s students are older than 25. Part-Time Students: 39% of students are part-time. First-Generation Students: 56% of undergraduates are the first in their families to attend college.
Family and Finances
Low-Income Students: 31% are at or below the federal poverty level. Independent Students: 49% of students are financially independent. Student Parents: 22% of students are raising children while studying.
Diversity
Students of Color: Between 1996 and 2020, African-American enrollment grew by 72% Hispanic enrollment grew by 240%
Life and Work
Working Students: 64% of students work while in college. Veterans: More than 340,000 post-9/11 veterans have used G.I. Bill benefits to complete their degrees. Commuters: Only 16% of students live on campus.
The traditional path to college was straightforward and linear: a student would finish high school and immediately start studying at a four-year college or trade school, enter the workforce, or join the military.
Instead of going to, and finishing college directly after high school, many of today’s students are returning to get additional education and training while working and raising families or changing careers.
Published by 2022 Today’s Students Coalition
For more information on the Fraternity’s DEI initiative,
please contact DEI Committee Chair Darald Stubbs at daraldstubbs@gmail.com.
