Cheech & Chong Light Up Austin for Documentary Film Screening at SXSW

March 18, 2024

The large joint and Cheech & Chong at the Paramount Theatre in Austin

Cheech & Chong brought their zany act to Austin last week for the premiere of Cheech and Chong's Last Movie, a documentary by David Bushell, at the SXSW Film & TV Festival.

The fun began Monday night, March 11, when the duo made a surprise appearance at C-Boys Heart and Soul, a club on S. Congress Ave. Tommy Chong strapped on a guitar and Cheech Marin belted out his famous song from Next Movie, "Mexican Americans," certainly appropriate for the location.

The next day, March 12, the movie screened that afternoon. A flatbed truck with a huge smoking joint parked out front of the Paramount Theatre on Congress Ave. a quarter mile from the Statehouse. Note that consumption and sales of medical and adult-use cannabis are illegal in Texas.

Tommy Chong: "We're going to keep the Cheech & Chong legacy alive. I envision us being the box-office kings for the next couple of years."

Austin Chronicle reviewer Jessi Capi posted about the movie:

Clocking in around two hours, Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie is a tad lengthy with its very detailed timeline, but it held the audience’s attention anyway. Some of us had partaken, which probably helped...

Cheech & Chong were stand-up icons with platinum-selling albums, awards and sold-out shows. They won hearts, inspired sedated minds and became high-profile faces of counterculture...

Much of Last Movie is dedicated to the “plot” of these two groundbreaking artists, and I wish the film spent less runtime on a goofy script and more on creativity and external sources explaining their lasting impact on film and cannabis culture. Still, it’s a great watch, a radical time capsule to be cherished.

Austin.com's Lola Hagopian called Cheech & Chong "the quintessential comedy duo of the hippie generation."