Cheech Marin reflecting outside of The Cheech (photo by David Fouts)
WHEN YOU TALK to Los Angeles-born actor Cheech Marin, regardless of how serious the subject, you can’t help but smile. His pop-culture presence is infused with an astute awareness of politics and history, and a “can do, make do, find a way to move ahead” spirit he connects to the word “Chicano,” a derogatory term that came to signify resilience, creative thinking, and social consciousness. “My dad, who died at age 93, always described himself as a Chicano, because it described him,” says Marin.
Born in 1946, and perhaps best known as one half of the stoner comedy duo Cheech and Chong, Marin has enjoyed a long career as an actor in such hit television shows as Nash Bridges and voicing characters in several Disney films. This week, he’s in town for the Houston Latino Film Festival (Mar 20-24) screening of The Long Game, which premiered at South by Southwest and is scheduled to be released theatrically on April 12, 2024. Marin has a small role in the film.
Set in Texas in 1955, the film is based on the true story of the Del Rio Mustangs, five young Mexican American caddies at a “whites only” country club, who created their own golf course in the middle of the South Texas desert, taught themselves how to play using discarded clubs, and went on the become the 1957 Texas state champions. (The history of the Del Rio Mustangs is recounted in the book Mustang Miracle by Humberto Garcia.) Directed by Julio Quintana, the cast includes Dennis Quaid, Jay Hernandez, and Marin in the supporting role as Pollo, a shellshocked World War I vet who works at the country club where the story takes place, and wears a cage shaped into a suit of armor over his body to protect himself while retrieving balls on the driving range. “It’s his metaphor for protection against the outside world,” says Marin of his character’s costume. Marin’s father served in World War II as a radio man on a PBY (Patrol Bomber), and like a lot of men and women at that time, did not have the language or tools to heal from the trauma of their experience. “My father went right from being in the Navy to being a policeman for 30 years,” says Marin. “Which has its trauma every day.”
Golf was a passion of Marin’s for many years until back issues forced him to give up the game. “I love my memories of golf,” says Marin ruefully. “It’s a very demanding game because you can never master it. You can only get better.”
In recent years, Marin has become one of the world’s foremost collectors of Chicano art, and in 2022, opened The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture (known as “The Cheech”). Some of the artists on view at The Cheech donated artworks to the auction for Rothko Chapel’s recent Inspirit fundraiser gala, where Marin joined 2023 Art League of Houston Texas Artist of the Year Vincent Valdez and legendary civil rights advocate Dolores Huerta for an onstage conversation about art and activism. “I love the art, and I’m an inveterate collector of a lot of things,” says Marin. “The fact that these painters weren’t getting their due added to the excitement of collecting what was out there.”
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Emmanuel Ax (photo by Nigel Parry)
IT STARTS OFF with a bang: a triumphant C major chord, its root, third, and fifth voiced across the entire orchestra. It’s as if you came home from a long day at work, entered your home to find the lights out then suddenly on, and a group of fashionable 18th-century Viennese men and women shouting in unison: “Surprise!”
Welcome to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25, a long and winding journey through high-stepping rhythms, unexpected key changes, judicious use of pauses and silence, and melodies that unspool with an uncanny inevitability. On March 22, 23 and 24, celebrated pianist Emanuel Ax will perform the concerto with the Houston Symphony, on a program that includes Beethoven’s “Eroica,” a.k.a. Symphony No. 3, and Missy Mazzoli’s These Worlds In Us, a uniquely orchestrated tone poem inspired by James Tate’s The Lost Pilot and dedicated to Mazzoli’s father, a veteran of the Vietnam war.
Before taking the stage with the HSO, Ax will play a free recital on March 21 at MD Anderson Cancer Center, as part of the center’s free Music-in-Medicine Concerts in the Park series. The title of the program is The Art of Musical Healing: A Piano Recital and is part of the center’s Music-in-Medicine Initiative, which explores how listening to music improves health and wellness. (In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ax volunteered his time to perform virtually for MD Anderson’s ICU patients on Zoom.)
Although he hasn’t investigated the specific medical and psychological benefits of playing and listening to music, Ax describes the Music-in-Medicine program, a selection of Beethoven sonatas, as “ennobling and hopeful.” “He had a dreadful life in so many ways,” says Ax, “and yet he turned out music that was just hopeful. I think his music is very life-affirming.”
Ax, who is 74, vividly remembers playing the Mozart concerto at the Mostly Mozart festival in 1975 but blanks out when asked if he was happy with his performance. “I hope it was all right!” laughs Ax. “I’m not a good judge of myself. I assume most of the time I don’t play very well.”
But isn’t Mozart fun to play?
“It’s quite scary,” says Ax. “The music is unbelievably wonderful, but there’s not a lot of room for error.” He recalls F. Murray Abraham as Antonio Salieri in the 1984 film Amadeus describing Mozart’s music. (“Displace one note, and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase, and the structure would fall.”) “You have to get things quite right, and it’s just hard to do,” says Ax. “But the music is so great, it’s worth it to keep trying.”
Ax responds with an adamant “No!” when asked if he’s grown tired of playing Mozart and compares his relationship with the music to his own marriage of 50 years. “It’s like what you feel about anything else that you love,” says Ax. “It’s not that you feel more deeply or differently about your partner. You see different things. I’m still in love, but just in a different way. That’s how I feel about Mozart too.”
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