Cheech Marin was particularly upset when Tommy Chong refused to participate in recording “Born in East L.A.” The song went on to be adapted into a movie starring Cheech without Chong, an experience Marin later described in an interview with CBS News as “kick[ing] off the rest of my life,” as Chong had directed all eight of the movies they made together. Marin remembered Chong’s egotistical behavior, noting, “He was the creative genius, and I was the actor and I was lucky to be there — uh, I don’t think so.” 

Tommy Chong eventually agreed with Cheech Marin’s assessment of the situation. In a 2020 interview with All Out Show, he called his current relationship with Marin “great.” He also noted that he had been “really really hurt” by their break, but admitted it was “probably [his] fault” as he had become “a bit of a megalomaniac when it came to the movies.” After “stewing around the house for a couple of years,” Chong was inspired to get back into comedy after seeing a Dennis Miller show one New Year’s Eve. He would eventually reunite with Marin, and the two occasionally make appearances as a duo. In 2018 they appeared on The Late Show with Steven Colbert, per Yahoo, and announced that they’d stopped doing stoner comedy now that marijuana was so socially acceptable. They joked that they’d be concentrating on more controversial topics such as unpasteurized dairy products and importing exotic reptiles. Far out, man.