Now I had a big hit movie and I expected the gates to go flying open.
Universal (under that new leadership) said it loved what I was doing so I sent them my next script called Born Again. My character’s face appears on a tortilla and all kind of miraculous things happen. I sent it in at the same time that they released Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. The movie caused an uproar of negative reaction among the religious community.
The upshot was that my script came flying back like a boomerang. They didn’t want to have anything to do with anything even remotely religious. My script was not at all religious, but it didn’t matter. They passed on my script, but they sent me a script about a policeman with a dog as a partner. I passed because I didn’t want to do anything dog-oriented. Both reasons made about as much sense. I would soon have to eat my words.
As I waited around for something to happen with Born Again, I decided that maybe it was the title that was throwing them. I changed it to Angel of Oxnard. Still no green light.
Out of the blue, I got a call from my agent that Disney wanted me to audition for the role of Tito, a Chihuahua, in their new animated film, Oliver and Company. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the new head of animation at Disney, had been a driving force for Up in Smoke at Paramount. The director was George Scribner, who had been raised in Panama and spoke Spanish.
I arrived at the recording studio and George handed me some pages and the direction that Tito was full of energy. Never having done animation before, I didn’t know exactly what tone to set. I read the lines and everybody kind of smiled and thanked me for coming.
I got out into the parking lot and I thought, That sucked! I was pissed off at myself for what I thought was a blown opportunity. I couldn’t remember the last time I had done an audition.
I marched right back into the studio and went right up to George and said, “I sucked. Can I do it again?”
George smiled and said, “Sure give it a go.” Then he said, “Play it like Tito has one finger in an electrical socket.”
That was all I needed, and I went for it full bore. Immediately, I could see everybody in the room light up. The writers started throwing out new lines and then writing more.
After half an hour, I couldn’t talk, my voice was so worn out. But everybody was laughing and nodding their heads. George said, “We start recording in about a month. See you then!”
For the next year and a half, I recorded the voice of Tito. Every week the writers produced new scenes for Tito and Georgette, the French poodle voiced by Bette Midler. Finally, I had a romance in a movie, even though it was “doggie style.”
My part kept growing and growing (get it?) until I was in the whole movie. I came out of every session worn to a frazzle, barely able to speak. When Oliver and Company was finally released, it was a huge success and I received glowing reviews. David Ansen wrote in Newsweek: “And best of all, Cheech Marin as the lecherous, jive Chihuahua named Tito. ‘Check it ooouut!’ advises the swaggering Tito, and you should, if only to see this hairless Hispanic mutt enter the Disney cartoon Hall of Fame.”
Disney was just beginning an unprecedented string of animated movie triumphs that totally redefined what the art of animation was all about. After Oliver and Company, they released The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the biggest one of all, The Lion King.
I was honored with a role in The Lion King, the part of Banzai, one of the three hyenas, along with Whoopi Goldberg and Jim Cummings. Three years earlier, while riding a ski lift with Jeff Katzenberg in Deer Valley, Utah, he told me, “I’m going to put you in this animated movie. Whoopi Goldberg’s gonna do it. I’ll let you know.”
Three years later I’m in a studio in Burbank. Proud as hell to be there. Chong, so I’m told, turned down the part of the other hyena, because he didn’t want to work for Disney and betray his ideals… or some fucking Tommy shit.
To be part of that process was one of the most pleasurable experiences of my life. I had a ringside seat at the construction of a movie classic. The animators would show me various drawings from studies they made drawing me while I was recording.
At first I thought, OK, this is going to be cute. But as I saw progressive drawings, I started to change my mind fast. When I saw video footage of how the animation would look, I was blown away. This was a whole new realm. It is extremely hard to make something that everybody loves. Everybody loves The Lion King. And for anyone that doesn’t, your kids will make you love it, playing after playing after playing.
The promotional tour was once-in-a-lifetime material. The first time I saw the completed movie was in Washington, DC. When the musical number “Hakuna Matata” came on, I turned to Whoopi and asked who was singing.
Whoopi, who knew a lot about the world of Broadway actors, said it was Nathan Lane.
Nathan Lane is a force of nature in this movie. I am thoroughly entertained whenever Timon is on the screen.
I was in geek heaven when they did a rack focus on a safari shot in the plains. Rack focus is a camera term for when the focus of the lens is thrown from the foreground to the background… or vice versa. It is a very useful and fairly common technique but I had never seen it in an animated film. It was like some film barrier had been crossed and animators were gaining the respect that they so fully deserved.
The party that night was at the National Zoo. I don’t know how they did it but they got the lions to roar pretty much throughout the night. If I was a dude in the jungle and I heard that sound, I would automatically think, I am going to die.
The next day we were at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. All my friends in New York came, and their kids went gaga over all the glam at the opening. I really felt that I was involved in something historic.
When we went to Orlando to do a big two-day international press tour, I took my young son Joey with me. We opened the door to our large two-bedroom suite to see three rooms filled with Lion King and other Disney merchandise. There were stuffed animals, video games, toys, candy, and everything else that Disney made, filling every corner of the suite. Joey found out that he could order any movie and had twenty-four-hour room service. He turned to me and said, “Dad, this is living.”
To this day, there are multiple stage productions of The Lion King playing all over the world, and it has been a mainstay attraction on Broadway for many years. I was thrilled to be involved. For the young generations that don’t know who I am, all I have to do is say, “We’ll eat whatever’s ‘lioning’ around!” and they instantly recognize my voice.
What I came to realize was that animation was what I was trained to do. Cheech and Chong records were animation without the animation. I also realized that an animated voice has to be bigger than life. You are trying to match a large cartoon character, and a conversational voice will not cut it. You cannot go over the top because there is no top to go over. The bigger, the better.
Around this time, Pixar Animation Studio began to be a huge creative and commercial force with the release of Toy Story, directed by John Lasseter. In my opinion, it had by far the best script of 1995.
Eventually, Disney bought Pixar and merged it with Disney Animation Studios, and John Lasseter became the head of both companies. Anyway, I was overjoyed to be asked by John to voice the character Ramone, the 1958 Chevy Impala lowrider, in the megahit Cars. “Low and Slow” was his motto. Cars, of course, was a gigantic commercial and critical success and threw off more merchandising than any movie ever made. Ramone also appeared in Cars 2 and Cars 3.
Another good memory from this period is from the making of The Lion King soundtrack. Whoopi and I went into a studio and said the line “Yeah, we’ll be prepared!” in one or two takes. That line was added as background to a song on the soundtrack. We were paid the regular royalty rate. But since the soundtrack sold 15 million copies, that fifteen minutes of work earned me mucho dinero.
Animation has been berry, berry good to me.