To say that Cheech Marin's career has been schizophrenic is putting it politely. To his older fans, he's best known for his R-Rated work with Cheech & Chong, the TV show Nash Bridges, and such movies as Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn. But to his younger fans, he's best known for such G- and PG-Rated fare as The Lion King and the Spy Kids movies. So it should surprise no one that Marin is doing voices in both Cars, the new Pixar movie and corresponding THQ video game, and Scarface: The World Is Yours, the Vivendi Universal game based on the classic movie. Which is why, polite, we spoke to him recently about both sides.

GameSpy: What was it about Cars, and the character they wanted you to play, Ramone, that got you interested in doing the movie?
Cheech Marin: Well I loved that it was a low-rider, a '59 Chevy, which is one year off my ideal car, a '58. That was the first year they had tail fins. And the fact that he was going to be a lover. But it was mostly because of [Cars director] John Lasseter. I just really admire his work; I think he's a great director. I've wanted to work with him ever since he did Toy Story. As it turns out, he's a fan of mine, and actually came to a play I was doing in San Francisco to tell me he had a part for me.
GameSpy: Do you have a favorite Pixar movie?
CM: The first Toy Story. By far.
GameSpy: So you think it's all been downhill since then?
CM: No. Heh heh heh. I really loved the script. I think it was the best script of any movie that year. It was so well-written, and the characters were well-developed -- it was a very intelligent script.
GameSpy: When John Lasseter first told you that he wanted you to play a low rider, did you ever think it was just kind of too obvious to have you play that part?

CM: I didn't think about it. I mean, who else would you get to play a low rider but me? It's like, who better to play a stoned Volkswagen van than George Carlin?
GameSpy: At what point in the process did they ask you to be Ramone in the video game as well?
CM: From the beginning. It's just par for the course these days. It was when they came to the talking cereal that I said, hmmmm…
GameSpy: How did doing Ramone's voice for the game differ from doing his voice for the movie? Did you have more flexibility to improvise?
CM: It was about the same amount. There were some things they wanted me to say because of the way the script was planned out, but there were times when they'd ask me if I had another way to say something.
GameSpy: While Cars has you doing a character in a game after having done them in a movie, you've also done voices for games without movies like Blazing Dragons in 1996 and the upcoming Scarface: The World Is Yours. Is it harder or easier to do a character after you've done their voice for a movie already?
CM: It's the same. It doesn't seem to really make a difference.