Cheech & Chong have been heroes to me ever since 1971…so much so that I made a student film of the DAVES NOT HERE sketch when I was in Cinema & Photography at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois! I was a Junior & had access to the C&P sound film studio that was a State-of-the-Art brand new soundstage that was designed & built to be right out of a Hollywood film production studio and was a dream that had come to life for this 20 year old student filmmaker. In fact, as we wrote the script, my partner (he was the money man…AND/OR the Producer of our film) continued to become more & more involved and convinced that this could become a very important film…so-much-so that he procured Eclair film cameras and Niagra audio tape recorders for the best picture & sound quality that was available in the mid 1970’s that was available through a film rental company in St Louis. And the payoff was an A- for both of us…the only A grades that he provided and it was our film! And that was the payoff! The film was shown on a professional projector that ran the film through and the tape soundtrack was run through on the other side of the projector that the separate audio track was synced with the actual edited film footage. We shot it on 35mm film stock which looked so good, we sent a 16mm version out to Cheech & Chong…and I kept a duplicate 16mm version with the soundtrack tape synced to the film…and I still possess that DAVES NOT HERE 16mm version of our student film‼️