CHONG 'LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO TALK TO'

Co-Pioneer Of Stoner Movie Genre Still Smokin' And Rehashing Pot Head
Notoriety

You might think that three decades after Tommy Chong pioneered the
stoner movie genre with Cheech Marin in Up in Smoke, Canada's Prince
of Pot would be tired of, pardon the pun, rehashing his reputation as
a famous pothead.

"No, not at all. I'm not tired of talking, period," laughs the
Edmonton-born cannabis comic, still smokin' after all these years.
"When you get to my age, man, you look for people to talk to."

Chong, 70, was in the news again last week when Cheech and Chong,
Hollywood's original stoners, announced they would reunite for Hey,
What's That Smell?, their first comedy tour in 25 years. It was
perfect timing, what with the renaissance in stoner flicks: Pineapple
Express, the Harold and Kumar movies, Knocked Up, Dude, Where's My
Car? and so on.

The counter-culture funnyman was certainly happier than the last time
he made headlines: He was busted for selling hand-blown glass bongs to
an undercover agent back in 2003.

Although he maintains he did nothing wrong, he said he pleaded guilty
so the feds wouldn't go after Shelby, his wife of 33 years, and his
son Paris, partners in the family's Chong Glass. He figures his
nine-month jail sentence might have had to do with his quip to the
press that the only weapons of mass destruction George W. Bush was
able to find were his bongs.

His ordeal was chronicled in a.k.a. Tommy Chong, Josh Gilbert's 2006
documentary just released on DVD. It paints Chong as a civil-liberties
activist targeted by those who wrongly assumed he and his pothead
persona were one and the same.

He insists that rather than glamorizing drug use, he was
affectionately satirizing the culture of do-nothing potheads.

Is he worried the DVD release of a.k.a. Tommy Chong will put him back
on the authorities' radar? Not at all, says the comic best known to a
younger generation as Leo, the aging hippie, on Fox's That '70s Show.

"I never worried about it when I was in jail because I didn't do
anything wrong," Chong says. "They're the ones who have to suffer the
karma and it's coming down on them. I'm just laughing at it."

Besides, he says, there's safety in numbers. He rattles off a list of
famous dope-smokers: Norman Mailer, Louis Armstrong ("the biggest
pothead, he smoked every day"), architect Frank Gehry and Montel
Williams ("because he has MS, he has to").

He says it's no coincidence some of the most notorious stoners are
geniuses. "Some of my biggest heroes in the entertainment business
smoke pot. I'm in good company."

In his perfect world, Chong jokes, there would be drug tests for great
inventors, just as there are when accidents occur. "Like when they
invented the computer," he says, mimicking a law enforcer: "Were you
high on pot when you invented this?"

He admits he's on a natural high now that the creative differences
that caused his split with Marin, 62, in the 1980s are up in smoke.