There's nothing straight about this movie. But here's the dope anyway: Cheech and Chong make their film debut in this riotous rock'n'roll comedy, bringing with them the same madness, lifestyles and sketches that sold over 10 million records in the early '70s. Cheech and Chong's marijuana-laced humor keeps their spirits high and leads them to an outrageous finale at L.A.'s Roxy Theatre, where Cheech performs in a pink tutu and Chong dresses as a large red quaalude. It will make you feel very funny.
Za ten film i za cala aktorska dzialalnosc "gloryfikowania marihuany", jak to uwaza amerykanska DEA, Chong odsiedzial w wiezieniu 9 miesiecy. Powstal z tego dokumentalny film o tym "najwolniejszym" panstwie swiata USA. Film pt. "a/k/a Tommy Chong" stal sie gwiazda programu odbywajacego sie obecnie w Toronto Miedzynarodowego Festiwalu Filmow.
Amerykanscy carowie wojny antymarihuanowej, permanentnej wojny wzorujacej sie na ideach Trockiego, chca wykonczyc tworcow konopnej kontrkultury (Chong) i ideologii (Emery) wsadzajac ich do wiezienia. Bo tylko tak potrafia w swoich niewolniczych umyslach. Sa zaprogramowani propaganda "reefer madness", zrodzonej w rasistowskiej Ameryce.
Dla mnie wolnosciwca, pieknym symbolem mojej kolebki wolnosci, bylby festiwal filmow w usteckim kinie "Delfin". Caly filmowy dorobek Cheecha i Chonga + dwa filmy dokumentalne ("Grass", "a/k/a Tommy Chong"). Ci Ustczanie, ktorzy mnie czytaja, pomyslcie o tym. Tak moglibysmy zaprotestowac przeciwko tej glupiej wojnie. I wsadzic Ustke na mape swiata.
Teachin' Chong: No lying, no dealing, no problem
Locked up in smoke
BY CHRIS KNIGHT
Talking to Tommy Chong is like having a phone conversation with someone in Japan. There's a tiny but noticeable pause at the end of his sentence, a time lag before I reply. Then I realize I'm waiting for him to add,"... man," in the same slow drawl fans know from his standup comedy and the pot-fuelled Cheech and Chong movies of the '70s and '80s. But he never does.
Chong is in Toronto promoting tonight's premiere at the film festival of a/k/a/ Tommy Chong, a documentary about his arrest in 2003 for trafficking - in bongs, not drugs - across state lines. An outspoken and highly visible marijuana advocate since 1978's Up in Smoke, it only took the U.S. government's three decades to put him behind bars - an absurdity played up in the film, which sides with Chong and against The Man.
He was charged after a nine-month police operation code-named Project Pipe Dream, in which DEA agents posing as potheads pleaded with Chong's mail-order bong business to ship a bong to them in Pennsylvania. The state doesn't allow such things across its borders. After months of basically saying, "Dave's not here," Chong relented and the trap was sprung. Even today he can barely believe it.
"I never took it seriously until I was three months in jail," he says. "It was absurd. I mean, going to jail for selling a bong. It couldn't be more absurd." In person, the 67-year-old is the epitome of laid-back: faded jeans, blue cotton shirt with a few open buttons, and flip-flops. Josh Gilbert, the film's director and an old friend of Chong's, is a notch more formal - jeans a little bluer, T-shirt under the shirt, shiny black shoes. He followed Chong and his wife, Shelby, up to and through his nine-month jail sentence in October, 2003. Chong drew the line at Gilbert filming his emotional ride to prison - ironically, in a limo hired by Vanity Fair, which was writing about the case. "I didn't want that documented," says Chong.
Since his release, Tommy and Shelby Chong have gone back to standup. "That's our favourite thing to do in life," he says. "That's were we used to sell the bongs." He displays a comedian's timing when asked if prison changed him. "I found God," he says. "I studied religion when I was there. I studied Catholicism, I studied Judaism and I studied the American Indians. And I've come up with my own religion. I believe in procrastination" - here it comes - "and I'm gonna organize it - but not right away."
On the subject of U.S. drug laws and the administration that put him away, he's more serious, even impassioned. "The U.S. government right now is in the hands of criminals," he says. "It's like the mafia took over." Canada, he predicts, will one day be taken over by the U.S., which he likens to a corporation rather than a nation. "But right now Canada's at this beautiful spot in its life where it has ideals."
Chong is himself a Canadian, born in Edmonton, raised in Calgary, with a house in West Vancouver - "overlooking the poor people," he jokes. Remembering the Marc Emery case and the recent demolition of a pot-smuggling tunnel between British Columbia and Washington, I ask if crossing the border presents a problem.
"You know, it's the opposite," he says. "They caught me with pot coming into Vancouver a few years ago, and I found out that they can't keep me out of Canada 'cause I'm a Canadian citizen, and they can't keep me out of the States 'cause I'm a naturalized citizen. So I said, 'You mean I can be carrying pot back and forth?' And they said, 'Oh, don't do that.'"
He's adamant that he's never broken any drug laws. "I've never engaged in criminal activities at all - or what I consider criminal. I don't consider smoking pot criminal or growing it. Maybe selling it... but I never sold pot. I found out too early in life that you can make so much more money being straight. And less work. It's like lying. Lying is such a hard job 'cause you always got to remember stuff. What lie did you tell?"
What does he think of the oft-floated notion of making pot legal and taxing the hell out of it, the way governments have successfully done with alcohol and tobacco? He's not sure. "If they legalized it, your grandmother'd grow more than you'd ever smoke in a lifetime. So I don't know how they could tax it."
He pauses for thought. "But there's another benefit, you see. There's the food; the munchie industry."
a/k/a Tommy Chong plays at the Toronto International Film Festiwal tonight at 10 p.m. at the Cumberland 3, Sunday at 4:15 p.m. at the ROM, and Thursday at 3 p.m. at ROM (NATIONAL POST, Friday, September 9, 2005).
Bust grows into film
Tommy Chong's drug paraphernalia arrest planted seed of festival documentaryJIM SLOTEK
Toronto Sun
JULY SAW the end of Tommy Chong's parole, after nine months spent in a U.S. jail for distributing novelty "Chong-bongs" across U.S. state lines - "paraphernalia" in the parlance of drug warriors. Until the end of his parole, the veteran of the world-famous "stoner comedy" act Cheech & Chong couldn't be in the company of pot-users, or inhale, without going back to jail.
It happens that he was back in Canada when the legal cloud was lifted. "My wife bought an apartment in Vancouver. So as I was celebrating my freedom, she had me up there working like a serf," says the L.A. resident and subject of the Toronto Film Fest documentary a.k.a. Tommy Chong.
"Some rasta passed me a little bud in Vancouver, and I kinda felt like I was still on probation, so I didn't smoke it for a while. But then I was on Qualicum Beach and I slipped on some rocks and was in pain, so I thought, well, this is a good time to smoke up. And it got me back smoking. It was nice, liberating.
"I didn't want my wife to know I was smoking though. I'm 67 and I still hide my pot-smoking from my wife," he says with a laugh. "My kids and me both hide it from her."
The Canadian-born comic has mined many truthful laughs from his Prohibition nighmare - from the DEA guy who needed Chong's help to find the pound of pot in his basement, to the guard at California's Taft Prison who'd enthuse about what a fan he was as he was subjecting Chong to cavity searches.
What's not so funny is that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency spent $12 milion to apprehend Chong (just short of the $13 mil bounty they had on Uday and Qusay Hussein and the $25 mil on Osama bin Laden). The supposition of the film a.k.a. Tommy Chong is that Chong was really convicted for those platinum albums and Cheech & Chong movies like Up In Smoke that grossed hundreds of millions of dollars. Ex-attorney general John Ashcroft often ranted about Chong's influence on teens.
And when push came to shove, the agency showed little interest in Chong's son Paris, who came up with the idea of selling glass bongs with his dad's face, and who ran the business.
It was the "Cheech & Chong guy" they wanted. Chong pleaded guilty in exchange for immunity for his children and wife Shelby. That's where his friend, filmmaker Josh Gilbert, picked up the ball. "Tommy got gagged," Gilbert says, "and people wanted to know why he wasn't fighting it, because he is a fighter."
When the DEA broke into his house, Chong says, "I told the head narc, that if he lost some weight, he could play himself in the movie. Of course, he went to the judge and told him." The result was a court order that Chong wasn't allowed to profit from his crime - which included making a movie about it. "But there was nothing saying that Josh couldn't do it."
Gilbert took on the film as a crusade, going as far as to befriend the warden and the ex-mayor of the town of Taft. "I basically schmoozed the town," says Gilbert, whose film follows Chong before imprisonment, into the institution, and then out. We also meet Chong's cellmate Steve, who took it upon himself to be "Tomm's dog" and threaten inmates who offered him pot. "Apparently there was an offer to reduce the sentence of anybody who could get me to commit a violation," Chong says.
If he made new friends in prison, he says some former friends "sorta crawled into the woodwork. It was not really a shock, but there were people that were great. (Ex-partner) Cheech (Martin) was there. Jay Leno was great. And the night before I went in, I got a call from Pat Morita from the Karate Kid movies. He said 'Tommy, you're gonna be okay. You're going in representing a whole culture. You shouldn't be there, but you are.'"
So what does he expect his film to accomplish? "I want it to make a shitload of money, for my legal bills and what they took from me. The universe is gonna be right, it's payback."
As for what stoners should take from it, Chong says, "Well, that the U.S. is being run by criminals for starters, and we need to vote them out. I'll tell you why pot's dangerous. It's dangerous 'cause when you smoke it, you think the world is fine" (TORONTO SUN, Friday, September 9, 2005).
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