[420 Girl]

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.


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