Screening at the Toronto Freedom Festival on Saturday (May 3) at Queen’s Park is a/k/a Tommy Chong, the nimble documentary chronicle of how the world’s most famous Asian-Canadian stoner comedian ended up spending nine months behind bars for lending his signature to glass-blown bongs sold online by his son.

While it premiered at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival to generally favourable reviews — two decades after Cheech and Chong’s last big-screen appearance as a duo in Martin Scorcese’s After Hours — and rights were instantly snapped up for distribution, the complexity of getting permission to use certain news and archival footage stymied a theatrical release. But director Josh Gilbert’s doc should continue to play well on the festival circuit so long as the Bush administration — whose anti-drug paraphernalia sting operation stung Chong — is still in command.

The flick was released on DVD last week — on 4/20, formally — although Chong, who got his first break in 1960s band Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers, has been upstaged today by the news of a movie starring a different guitar-playing hippie.

“It certainly gives new meaning to the term ‘Purple Haze,’” Chong ponders at the prospect of Jimi Hendrix: The Sex Tape. “I used to wonder if the black men in Seattle were all the same tribe in Africa, because they all had that long, lean look. When they came to Vancouver, they could do no wrong with the ladies.”
 
Chong is evidently still debunking Bobby Taylor’s claim that Hendrix was in the uniquely multiracial band, whose members were recruited from Calgary. The act fizzled out when Chong was fired for missing a show due to lack of a green card.

Yet, even during his time as a footnote in the history of Motown Records, comedy was on Chong’s mind: “When we’d play in Chicago the rest of the band wanted to hang out at a blues club afterward,” he recalls. “I went to watch Second City.”  

The influence served Chong well when forced to skulk back to Vancouver, where he met draft dodger Richard Marin, who took on the stage persona of “Cheech.”

Few reviews of Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay don’t draw parallels with the half-dozen comedies Cheech & Chong starred in between 1978 and 1984 — not just for all the stoner jokes, but also the unique ethnicities.

The big difference is that Harold and Kumar appear as two innocuous young geeks while, to a kid catching a glimpse of their image, Cheech & Chong seemed scary.

“I think the contrast is a reflection of the fact that Hollywood comedy is now run by a bunch of Ivy Leaguers,” says Chong. “And that’s the look they can relate to.

“The movies we did never presented our characters as victims — we were the ones responsible for all the mishaps. And we were playing up certain stereotypes. I wanted to look like that bitter musician who had to drive a truck on the side or work as a roofer. Cheech was supposed to be the image of a Chicano low-rider — the kind of guy who had more love for his car than any human being.

“It didn’t make us any friends in the establishment, though. Lorne Michaels never wanted us on Saturday Night Live. Rob Reiner was going to direct Up In Smoke, but someone advised him against it, and that’s how I became a director instead.”

The success catapulted Cheech & Chong from cultish comedy act to true celebrities — Chong, over 40 by then, wouldn’t even try to go unrecognized.

“When you take money for entertaining people, even if you’re portraying a character, it is their T-shirt,” says Chong. “They’ve paid for the right to ask you for an autograph. Plus, I remembered what it was like to feel stiffed by celebrities.

“Plus, I couldn’t grow a beard like that until I was in my 30s, and was so excited that I probably overdid it. My wife was the one who told me to never cut my hair.”

Chong, who turns 70 in May, gradually grew into a less freakish look befitting a marijuana advocate who no longer actually smokes the stuff. He’s been with wife Shelby for over 40 years — last weekend, they brought their touring duo act to a comedy club in Calgary. “I visit the place now like a stranger,” he concedes. “The people I grew up knowing there are in rest homes. But that’s where my dad bought his first house for $500, with no plumbing, no water and no electricity. And, when you come from that kind of upbringing, the only way to go was up.”

While he pounded the musical pavement to the west coast, Toronto didn’t end up on Chong’s itinerary until Cheech & Chong were big enough to play Massey Hall in the mid-'70s. The audience cheers were loud enough to merit being repurposed as a sound effect on their biggest radio hit, the “Alice Bowie” parody track “Earache My Eye.”

A permanent move back to Canada was always on Chong’s mind, especially when movie success gave him the wherewithal to be more nomadic, but jobs like a recurring role on That ‘70s Show kept him in California — where he was arrested on Feb. 24, 2003. Now, he thinks leaving would mean the DEA won. His marijuana activism focuses on medicinal use, although he supports any benefit.

“Pot is like a truth serum,” says Chong. “It’s hard to lie, and it’s hard to be conniving, when you’re stoned. The war on drugs is still a war on freedom.

“Meanwhile, the products related to marijuana are a bigger industry than ever. And it’s an industry in which you won’t find anyone who doesn’t love their job.”

While he still relishes the adulation, Chong has calculated it’s better for the overall cause if he steers clear of events like the Toronto Freedom Festival, yielding the spotlight to beleaguered seed seller Marc Emery and others appearing on an EYE WEEKLY-sponsored speaker stage as part of the event.

“The media isn’t going to portray this as anything but a big smoke-out,” says Chong, “and putting the Cheech & Chong persona on display probably isn’t the best way to overcome that. I don’t want the movement taking a step backwards.”

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