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Fame & Fortune: Tommy Chong
'Money's a flower that comes from planting a seed'
Larry Getlen | Bankrate.com | 09/12/2006

What happens when the world's most famous "pothead" goes straight and starts a legitimate business? He goes to jail, of course.

After the breakup of his hit stoner comedy duo Cheech and Chong, Tommy Chong took a step in his life that might seem -- based on his on-screen persona -- surprisingly entrepreneurial: He took a hobby and turned it into a business.

Chong started a company called Chong Glass that sold pipes and bongs and met with a fairly impressive measure of success. But not everyone was happy about Chong's newfound business acumen, including the Drug Enforcement Agency, or DEA. Using a rarely enforced law about transporting paraphernalia across state lines, the DEA set up a sting operation that led to late-night raids on both Chong's home and his business, and in the end, he was sent to prison for nine months.

Faced with a potential nightmare scenario, the comedian and actor used his time wisely. He got to know his fellow inmates, explored his spiritual side with the "I Ching" -- the oldest of the Chinese classic texts which explores the cosmology and philosophy of Chinese cultural beliefs -- and accumulated material for a book about his time behind bars called, "The I Chong: Meditations from the Joint."

Bankrate spoke to Chong about what effect his time in prison had on him and how the blow was softened by his less-than-regal upbringing.

Bankrate: In the book, you write about how the prisoners at Taft Correctional Facility formed their own little community. How would you compare that to the communities you're part of in other areas of your life?

Tommy Chong: It's totally unique. It's so unique that your closest family -- your wife, your kids, anybody -- can't relate to the camaraderie or unity you have with the person you share a cell with. It's a fraternity you have to experience before you can understand it. I meet people on the outside, and if they tell me they've been in jail there's an understanding that passes between us. It's much like being in combat. You have to be there to really understand it.

Bankrate: You're a very free-spirited person. How did you react to being constantly controlled?

Tommy Chong: No problem, because it was like being on location, shooting a movie. You're always being counted, someone always has to know where you're at and you're being followed around. In prison it's a guard, on a movie set it's an assistant director. It was so similar to being on location that that's what I used. I pretended I was on location.

rate: Just being in prison seemed to give the simplest tasks, such as keeping a garden or building a kiln, special purpose. How did you find that tasks like that affected you?

Tommy Chong: You're doing time, and time means you try to make things last longer than they normally would. There's no reason to hurry anything, unless you're cooking. So inmates tend to take up hobbies that would eat up time.

Bankrate: You talk a lot in the book about how our society is ruled by people who have already stripped us of our freedoms. In your eyes, is there hope for us to get those freedoms back?

Tommy Chong: Oh yeah. "The Book of Changes" says that the only thing constant in the universe is change. In other words, what goes up must come down. And we're watching it. If it's true and it's real, then nothing can ever change that. But what's phony and false will eventually disintegrate.

Bankrate: Are you appealing your sentence?

Tommy Chong: No. I'm waiting for this administration to disappear, then I'll go there ... or, I might not. I looked into it, and it's a process that ... it's like my high school GED. Eventually I'll get it, but it's not necessary in my life. That's the way I look at this appeal process.

Bankrate: You speak in the book about having grown up poor, even in some homes with outdoor plumbing. How did this affect the way you later perceived and handled money?

Tommy Chong: It wasn't so much being poor -- there's a better word for it. I was rich in other ways. It's like being in jail -- you appreciate the littlest things. The trouble I have with people who are born into money is that they don't ever get the chance to appreciate the finer things in life, like clean water or a beautiful sunset. I was rich in so many other ways. What it's done with me is, it made me appreciate everything to the fullest.*When I'm signing autographs, other actors ask, "Why do you sign so many autographs?" And I say, "Because I get a big thrill out of thinking someone thinks I'm important enough to ask me for my autograph." So there's a humbleness that comes from being poor that I appreciate.

Bankrate: Do you think this is part of the reason you were able to handle the prison experience so well?

Tommy Chong: Oh yeah, absolutely. Sure, I slept on a steel cot, but I did that when I was a kid, so it was a piece of cake. It's like Europeans or Mexicans coming here. You're telling them, "I can only pay you $7 an hour," and you're talking to people who are used to getting $7 a day.

Bankrate: You say in the book you spent $100,000 on lawyers, $40,000 on a public relations representative -- all told, how much did all this cost you?

Tommy Chong: Counting loss of income? Probably close to $2 million.

Bankrate: How long have you been out of jail at this point?

Tommy Chong: Two years, I guess.

Bankrate: Have you recovered from it financially?

Tommy Chong: Almost. We're very close.

Bankrate: What happened to the glass company? Did this put it completely out of business?

Tommy Chong: Oh yeah. That was in the court papers. That glass company had to disappear. It could no longer exist.

Bankrate: So that $2 million loss includes that?

Tommy Chong: Yeah. We lost about a half a million with the glass company, another half a million in legal fees, and then about a million was loss of income.

ankrate: I keep hearing different things about whether you're going to work with Cheech again. For a while there it seemed like you were ready to go.

Tommy Chong: We were ready to go. In fact, New Line gave us a deal, and then I got busted. They wanted to use that time to have (veteran screenwriter) Larry Charles write a movie script, which he did, but then New Line wasn't thrilled with the script. It would have cost $30 million, and they didn't want to go that route. So then I said, "Well, I'll write a script." That's what I wanted to do anyway. So I wrote a script, but then Cheech didn't like the script. Cheech doesn't want to do the old routine. He wants to move on. So he's going to move on without me. You can't teach this old dog any new tricks.

Bankrate: You said in the book that you don't gamble for money, because "to gamble for money is to mock God -- to be truly successful in life you must respect every penny in your pocket." Explain this, please.

Tommy Chong: Money is a reward for labor. You work; you get money. The Indians would trade things: Here, I've got this bow and arrow, and I need whatever you got. In the early days people would trade, then trade got too cumbersome. It started with shells in terms of money, and now it's currency. If you're connected, biblically ... I don't want to get too involved in this, but, you know the Ten Commandments? They're not suggestions, they're commandments. They say, this is what you must do in order to be happy, to live a full and prosperous life, and if you break any of these commandments you're going to suffer, because these are the rules of human life. When you gamble, you're thumbing your nose at all that -- you're trying to make something for nothing. When you work, the spirit, the higher self, creates situations for you to get a reward for your work. That's why, if you give your belongings away or give your money to charity, not with the intention of getting anything back but just for being generous, that kind of attitude is rewarded. When you gamble, you disrespect all that. You're spitting in the face of God. You're saying, "There's no God -- I want to win."

Bankrate: Does your spiritual approach come into play in your investments?

Tommy Chong: Absolutely. My wife does most of the investing, but she does it from the heart. We look for things we would like to happen -- very positive. We don't own any tobacco stock, for instance. Because it's not about money. Money's just the flower. You plant a seed and then the flower comes out, or you plant an apple tree and an apple comes out. That's your reward for that tree. To create more apples. That's the way I look at it. My dad was a gambler, by the way. That's why we lived with outdoor plumbing.

Bankrate: Did that have a big impact on what we're talking about here, then?

Tommy Chong: Giant impact.

Bankrate: I guess you're doing well now, though. You talk in the book about how your neighbors include Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, Steven Spielberg and Nicole Kidman. Just how wealthy did Cheech and Chong make you?

Tommy Chong: There was an article about me in Entertainment Weekly, and it implied that after Cheech and Chong my career just took a nosedive. But Cheech and I have been getting checks from "Up in Smoke" for almost 30 years now. I live in this gorgeous house that my wife found. Everything doubles and triples in value that my wife touches, because her heart's in the right place. It's not about money. It's about being true to yourself.