a/k/a Tommy Chong
by Josh Gilbert
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DVD details
Actor: Bill Maher, Cheech Marin, George Thorogood, Jay Leno, Tommy ChongDirector: Josh Gilbert
Brand: Infinity
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 80 minutes
Published: 2008
DVD Release Date: 2008-08-26
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Infinity Ent
DVD Reviews of a/k/a Tommy Chong
DVD Review: Chong found Wrong Over Bong
Summary: 5 Stars
A/K/A TOMMY CHONG (Produced/directed by Josh Gilbert, 2008) took forever to get released on DVD ... a bit like Tommy Chong seemed to be embroiled in trouble forever. It's an intimate yet quiet, meditative look at Tommy Chong's legal trouble from a few years back, and how that should have changed America.
Tommy Chong always conjures up three great memories for me: one is the countless records we laughed along with back in the 1970s. Second is the film YELLOWBEARD and third is the film NICE DREAMS, both of which Tommy starred in, and partly wrote. Always viewed as the slightly lesser half of Cheech & Chong, Tommy is in fact a genius in his own right. Few others have changed the landscape of comedy, film and society - and are still around to talk about it all.
This film, part biography, part history of Cheech & Chong, part social history of the attitudes toward marijuana, is the harrowing story of the destruction of Tommy's character and business, his arrest, conviction and sentencing, courtesy of a year-long jack-booted federal sting. His crime? - selling hand-blown, beautiful glass water pipes. Sadly, this type of pipe, technically a "hookah", is known as a "bong". Tommy's company, which he was urged to found at the behest of his eldest son, was called Nice Dreams Enterprises. At the time, it was only illegal in Pennsylvania and Iowa to sell "paraphernalia", so the DEA approached Tommy's company from Pennsylvania.
In a brief period, the DEA agent posing as a Pennsylvania customer called the business 20 times. Entrapment, anyone?
The case of "The United States v. Thomas B. Kin Chong a/k/a Tommy Chong" (2003), in the U.S. District Court, Western District of Pennsylvania, will surely go down in history as a sad chapter of America's inherent fascism. The rule of law means nothing at the federal level, where the shell game is played by the politicians. Tommy had no chance: when the sting came to a head, as one lawyer put it, it "looked like John Dillinger was being arrested!"
Of the fifty-something people charged, only Tommy - with no priors and really no record - was sentenced to 9 months in Taft Federal Prison. FOR SELLING GLASS HOOKAHS. The fool John Ashcfroft took it upon himself to start the war, and prosecuted it via the hare-brained harpie Mary Beth Buchanan. She simply made it her goal in life to get Tommy, and it is Tommy's honest belief that the persecutions are only beginning.
It escapes my memory who else has been convicted and jailed in this way from the world of entertainers. There is Boy George, of course, but somehow Tommy is nowhere near his league. Honestly, I cannot recall any entertainer being slammed this hard. Over NOTHING.
I am dead-set against drugs personally. While I am a lifelong fan of Cheech & Chong, I knew they were harpooning the permanently drug-addled idiot while simultaneously endorsing the freedoms they thought America represented. Yet Tommy, half Chinese, half Scots and a native of Vancouver, knew all too well that just his physical appearance threw him out of the mainstream.
This quiet, thought-provoking film brings back the memories of a few years ago, when I sat in disbelief, stunned that the feds went after Tommy in that way. What had he done? - and the wife said, "It's for bongs!" Not for drugs, not for trafficking? - no, just for selling bongs. A travesty. This film will let the viewer see plainly what this country is really all about, and why.
I always say, you can make your own decisions about drugs, about grass, but watching this film was like seeing films of the earliest anti-Semitic waves beginning in Germany. Sad and sickening. In 2005, Tommy completed his probation and in 2008 he successfully reunited with Cheech Marin. Can't say what they're doing now, but one thing is certain: Tommy Chong will enter history as a beacon of hope for America's freedoms.
This DVD is $4.89 here at Amazon. Aside from it being 80 invaluable minutes, there is no excuse to skip it. You MUST see this travesty of justice, which truly takes its place among all the American travesties of justice.
Description of a/k/a Tommy Chong
Studio: Infinity Resources Inc Release Date: 08/26/2008 Run time: 80 minutes Rating: NrBestsellers in DVD
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