'A/K/A Tommy Chong,' a Documentary About the Comedian and the Law

NYT MOVIE REVIEW

On Feb. 24, 2003, the nation's newspaper headlines provided a snapshot of the way we live now. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was in China that day, talking to the country's leaders about North Korea and the looming war in Iraq. A United Nations representative to Afghanistan was issuing dire warnings about that country's fragile peace. The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, was threatening to arrest the leaders of a national strike; meanwhile, representatives from the Ivory Coast were in Paris trying to negotiate peace.

That same morning, in the upscale Los Angeles neighborhood Pacific Palisades, more than a dozen members of the Drug Enforcement Administration were giving the comedian Tommy Chong (né Thomas B. Kin Chong) and his wife, Shelby, a very rude awakening. A nationwide federal investigation, code-named Operation Pipe Dreams and Operation Headhunter, had just gone public and, as recounted in the documentary "a/k/a Tommy Chong," was about to rock the couple's world. More than 100 homes and businesses were raided that day, and 55 people were named in indictments, charged with trafficking in illegal drug paraphernalia — meaning, for the most part, what teenagers, hippies, rappers, Deadheads, cancer patients and many millions of other regular pot smokers commonly refer to as bongs.

Mr. Chong, half of the famous stoner comedy team Cheech and Chong, was not indicted that morning. But his family's business, Chong Glass, which manufactured a line of colorful hand-blown bongs under the name Nice Dreams (after one of the comedy duo's flicks), was raided. The company had been the brainchild of the Chongs' son Paris, who made sure he and the rest of the employees were familiar with laws regulating what are euphemistically called tobacco pipes. Even so, the company succumbed to one eager head-shop owner in Beaver Falls, Pa., who — as we hear in a tape played in the documentary — really, really wanted to buy some Nice Dreams pipes. That dude turned out to be a federal agent.......