Fame & Fortune: Tommy Chong
'Money's just a flower that comes from planting a seed' |
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Bankrate: 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. | 
