Chong’s Semi-Autobiographical Film ‘Far Out Man’ Is Family Affair

There is a long pause while Tommy Chong deliberates.

“Nothing,” he pronounces finally, after being asked what he’s done for the past few years. Then he adds, “Trying to figure out where I lost Cheech.”

He’s speaking, of course, of the other half of the comedy duo Cheech & Chong, whose ‘70s “stoner” humor simultaneously made them cult heroes and conservatives’ whipping boys. They split up in the ‘80s; as Chong puts it, “ ‘Just say no’ meant ‘Just say no work.’ ”

Chong’s new film, “Far Out Man,” which was released (“unleashed,” Chong corrects) Friday, may give him a chance to prove that even in the cautious ‘90s, old hippies never die. The film is about just that--an aging flower child who is mentally trapped in the Woodstock era. Are there drug references in the movie? “Absolutely,” Chong says.

“It’s sort of like a satire of my own life,” he explains. “I took reality and jazzed it up with some unreal events, and I came up with the ultimate home movie.”

In many ways, “Far Out Man” truly is a home movie, with Chong wearing hats as writer, director and star. He also co-wrote some of the film’s music and cast his wife and two youngest boys in co-starring roles.

Chong’s daughter, actress Rae Dawn, and her husband, actor C. Thomas Howell, also star in the film, playing themselves.

“Practically everybody in my family is either in it or working on it,” Chong says. “It’s a good way to get the family together for lunch.”

It’s also a good way to rile up the “right-wing fanatics”--proponents of the new anti-drug morality which Chong views as “a license to tear up the Constitution” and a misappropriation of money better spent on teachers’ salaries.

“There’s no way you can defend drug use, but people generally treat Cheech & Chong like we caused it all,” Chong says. “We didn’t . . . Cheech did.”