By Abigail Lewis
Tom Shadyac had everything. As in Every. Thing. He lived in a 17,000 square foot 
house, traveled by private jet and hobnobbed with celebs in swanky locales. He’d made piles of bling directing such hits as The Nutty Professor, Bruce Almighty and Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, and he was on a roll. Then he rolled his mountain bike.
It’s classic, really. Suffering for months from the depression, mood swings and pain that characterize post-concussion syndrome, Shadyac had that flash of insight that comes with thinking you might be close to death. As Samuel Johnson said, “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
No doubt Shadyac knows that quote. In the hour he spent with WLT talking about his new film, I Am, he quoted half a dozen luminaries from memoryk, from Einstein to Madeleine L’Engle to Martin Luther King. He may have been Bob Hope’s youngest staff joke writer and even performed at the Improv, but he has some rather weighty concerns. Like, for instance, what’s wrong with the world and what it will take to fix it.
Getting in Gear
Shadyac was raised in Virginia, moved west in the early ’80s, and went on to get a Master’s in film at UCLA. He had his first big hit with Jim Carrey, who starred as the famously butt-talking pet detective, Ace Ventura. His directing career took off from there, and his successes have all been laugh fests.
But the man was raised Catholic and something about his early immersion in mysticism was perhaps just waiting for an opportunity to emerge. That opportunity came while he was in recovery from his bike crash and resulted in his new film, playing at the ArcLight and elsewhere this month.
I Am uses trademark Shadyac sensibility to explore the nature of reality. As he sees it, “Film is the ultimate reality show, and what we call reality may not be reality. There’s something else—mystics and poets have known it, and now scientists are catching up with it—so this is really a look at what might be the ultimate reality.”
He hadn’t been a big party guy, but the accident triggered an awareness that he’d been living a kind of double life. Although he claimed to be someone who values love, kindness, community and brotherhood, that wasn’t mirrored in the way he was handling his finances. He’d bought into the model of, “Be the best, compete and win,” and now, he says, “I began to wake up to the hypocrisy in my own life. I was decrying the gap between the rich and the poor; I was the gap between the rich and the poor.”
Change the Conversation
One of the cool things about talking to Shadyac is he can spin off any idea in 16 new directions. Whether or not he always got that 4.0 GPA he shows us in the film, and notwithstanding his affinity for slapstick, it’s clear he’s a deep thinker.
His grand ambition is to actually change the overriding conversation of the culture. One of his favorite sayings is, “I can’t hear what you’re saying over all that you’re doing.” Believing that the most powerful story he tells is not the one we see on the screen but the one he tells with his life, he hopes that all of us, and particularly artists, will start having a conversation about living the art we put out into the world—literally becoming art.
Not that film is the only way to do it, but Americans idolize performers and the wealth they represent.
“I’ve never thought of a good idea in my life,” demurs Shadyac. “I’ve been gifted many good ideas. What we do with those good ideas we’re gifted with… we say ‘I own them, it’s mine.’ Artists should be able to make a good living but what we’ve done, what I participated in, is a way I don’t support any more.
“All art is a holistic endeavor,” he continues. I need someone to help me light the shot, bring a prop… we’re all pieces of the mosaic. But art tends to elevate the artist: ‘Ah, you’re the director!’ Art is participating in a vision of the world that is helping to create the problems of the world. I think the way I did the economy in my life was a form of violence because it does something that nature has rejected. When you place all the resources in one sector, all the other sectors suffer.”
Lest fans worry that Shadyac is ditching comedy, the subtler message is in how he does business, not the kinds of movies he’ll make.
“I’ve always wanted to do movies that added value,” he says. “Humor is a value, so I can do a comedy that makes people laugh and enjoy an escape not from reality, but to reality. So I will continue to do films that speak to me in that passionate way. I’m changing, so the films of course will reflect that change. But it’s mostly the way I’ll set up the economy of a film. I’ll try to distribute whatever resources we get to others in need, helping to heal the planet and the inequalities in the world.”
One might think the film industry would cast a dim eye on Shadyac’s budget reallocations, but so far the pingback has been good. During the making of I Am, people got paid what they needed, and if they needed more, they got more. Shadyac had to take a salary (DGA rules) but plans to give profits away. His hope is to be fortunate enough to “get into the zeitgeist” and make a real difference in the world. More than a big estate or snazzy threads (he usually sports a t-shirt and jeans), that’s what brings joy to his life.
People ask him what he’s “given up,” but he doesn’t see it that way.
“I’m embracing things that have enriched my life exponentially, so it’s not that I’ve moved away from a bigger house; I’ve moved to simplicity. The hardest was when I went from flying privately to commercially. Flying has to be rethought cause we use too many resources, so regardless, I’m still talking in a paradigm that has to be rethought.” Why the shift? He realized he didn’t like the splendid isolation.
Rather than disengage, Shadyac passionately wants to connect. But creating community obviously involves more than subjecting oneself to bodyscans and nasty airport lines. “We have to start,” he says, “by teaching our children what’s true, that we have found as we’ve walked through our history as a species that here’s what seems to builds a life that has beauty, and it starts with family, and not just your blood, but the human family. And the natural world. You start teaching that and reflect that in how you teach.”
What Money Can’t Buy
Not surprisingly, Shadyac has a few thoughts about individuals—and corporations—getting exponentially wealthy on the shoulders of others. Creating jobs is one thing, but he posits a mythical company called AllMart that gives back whatever it doesn’t need. In his view, it’s simply logical.
Author Thom Hartmann talks in the film about studies proving that when money buys you out of the burdens of hunger, homelessness and disease, it makes you really happy. But above that, it not only doesn’t increase happiness, it can decrease it.
On the other hand, notes Shadyac, “People who have devoted themselves to healing the world and bringing forth justice and equality have stories of happiness up here (indicates high level). We know that money happiness is here (indicates lower), but that’s the model we teach. You can’t even see the quality of life a person experiences when he helps to free a slave, or to educate a child who may not have the means. That’s its own sales pitch. If I do WalMart, I can be here. But if I do AllMart, I can be off the chart. That’s why I think this actually has a chance, because it has proven incredibly fruitful.”
Our economy, he believes, is nothing but a reflection of our fears.
“People who have a philosophy of control and domination,” he says, “that’s simply how they were brought up and they just need to see a different way.”
And if we say, “Pay me now and I’ll give more back?”
“That’s saying I’ll be greedy now to be generous later. The right hand is fighting the left,” counters Shadyac.
So then, where do we draw the line on accumulation? Maybe we don’t need to travel at all, or why a house instead of an apartment, or why a mobile home in Malibu instead of, say, Lancaster? Sure he downsized, but to one of the wealthiest communities on the planet.
“It’s the question,” says Shadyac. “What is enough? Everything you see has been born from a philosophy that was flawed. We didn’t come to all these technologies by asking as we developed them, ‘Are we living in a sustainable way? Are these ideas going to support the natural world or be harmful?’ They came from an idea that was flawed. So we can simply shift the philosophy underneath everything and build a mentality that supports the earth.
“We’re all part of the divine fabric. I believe we had to take physical form somehow because this God force had to experience [its] own creation. And I actually believe that life/God/consciousness might have said, ‘Let’s allow this. This might be a good thing because I want life to be experienced. I want my creation to be creative.’ So we got incredibly creative. But now life is saying, ‘Beautiful, but now you must put that together with the ancient philosophies of connection, dependence, family, unity. Put these things together and you will have a new world.’
“People talk about 2012 and I think maybe the critical mass of people who are starting to act in a certain way will shift. And we’ll never point to a date in 2012 and say, ‘It happened then,’ but maybe it did.”
We change the world every day, says Shadyac, and everything around us shifts based on who we are. The question is, “How do we change it? I wanted this film to wake people up to how powerful they are.”
So then, what’s wrong with the world and how is it going to get fixed? There are plenty of theories and not a lot of agreement, but Shadyac’s new film has a solution that somehow, miraculously, might just work for everyone.
❋❋ If you liked this story you might also enjoy . . . ❋❋
❁ 2012: Change Odyssey
❁ 2012 and What It Means for You
❁ 2012: Our Planet in Stillpoint
2 Comments
great article – love to read about others awakening – especially those sheltered by wealth and fame – harder to see the light sometimes.
“I’ll try to distribute whatever resources we get to others in need, helping to heal the planet and the inequalities in the world.” ”
He could just sell the house and write a big check.