Sitting Down With: Tom Shadyac

Tom Shadyac is a Hollywood director, writer, and producer best known for working with comedic geniuses such as Jim Carrey, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, and Steve Carrell. As an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, Tom created the infamous “Are You a Preppie?” poster before migrating to Los Angeles, where he become the youngest joke writer for Bob Hope. Eventually, he would go on to make such hits as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Liar Liar, The Nutty Professor, Patch Adams, Bruce Almighty, and Evan Almighty.

We caught up with Tom in Napa after a screening of his terrific new film, I Am, which he felt compelled to make after a severe bike accident. Fearing his own end, he decided if he could do one last thing, it would be to explore and share the truths he had come to know. The documentary is centered around two fundamental questions: What’s wrong with the world? and What can we do about it? Independently produced and distributed, I Am is a highly principled film that tackles esoteric content in a grounded and (of course) humorous way. We sincerely encourage readers to check out I Am when it opens in the LA in March. And hopefully, the film will go on to generate crossover appeal with mainstream audiences around the world.=

Rob Sidon: I’ve especially enjoyed your blockbuster comedies with Jim Carrey. Before discussing your new film, I AM, which is a radical departure from what you’re known for, might we talk a bit about your partnership with Jim? It’s like you’re brothers.

Tom Shadyac: We are brothers. When I first saw Jim perform in comedy clubs in the early ’80s, I was not only taken with his insane talent, I thought he looked like family, like one of my cousins. It was eerie, in a way. Little did I know that some 10 years later, we’d be working on Ace Ventura and would find a creative kinship, as well. I respect Jim on so many levels. He’s a brilliant artist, a true comedic genius. A genius to me is a person who can tap into the Creative Source, the Big Electron, as George Carlin used to call it. A genius doesn’t so much think of an idea as ideas simply arrive into his or her consciousness, like little gifts from divinity. That’s Jim. A team of writers could sit around all day and try to think of a topper line for a scene. Jim walks around the room a couple of times, opens his antennae, and boom, an idea pops in that’s unmatchable. When you work with creative geniuses like Jim, or Eddie Murphy, or Robin Williams, it can do wonders for your belief in something cosmic, creative, and orderly in the universe.

RS: Success in Hollywood rewards handsomely. In other words, you became filthy rich.

TS: My films did well, so yes, I did well. But it’s funny, even in the question I see the depth of our cultural illness concerning money. The question states that I was rewarded, and the word “handsomely” is used, and then that same reward is called “filthy.” Interesting. Which is it?

RS: Then something changed. What happened that led you to make I Am?

TS: Well, the short answer is, I got into a bike accident which left me struggling with Post Concussion Syndrome, a condition where the symptoms of a concussion don’t go away. It’s quite torturous really, and after months of isolation and pain, I simply didn’t think I was going to make it. Well, death can be a very powerful motivator, and so I asked myself a serious question: If this was it for me, if I was going to die, what did I want to say before I went? I Am is that expression, a kind of last testament to certain truths that I had woken up to that I did not see our culture talking about, and I simply did not want to die with these ideas buried inside of me.

RS: Had you been a student of metaphysics or spiritual philosophy?

TS: Yes, my whole life. As early as I can remember, I simply wanted to know what was true, and somehow I perceived at a very early age that what I was being taught was not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And that intuitive perception led to a lifetime of questioning and searching; of stumbling and fumbling toward the light; of reading the mystics and masters like Rumi, Hafiz, Mary Oliver, Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Merton, and countless others; and of experimentation with various spiritual disciplines such as prayer and contemplation, the monastic traditions of Lectio Divino, and silence and meditation.

RS: You downsized your life to make I Am.

TS: No, actually, my life had already been downsized. I was already living in the mobile home park and was living much more simply. I think there’s a common misperception that my bike accident caused an instantaneous spiritual awakening that had me sell my estate, give all my money away, and move into a trailer. As dramatic and movie worthy as this sounds, I assure you it was not the case. The “awakening,” so to speak, was much more gradual, taking place over a number of years, with much consideration and contemplation.

My film crew for I Am is a different story. I went from a crew of around 400 on Evan Almighty to four on I Am. Now that’s downsizing!

RS: How would you describe the film?

TS: My hope is that I Am is a window into Truth, a glimpse into the miracle, the mystery and magic of who we really are, and of the basic nature of the connection and unity of all things. In a way, I think of I Am as the ultimate reality show.

RS: You made the film to answer two fundamental questions.

TS: Yes: What’s wrong with the world, and what can we do about it? And when I say what’s wrong with the world, I didn’t want to hear the usual answers, like war, hunger, poverty, the environmental crisis, or even greed. These to me are not the problem; they are symptoms of a larger endemic problem. In I Am, I wanted to talk about the root cause of the ills of the world, attempt to identify it, because if there is a common cause and we can talk about it, air it out in the public forum, then we have a chance to solve it. Until then, we are like doctors who keep prescribing medication to treat our collective nausea when what we need is the wisdom to ask ourselves what we’re ingesting in the first place that is making us all sick.

RS: One reason I enjoyed the film is that its underlying message is so positive—that human beings are not hardwired as selfish creatures. You turn to scientists to explain.

TS: Well, I was raised Catholic, so this is not exactly the message I was taught growing up. I was told I was born bad, burdened with something called “original sin,” and that all mankind was similarly infected. It was a revelation to me that for tens of thousands of years, indigenous cultures taught a very different story about our inherent goodness, which is being backed by the sciences now. We are discovering a plethora of evidence about our hardwiring for connection and compassion, from the vagus nerve, which releases oxytocin at simply witnessing a compassionate act, to the mirror neurons, which causes us to literally feel another person’s pain and thereby empathize. Darwin himself, who has been grossly misunderstood to believe exclusively in our competitiveness (hence the famous saying, “survival of the fittest”), actually observed and noted that humankind’s real power comes in its ability to perform complex tasks together—that is, to sympathize and cooperate.

RS: To exemplify the essence of I Am, you set up an experiment. Can you explain it and say why it’s important?

TS: The experiment in the movie’s just a demonstration and not scientific at all, but it does suggest something that is incredible if it’s true—that our thoughts and emotions affect the living systems around us. It’s called The Yogurt Experiment, and here’s how it works: Yogurt is a living system, and as such, will register a baseline reading when hooked up to a magnetometer. A person is then seated in front of a Petri dish of yogurt and asked to recall various emotional experiences. When the person’s emotional state changes, those changes are picked up by the yogurt and in turn, register on the magnetometer. What is crucial to note is that the person is not hooked up to the yogurt at all. He’s simply sitting there. But changes in his emotional state send out an energy signal that affects the yogurt bacteria, which moves the needle on the magnetometer.

These types of experiments are significant because they demonstrate the power each individual has to affect everything around him or her. We know this intuitively. When we come home in a bad mood, our spouses can feel it and are affected by it. When we enter a room energized and upbeat, that emotion is contagious. Roland McCraty has done lots of these experiments about our effects on plants, animals, and each other. The results are overwhelming and hard to write off as chance, clearly indicating that something, some kind of connectivity is happening.

RS: You also turned to spiritual figures, such as Bishop Desmond Tutu.

TS: I always want to be careful with the word spiritual. It sometimes conjures up images of floating above life in a Zen-like state. I believe spirit took bodily form to engage in the world of sticks and stones, meat and marrow, flesh and blood. We are here, I believe, not to float above life but to engage in it. There’s a story in the Judaic tradition that says when the Messiah returns, he’s only going to ask one question; he will want to see the soles of your feet. He’s going to want to know if you wore them out trying to make the world a better place. Desmond Tutu is a man who has worn out the soles of his feet; he has not just talked about the power of love and forgiveness, he has walked those principles and demonstrated them to a nation that was under the oppressive weight of racism and prejudice. His walk, his march with his people, in full reconciliation and forgiveness of the oppressor, freed the people of South Africa and those of England, as well. What a light he is, and what a blessing to have his wisdom in our film.

RS: Yet you can’t deny the shadowy, greedy side of the human experience. As a Hollywood veteran, you know we don’t live in a Pollyanna world. How do you reconcile?

TS: If I say that love is more powerful than hate, I am not stating a platitude or a Pollyanna idea. It just may be that I am describing reality at its most fundamental level. Maya Angelou believes that love may be the actual force that holds the stars in the firmament; love may animate and move the very blood in our veins. Gandhi, too, believed that love is a force, not as a philosophical trope, but as a law that he saw demonstrated over and over in life and the human experience. Hate can rise for a time, he said, but it will always eventually be defeated.

Sure, humans can be greedy, and there is a shadow side to all of us. But if you look at that shadow side and trace the darkness when it manifests, you almost always see someone deprived of that powerful force talked about above—love. Who is it that sexually abuses children? Those who were sexually abused themselves. Who become the most violent murderers and killers in our society? Those who grew up witnessing and experiencing murder and killing as a way of life. Who become the most greedy and selfish in our society? Those who were raised in fear-based environments and taught repeatedly to look out for number one. Emerson, St. Augustine, and others believed evil is not even a force unto itself, but rather, it is simply the deprivation of good. I don’t believe we’re evil or bad—certainly not the vast majority of people. We’re just asleep.

RS: The late Howard Zinn, a major influence on you, is interviewed in the film. Was he a glass-is-half-full kind of person?

TS: I don’t think Howard even saw the glass. The glass divides. Howard just saw the water, the solution.

RS: Your late father was interviewed for the film. He tried to temper your optimism.

TS: My father is emblematic of the malaise so prevalent in our culture. Here he was, this incredibly generous man who didn’t believe man was basically generous. He was an incredibly compassionate man who didn’t think man was basically compassionate. He helped build the largest pediatric cancer research institute in America, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where children with cancer are treated every day for free, yet he didn’t think man could build businesses based on values of love and compassion. My father brought to fruition the very things he believed we couldn’t or wouldn’t do because of our supposed defective nature, but he just couldn’t see it because the cultural malaise is so insidious and all-pervasive.

RS: But you are bouncing off the walls with positivity. I love it; it’s infectious. How much of it stems from your accident?

TS: If there is any positivity in me, it is thanks to the Creator, the Big Electron, God, Life, Love, whatever you want to call the Divine force, that has somehow seen fit to allow me to participate in the joy of service.

RS: Despite your deep Hollywood connections, you’re distributing this movie in an nontraditional way.

TS: The Hollywood way is to throw tons of money at advertising and distribution, and we simply don’t have that kind of money. So we’re doing it the old-fashioned way, by traveling like a circus troupe and screening it to everyone we can. The idea is to generate lots of word of mouth that hopefully will propel us into a wide, sustained theatrical run.

RS: How did you decide to become a director?

TS: I didn’t really decide. It was decided for me, as I think is the case with most significant decisions in our lives. I tried on a number of different show business hats, from writing to teaching to acting and stand-up comedy, and I did my best to remain open and to listen. When I tried directing for the first time, as we rolled on our very first shot, Life shouted a loud, unmistakable, soul-searing, Yes!

RS: Will you helm large-budget Hollywood projects again?

TS: Sure, why not? A big budget isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as the money available is spent in an effective, efficient, and conscious manner. I am much more interested in what kind of energy a project puts into the world, what it stands for, and whether it helps or hurts our collective healing and the evolution of consciousness.

RS: Still giving away your proceeds freely?

TS: St. Augustine said, “Determine what God has given you and take from it what you need; the remainder is needed by others.” I say, “Touché, St. Augustine!”

RS: Do you notice Hollywood shifting toward films with spiritual and metaphysical messages?

TS: Truthfully, I have been so immersed in the making and distribution of I Am, I haven’t seen that many films as of late. But I will say, what we need to concentrate on is not the transformation of media, but the transformation of the people who create media. If we artists wake up and begin to see, think, and walk anew, the art we create will necessarily follow.

RS: What’s next for you?

TS: I’m hanging out with I Am until we see what unfolds here, but I do have two films ready to go: A drama, Planetwalker, which is the true story of John Francis, who saw an oil spill in the San Francisco Bay in 1971 and did a crazy thing—he gave up driving for 22 years and walked in silence for 17 of those years, and a comedy in the vein of Liar Liar called Doctor Sensitive. I also have a deal to host a talk show called Shift Happens, using humor to dialogue with America about how we can birth a better world.

RS: Well, we think I Am has a shot of being a big crossover film that can raise human awareness. How can our readers see I Am?

TS: We hope your readers will go and check us out, and if they are so moved, will share their enthusiasm with everyone they know and even people they don’t know. One of the themes of the movie is the true power of the individual to make a difference. Our release will be a case in point—we need individuals to blog, post, talk, and text about I Am. In the meantime, anyone can stay in touch with us through our website, IAmTheDoc.com. We have a trailer up now and a place to sign in and register to be a part of our team.

RS: Anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

TS: Did I mention I hope they’ll go see I Am?

For more information about Los Angeles screenings, visit: IAmTheDoc.com.

Rob Sidon publishes Common Ground Magazine in the San Francisco Bay Area (CommonGroundMag.com). This interview first appeared in Common Ground Magazine and is reprinted with permission.

By Rob Sidon