Tom Shadyac
Tags: director, shadyac, ace ventura, I Am, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn
Director Tom Shadyac is playing up the fact that the director of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective has made a philosophical documentary. It shouldn’t be such a shock to people. Anyone deserves a voice in matters of humanity, and someone who’s already in touch with how to inspire laughter and happiness doubly so.
A bicycle accident left Shadyac with Post Concussion Syndrome. The resulting hypersensitivity to light and sound made it impossible for him to even go outside. Thinking he was near the end, Shadyac began pondering what he would leave the world. Then, the symptoms subsided, leaving him empowered to turn his question into a film.
In I Am, Shadyac interviews great thinkers like Noam Chomsky, Desmond Tutu, Lynne McTaggart and the late Howard Zinn, and found out that the individualism of modern society is counter natural. In nature, flocks and herds act in the interest of the group, not the alpha.
Shadyac gave me a hug after discussing these concepts further with him. " I like talking about comedy, but I need to talk about compassion," he told me. For the themes that went beyond the film, when answers failed Shadyac, he had some interesting ideas about new constructive questions we could ask.
SG:
The term mental illness will make people defensive. Is there a softer way to describe it?
TS:
Well, it would be if I was calling you mentally ill, but I wasn’t. I was calling me mentally ill. I think that’s to an individual to look and see. I think it’s actually a very accurate term. It wasn’t my term. This surfaced through my discovery that natives had this term for people in their own societies who took more than they needed. Just like the term alcoholic is a term that may take a kind of perspective and courage to own up to, I don't think there’s anything wrong with calling something what it may be.
SG:
That’s the thing. People who may be practicing taking more than they need might jump to say, “Well, I’m not mentally ill.”
TS:
Sure, sure, I understand that. If you want to call it “sleepwalking,” if you want to call it “under the influence of a story that’s not necessarily true,” if you want to call it “not fully being awake,” and I’m not saying I’m any of these things. I’m not saying I’m fully awake. I’m awakening hopefully but I understand that. Again, I also think there’s power in naming a name.
SG:
I’ve always felt I could sense when good or bad things were about to happen. Now there’s actually science behind that? It’s true?
TS:
Well, you may be very in touch or have a gift of this intuition and be in touch with that gift, but yeah. I think that in the future, there’s going to be a science for intuition as tangible and real as the science we have for biology right now. It’s simply breaking down the paradigm because intuition in our paradigm is not possible. You can’t predict the future because it’s in the future, but if space and time are an illusion and they’re really this web of connectivity through all of life, past, present and future, well, then it makes sense. The entanglement theory doesn’t make sense in our paradigm, in quantum physics.
SG:
Even books like The Secret say that feelings indicate right or wrong thinking. That sound like the science you discovered in the movie.
TS:
Yeah, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called Blink. I tried to interview Malcolm for the movie but we were unable to do it. In that moment of Blink, that’s the instinct giving you a feeling about a direction, a choice. Now they’re able to study that and almost quantify it.
SG:
Your metaphor of trying to treat our world like a machine reminds me of all those auto telephone menus that have every option except an individual’s need. Would a step toward bringing back the human world be as simple as spending a little more money to have human operators to make human decisions?
TS:
Yeah, I think that’s beautiful and philosophically we’re always trying to rush things along, to move faster and what’s the gain? If it’s an economic gain, then what is the point of all that extra economic growth? To what end? What you’re suggesting is that we empower people and that we build a society based upon the use of their talents and the glorification of their creativities. Yeah, human operators would be a wonderful way to stop. I’d be fully with you.
SG:
Those automated menus don’t speed anything up. If that's the purpose, it's not working.
TS:
I think much of our technology is about moving faster. How do you get this done faster? How do you heat something up faster? How do you travel faster? In the operator case, it may simply be about making money.
SG:
Here’s a twist on the pursuit of material possessions. I never wanted a bigger house or more stuff, but I was married and she wanted a house. So now I'm divorced and living in the house that was supposed to make her happy. Can even “connected” people get sucked into the material world through a partner that way?
TS:
Well, I think I was one of those people. It wasn’t like I considered myself a disconnected, consciously greedy person. I cared about people, I respected them, I believed in those moral teachings of generosity but I participated in this vision unaware. Yeah, of course we’re influenced by people around us, the messaging around us, whether it’s from a loved one, a spouse or from the messaging we get from media.
SG:
I don’t want to chase more. I just want to be comfortable, but in this market getting rid of the house isn’t an option.
TS:
The film isn’t really about telling people you’ve got to live in smaller houses or you have to make this step or that step. Philosophically it’s about asking yourself how much is enough? If you’re carrying around a burden, say of a debt in a home, and it’s not what you need, you have more square footage and it’s all about social esteem or value which my estate may have been, it was simply what others had at my success level so I got it. It was the ability to ask myself, “How much is enough for me?” that gave me the ability to move away from that. But people should look at the film and my journey and I share that journey. Then if they’re able to ask themselves questions, bigger homes for other people may be very appropriate because they use it for social function, they have a large family, they use it for community, it brings them a certain joy. That wasn’t the case for me.
SG:
My big obsession is movies. I could never see enough movies. Can I enjoy movies and still be spiritually sound?
TS:
The spiritual journey is about listening to your own heart. Not my message even in this movie, but whatever meets you in this movie and your own heart, not what you’ve been told by others but your own heart. If your heart says that you love films, you love that space in a movie theater, that sacred space or that journey that you go on with these characters… More. Power. To you. Because you can use that novelty, that unique pursuit, you’ll see more movies than anybody, for the greater good.
SG:
In situations like the banking and mortgage crises, I always ask what is our personal responsibility to say no to them in the first place. We sort of deal with them after the scam is revealed. Could the answer be that some people have chosen not to know better and let authorities convince them to invest in bad schemes?
TS:
Your question is the answer. Your question states it as well as I could or anyone could. We all give the power to the things that have so much power around us. So no corporation has any power without us. No bank has any power without us. When you have the courage to say, “Okay, I want to take a step back from this and maybe shift that resource, put it somewhere else or shift my purchasing power, put it somewhere else,” everything can change. Remember when gas prices went up a couple years ago and people said, “Ooh, this is too high. I’m going to start carpooling. I’m going to start walking to work once a week or taking the bus,” those companies heard us loudly and quickly and prices fell immediately.
SG:
The film also presents the idea that oppressors are damaged people, and showing them love can bring positive change. If someone is violently opposed to gay marriage, is a solution to an issue like that to show them the love that they’ve been missing, that causes this violent reaction?
TS:
Well, I think that is the underpinning of how Gandhi shifted a population and how Martin Luther King shifted a population, to not hate what hates you but to love what hates you and to meet them at their damaged self. I think it was true of women’s rights. I think it’ll be true of gay rights and wherever we move in the future.
SG:
Is that how the women’s movement and Civil Rights won?
TS:
Yeah, I think women largely were a nonviolent movement. They demonstrated and by demonstrating, I think what you’re saying is it’s not just holding a sign, it’s by demonstrating the dignity and the beauty and the intelligence of the feminine. So you demonstrate that, as opposed to holding a sign which is important but you become the sign.
SG:
What’s so frustrating is that’s not the debate that’s being had. It’s just a back and forth.
TS:
That’s why I made the movie.
SG:
According to your studies, we have really misinterpreted Darwin, haven’t we?
TS:
I believe so. Again, I haven’t read all of Darwin.
SG:
I’m going to now!
TS:
I’m going to certainly read more but from what I understand, when Darwin identified sympathy as man’s greatest trait to help him survive, I think that says it all.
SG:
I never knew that. I only ever knew survival of the fittest. I never knew there were other aspects, let alone they were emphasized more.
TS:
Now it’s becoming almost survival of the kindest. Even if Darwin had only said survival of the fittest I think we should have the courage to call that into question because we can see how cooperation and how kindness helps us get along. We can see cooperation in biological systems. There are cooperative systems. A rainforest is an incredibly cooperative system. When something operates outside of that cooperation, say a kudzu vine and eats everything, it’s eventually going to die. It may take 1000 years or 100,000 years but a cancer is a cancer. It destroys its host.
SG:
Is it easier to talk about these concepts in an age where The Secret and Eckhart Tolle are popular?
TS:
I think that anything outside the box meets resistance. Even though there are other practitioners, Eckhart Tolle you mentioned, I think the box would still view some of his beliefs as unrealistic, and spiritual but not practical. So have we evolved? Absolutely. But do we still have to split the sack of this culture and stick our heads out, as Rumi said? Yes. In that you can find resistance.
SG:
Are we at least further along? We’re not starting from scratch.
TS:
Yeah, I think everything adds upon everything else. Again, the story I uncovered was so hopeful and the reason I uncovered it is because we’ve evolved. Jeremy Rifkin wrote a book called The Empathetic Civilization and in that book he talks about the story of humanity that’s not being told. We have evolved. Women now have the vote, not just in this country but in many others and we’re still evolving in that regard. The African-American is no longer enslaved in this country. We have seen through that so there are these steps that we’re taking. I actually have heard the stat, and I have to research this, that there are less wars. It seems like they’re incessant, but there are less wars. So there is another story and that helps me have this conversation because I think it’s ready. Like when the environmental film An Inconvenient Truth came out, we were all ready to have that conversation because we had all had our perspectives opened up over the course of the years from an advertisement in the ‘70s that used to have a Native American with a tear in his eye.
SG:
Have you ever read Dale Carnegie?
TS:
Years and years ago, but not recently. Not enough to comment.
SG:
Even How to Win Friends and Influence People says it’s in your best interest to be kind. Even if you’re only motivated to help yourself, it’s in your interest to be kind to others.
TS:
I would open that perspective up and say that in helping yourself, there is no self. When you look at the meat and marrow of reality, your self is inherently tied with your neighbor. There is no end to you and your physical self and the beginning of another, that we are all in this web of mutuality. So this self I would describe with a capitol S like Emerson did in Self-Reliance.
SG:
Could a compassionate person rise in the ranks to become a CEO who makes those decisions?
TS:
My brother’s that CEO right now. My father was that CEO. My brother runs St. Jude Children’s Hospital. At the root of every decision they make is how do we cure cancer and love our patients through research and the resources they need to heal? It’s not about building profits so that he can have a bigger home. It’s about the profitability that comes with helping. Paul Newman did it when he started Newman’s Own. Gives 100% of his profits away. People are paid a reasonable salary. We see it all the time. We see the group Invisible Children, [helping] these young kids that are in the longest running war in Africa, they’re not choosing to get paid a high salary for that. We certainly can build business. I’m building this business. Shady Acres is now that business.
SG:
Will you be able to make mainstream movies again, comedies, and share your wealth and compassion better?
TS:
I certainly can make and would welcome making another mainstream movie. I think this is a mainstream movie. Anything that moves my soul, I would hope to serve as an artist. My hope certainly is that I can do that in a much more reasonable way, in an economic model that shares. I’m an artist. I don’t even believe I own my art, so that I share whatever gift I have and build something for the greater good.
SG:
By mainstream I meant I have every confidence you can make more $100 million blockbuster comedies. You have plans to avoid the traps you fell into before?
TS:
Well, I’m simply going to only take what I need and the rest I have a system I’m creating which I did on this movie where anything above what I need, which is Director’s Guild minimum now, it will go into another account. I won’t be able to touch it. It will be a board of people that will send it back for the healing of the natural world and the healing of us.
I Am opens in Los Angeles March 11, and New York March 18.
I Am opens in Los Angeles March 11, and New York March 18.
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