Interviewing Tom Shadyac: Finding joy of a different kind with I Am

Though the last name looks hard to pronounce, it's highly recognizable. Tom Shadyac ("Shady-Yak"), well-known as the director who plucked Jim Carrey from TV's In Living Color and turned him into a comic film star, may be creating a whole new name for himself. Without holding out for the laugh, says Kimberly Gadette, introducing Tom Shadyac ... documentarian.

When you think of what director Shadyac has bequeathed to the cinema, you might recall Carrey's crazy-faced fellow with a dogged reputation who sports an oily upswept 'do as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Or the attorney who can't stop himself from telling the truth in Liar Liar. Or Morgan Freeman's God, coming down to bestow powers on both Bruce and Evan Almighty. Or The Nutty Professor's multiple Klumps, fat and fabulous, all played by Eddie Murphy.

But life changed for the hit director, and though he was laughing all the way to the bank, Shadyac reconsidered the idea of money buying happiness. He perused writings by some of history's greatest thinkers, poets and philosophers, he checked into a monastery, and he slowly carved out a new path for himself. And after a biking accident led to a severe concussion in which Shadyac felt his life slipping away, he wanted to leave the world a farewell note about what he'd learned. But suddenly recovering, the plans changed ... and happily, instead of a note, what we get is a film called I Am.

Continuing to do the unexpected, Shadyac decided to debut his film commercially in Portland, Oregon – allowing Kimberly Gadette the chance for a face-to-face interview. Dressed in Portland-casual jeans and a loose sweater, sitting by a fire while a sudden snow shower fell in fat flakes outside the hotel window, Shadyac could have easily answered a casting call for a hip-looking college professor that co-eds might have swooned over on a Berkeley campus, circa 1969. But upon further checking: not a co-ed in sight.

IMO: This may be a first: a film's slow rollout starting in Portland, weeks before Los Angeles and New York?

TS: Usually my movies open in 3,000 theaters at once. And now if we get to 3,000 theaters, it will be one week at a time, starting in Portland. We're trying to build a story ... people who see the film are our story. This film has been a transformative experience for many who've seen it, and they are our best testament: the passion with which people leave the theater, the passion that can then translate into other audience members coming ... ultimately, we need time for that story to get out.

IMO: As to the title, the words "I Am" crop up in multiple religions as a moniker for the name of God. In Judaism, the reference is in Exodus when Moses talks to God; it's also in Roman Catholicism, and the words themselves are often used as a purely non-religious meditation. Is this a happy coincidence or a conscious choice?

TS: A happy coincidence. The original title was Imagine, but if you look at that word, it's right there in the first 3 letters. After awhile, it emerged as the only title for me. But as for the Biblical references, the fact that "I am" is the original utterance of God, the eternal I Am, is all coincidence.

IMO: Further on the title: when some people see I Am, they might think that it's some sort of ego trip. Are you at all concerned about that?

TS: People often have a reaction based on what they think something is. I think they'll have a different reaction if they see the film – they'll see who I am and then they can make a judgement. Rather than an ego trip, I hope it's just the opposite. I call myself "mentally ill" in the film, I set myself up as a very flawed character who needed to be woken up to certain things, who was behaving hypocritically in life.

IMO: Early in the film, you bring up the fact that with your successful comedies, you hoped to heal the world through laughter, but that you were ultimately part of the problem. Can you address a) what you meant by your adding to the problem and b) doesn't the ability to make people laugh make for a better, happier world? It seems that you were awfully hard on yourself with that statement.

TS: I think it's realistic. It's what I call the right-hand-fighting-the-left-hand philosophy; my intention with whatever movies I've made (and I haven't changed in my intention), is that I want to add some value to the world, whether it's laughter or a thought or an emotionally cathartic experience. But looking at how I set up my business life, how I allowed myself to be swept up into an ideology that divides the world, I think I added to a world of the haves and have-nots. In trying to unify the world through laughter or through compassion, it allowed me to separate myself from that world and exercise the basic economic philosophy behind the artist, which is "I'm worth more ... my art makes more money, so I'm worth more than you." I would decry the gap between the rich and the poor ... and yet I was the gap between the rich and the poor. As long as I stand on top of a mountain and say "pay me more," I diffuse the effectiveness of my art. And the ultimate art is my life.

IMO: What does Hollywood think of "Tom Shadyac 2.0?"

TS: [Smiling] We'll have to find out. The people that I've dealt with in Hollywood so far have been incredibly gracious. To give you an example, regarding our amazing soundtrack, we couldn't afford it. We got the Black Eyed Peas and Will.i.am to give us a song at an incredible rate, and the same with Peter Gabriel. They saw the film and said, "We want to participate, this is beautiful." All the studios helped us with music. Our composer John Debney. My agency (Creative Artists Agency, the biggest agency in the world) never talked to me about a nickel that they'll make on this movie. They've just been helpful on a human level. They've set up screenings in their screening rooms, allowed me to have teleconferences, they've given me contacts (it's how I found my distributor Mark Urman). They think there's something worthy to be explored through the dissemination of this film.

As far as individuals in Hollywood go, I have high hopes that they'll just see the movie for what it is, which is an imperfect person sharing an experience that he hopes can open up a conversation.

IMO: On the day I saw your film, I also saw a disturbing drama based on a true story about sex trafficking of minors and rampant corruption in Sarajevo. The two films couldn't have been farther apart. So what do you do, what do we do, when we want to believe in the better aspect of man, yet face this much ugliness in the world? How do you personally reconcile that?

TS: I think the most important thing you can do is to be the change. Someone asked Gandhi, "What's your message?" He said, "My life is my message." So I believe that we must eliminate slavery in our own lives. We are slaves to ideologies that are not necessarily true. So yes, there's this slavery going on, say, in human trafficking. For us to heal that, I think it starts with us eliminating our own "enslave-ness" if you will ... whether it's an economic enslavement, or an ideological enslavement. And then we reach out and come together, saying, "That's not acceptable." And then we fight for justice with passion. But I think what happens in our society is that it's very convenient to point out the greed of a corporate boss, or the corruption of a politician, or the sexually aberrant behavior of someone in the public eye ... when each of us has those things to heal in ourselves. There's a saying that I love from the Catholic monk Thomas à Kempis: "Study to overcome that in yourself which disturbs you most in others." So if I'm so pissed off at those intolerant conservatives, well, I'm intolerant about people who are intolerant. So I must heal my own intolerance to have power. So really it starts with love ... love of self, love of another, and then that creates an energy that can shift things.

IMO: In one segment, you interview your father Richard (Note: Richard Shadyac was instrumental in founding and raising funds for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, a haven for children with life-threatening illnesses who are treated free of charge. He passed away in 2009, shortly after his on-screen interview.) Having a father who was such an altruistic force in your life, how is it that you didn't catch that wave of selflessness a bit earlier?

TS: I caught that wave exactly as he taught me. When I was becoming successful, amassing money and material things, that's the model he taught me. I was still what you call "giving" – I still gave to charity, I was, as he said, generous and giving on Sunday, but from Monday through Saturday, I had a different philosophy. What was interesting about my father was that when I took the altruistic model one step further into my business life, he said, "No, you can't go there. That's not human nature." I argued, "Why can't I, as an artist, create a compassionate business model for my art? Why can't we create businesses like St. Jude, like Paul Newman did with Newman's Own?" Nobody's getting rich at Newman's Own (not materially) – they're getting rich through purpose. They've given away hundreds of millions of dollars to causes that need it, to sick kids. Why can't we as a society do that?" And he said, "It's not in our nature." My dad was a lawyer. I'd like to say to him, "You're the evidence against yourself. Your life is the evidence against yourself, because you built a life based on compassion."

IMO: You were on a path of global awareness years ago, such as your environmental activism during the film shoot of Evan Almighty ... planting trees, using bikes instead of cars, donating the sets to Habitat for Humanity. There's currently a lot of misinformation out there, stating that it was your biking accident that sent you on your new, non-material path. Could you clear up exactly when you decided to relinquish the big houses and private jets for a simpler lifestyle? 2003 right?

TS: Earlier. After Liar Liar came out in 1997, I ran to Thomas Merton's monastery to be silent, to get away from all that was happening around me, to try to empty myself and listen. But after Bruce Almighty, Morgan Freeman helped to open me up to another layer. He's a wonderful human being and ...

IMO: Well, as your movies depict, he actually IS God, but go on ...

TS: [laughs] Yes, well, we cast him as God for a reason. He's as solid as they come. Morgan turned me on to another level of understanding and I started exploring, reading Daniel Quinn, Thom Hartmann, Emerson, Thoreau, the mystics – and that's when I began to see the hypocrisy in my own life and started to make changes.

IMO: Do you have any thoughts as to why you suddenly began to heal from your Post Concussion Syndrome?

TS: I do. [long pause]

IMO: And they're private ...?

TS: [Laughs] No, I'd be happy to share them. I believe that we do often times experience physical manifestations when there are emotional and spiritual tensions in our life. I think that the subject matter explored in I Am was who I am ... it was so much a part of my heart ... but I didn't have the courage to express it in a piece of art. I didn't have the courage to say "OK, I don't care what the world thinks, this is what I believe." I think that facing my own death, that head injury, was a part of the tension that my body was taking on because I had these ideas locked inside of me. And so I think that I chose that accident, if you will, and that I needed to knock myself from my head into my heart. And my heart was about these things that you see in the film. So when I eliminated that tension, when I began to explore what was in my heart, I think it helped my head.

IMO: You've been teaching a class at Pepperdine University (in Malibu, California) called "Film and Life," employing films as an access point to talk about life. Are there particular films that are your go-to choices?

TS: One that I love is this climbing film called Touching the Void; Danny Boyle recently talked about how it was an influence for him for 127 Hours. It's as good as any Tom Cruise action film and it's a true story, a perfect analogy for life. I also show Iconoclasts (on the Sundance Channel), which is a conversation between two artists. The Dave Chappelle/Maya Angelou Iconoclast is like scripture. The Paul Newman/Robert Redford did the first Iconoclast; there's so much to learn about approaching life with a sense of joy. These two guys said it all boils down to, "We had fun doing what we did." And I think that's what we're called to do in life, is to be in this celebration, and then you take the trials in that context. So that's what we do, we show these little films and TV shows and we have conversations about decisions that students are facing in their own lives.

IMO: Speaking of joy, you once said, "Humor is a bridge; once you lay that bridge down, ideas can get in." Given this current departure from your earlier work, do you foresee humor still playing a fairly big role in your life? Just talking to you, the funny bone comes through no matter what...

TS: Hang out with me. I still love humor. There is humor in the film; I think it's one of the reasons that we're being met with such an enthusiastic response. There's certain pills we swallow when we wake up to new ideas, but I think humor really helps us.

IMO: Say you wake up one day and find that you've come down with a nasty case of consumer fever. Or you've had it with flying coach, squeezed in with terrible people chewing your ear off. You can't go back! It's not that you've written a little article somewhere, or mentioned something to a loved one. This is globally HUGE. Are you at all concerned that you have boxed yourself in?

TS: Not in the slightest. Because if I was saying, "I have the answer, listen to me, I know everything" that would be problematic. But what I'm saying is, I'm moving in a direction in my life and it feels beautiful. And there may be times where I'm going to take a step, whether it's consumer fever, or doing something that I look back and think "Oh that really wasn't the greatest choice," but I want to allow myself that prerogative. I'm going to walk this imperfectly, but I know what I want from my life. I'm very clear about it. I want to serve this idea that we talk about in the movie; I'm a servant.

Anybody who thinks I've given everything away, I say no. I have enough to pay for my medical needs, my passions are met ... I live in a beautiful place near the beach, I'm feeding myself, I surf every day; I mountain bike, but I ask myself "How much is enough?" On the other hand, I don't bemoan anyone who needs what they need. I don't bemoan anyone their authenticity and their true joy. For me, the more I walk into this life, the richer I feel. The more I give away, the richer I feel.

IMO: Sharing with you my epiphany early this morning: previous films of yours have dealt with protagonists who are suddenly faced with some sort of external magical, scientific or god-like phenomena (Liar Liar, The Nutty Professor, the two Almighty's). It occurs again in this film ... but in this case, you're the protagonist. You're the guy ...

TS: You should have a philosophy class! I agree. I did realize that the Almighty's, both Bruce and Evan, started with flawed characters who had to wake up to certain things, and I think that in this film I'm that flawed character. You know, all of those prior films have a theme ... and this is the blanket that wraps them all together.

[This interview was edited and condensed.]

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