Recently, we sat down with Tom Shadyac, director of comedies like Ace Ventura and Bruce Almighty, to discuss his new documentary, I Am, which focuses on many of the problems with the world today and how we can fix them.
Harvard Political Review: How did you decide who to interview for this film?Tom Shadyac: Those people in the film affected me at some point on my journey. Desmond Tutu helped changed me. Howard Zinn woke me up to a different kind of history when I read A People’s History. The poetry of Rumi, which was translated by Coleman Bark, helped to open me up and see as the mystics saw. All these people helped me become who I was, and so I wanted to talk very specifically to them.
HPR: How did you begin to narrow your personal scope? I know it is about your journey and what affected you, but how did you decide what to focus on?
TS: Well, the questions I wanted to ask are very specific. And that’s why I started the journey with a focused question of what’s wrong with our world. I didn’t want to hear symptoms. I didn’t want to hear that the economy is falling apart and the environment is falling apart and wars are happening. I wanted to know if these interviewees had any idea of what was the root cause to those, what I would call, symptoms. So, it is said the definition of intelligence is the ability to identify primary causes. I wanted to identify the primary cause of what was happening in the world. So, on one level you could say this could be a very complex conversation, but I think it could also be very simple and boil down to principles. If you are seeing things not as they are, you’re going to craft a society that goes askew. And if you can find out closer to the truth – if you can see things closer to how they are, actually are, then I think you have a chance to build a world that may function in a more effective, efficient way.
HPR: A lot of the film dealing with the dichotomy between material wealth and happiness and personal happiness seemed directed at the American consumer culture. Did you ever think of focusing on different cultures as well and what their definitions of happiness are? Or did you mainly want to focus on our society and what is troubling us the most?
TS: I’m American and I come out of the American culture, so I see things from the American perspective. I’ve studied enough of the world to know that America is simply leading this idea of material wealth. But, it is a world wide, pervasive idea that we have to get over. So, it is not simply about America. We just happen to be, I think, leading the charge. And we have an opportunity now to say, we’ve been there to other people and other cultures who want to be us, and say we’re rethinking things. And that’s a very powerful place to be.
HPR: Do you see yourself making more mainstream comedies again, or do you see yourself exploring these deeper questions more?
TS: I think filmmaking is a sacred art and I am humbled by the fact that I get to participate in that. But we literally want to start a revolution – not of guns, but a revolution of ideas and perspective. We want your generation to raise their children in a way that is closer, if you will, to reality. I think our generation has helped to birth new ideas in a new way and your generation has a chance to make that rubber meet the road.
HPR: It is always very difficult to translate these ideas into reality. And, the feeling that I got when I watched the film was that you have these moments of clarity where everything seems like a light bulb just went on. This may be the answer, but how do you really make that stick? People will watch the film and feel inspired, but how do you maintain that momentum?
TS: If you want a life of sugar highs then watch a lot of television and accumulate a lot of stuff and you’ll get a lot of sugar highs. If you want a life that is deeper and based on a more nutritious life, then you’ll hang out with people that further this walk in your life. You’ll read things that will challenge you. You’ll open yourself up and the practical steps follow. That response that is so essentially who you are eventually gets forgotten because you get back into the stresses and strains of an artificial society that every philosopher and mystic before me has talked about. You think it is essential to get the right grade, you think its essential to get in the right grad school. That’s not essential. What’s essential is to become who you are, to wake up to who you are, and then to become who you are in the most powerful way. So you either feed that every day by what you eat, or you don’t feed it. I think our culture is at a point where it has been feeding itself enough junk food that it’s tired. They’re tired of the sugar high and they want something that is more nutritious. They want more real food.
HPR: You said you moved from your big mansion to a mobile home, but outside of giving up your material wealth, have you had any travels to developing countries that impacted you as well?
HPR: How did you begin to narrow your personal scope? I know it is about your journey and what affected you, but how did you decide what to focus on?
TS: Well, the questions I wanted to ask are very specific. And that’s why I started the journey with a focused question of what’s wrong with our world. I didn’t want to hear symptoms. I didn’t want to hear that the economy is falling apart and the environment is falling apart and wars are happening. I wanted to know if these interviewees had any idea of what was the root cause to those, what I would call, symptoms. So, it is said the definition of intelligence is the ability to identify primary causes. I wanted to identify the primary cause of what was happening in the world. So, on one level you could say this could be a very complex conversation, but I think it could also be very simple and boil down to principles. If you are seeing things not as they are, you’re going to craft a society that goes askew. And if you can find out closer to the truth – if you can see things closer to how they are, actually are, then I think you have a chance to build a world that may function in a more effective, efficient way.
HPR: A lot of the film dealing with the dichotomy between material wealth and happiness and personal happiness seemed directed at the American consumer culture. Did you ever think of focusing on different cultures as well and what their definitions of happiness are? Or did you mainly want to focus on our society and what is troubling us the most?
TS: I’m American and I come out of the American culture, so I see things from the American perspective. I’ve studied enough of the world to know that America is simply leading this idea of material wealth. But, it is a world wide, pervasive idea that we have to get over. So, it is not simply about America. We just happen to be, I think, leading the charge. And we have an opportunity now to say, we’ve been there to other people and other cultures who want to be us, and say we’re rethinking things. And that’s a very powerful place to be.
HPR: Do you see yourself making more mainstream comedies again, or do you see yourself exploring these deeper questions more?
TS: I think filmmaking is a sacred art and I am humbled by the fact that I get to participate in that. But we literally want to start a revolution – not of guns, but a revolution of ideas and perspective. We want your generation to raise their children in a way that is closer, if you will, to reality. I think our generation has helped to birth new ideas in a new way and your generation has a chance to make that rubber meet the road.
HPR: It is always very difficult to translate these ideas into reality. And, the feeling that I got when I watched the film was that you have these moments of clarity where everything seems like a light bulb just went on. This may be the answer, but how do you really make that stick? People will watch the film and feel inspired, but how do you maintain that momentum?
TS: If you want a life of sugar highs then watch a lot of television and accumulate a lot of stuff and you’ll get a lot of sugar highs. If you want a life that is deeper and based on a more nutritious life, then you’ll hang out with people that further this walk in your life. You’ll read things that will challenge you. You’ll open yourself up and the practical steps follow. That response that is so essentially who you are eventually gets forgotten because you get back into the stresses and strains of an artificial society that every philosopher and mystic before me has talked about. You think it is essential to get the right grade, you think its essential to get in the right grad school. That’s not essential. What’s essential is to become who you are, to wake up to who you are, and then to become who you are in the most powerful way. So you either feed that every day by what you eat, or you don’t feed it. I think our culture is at a point where it has been feeding itself enough junk food that it’s tired. They’re tired of the sugar high and they want something that is more nutritious. They want more real food.
HPR: You said you moved from your big mansion to a mobile home, but outside of giving up your material wealth, have you had any travels to developing countries that impacted you as well?
TS:A few years ago I traveled to India and it called into question what we think of poverty. You know, people without material wealth are not necessarily poor. It’s what Thoreau said: ‘When do we agree to accept the appearance and not the reality?’ People that I have met in my lifetime, and some on this trip to India, who didn’t have what we would consider a wealth of material goods were some of the richest people I’d ever met because they had community. They had family. They were in touch with their needs and the natural world and their connection. It made me think about poverty in a whole different way.HPR: Could you talk a little bit about the I AM Foundation and what it does? Is it an umbrella organization to other charities you support or is a charity in itself?
TS: It’s both. And it’s new. We just launched it with the film. We are going to support charities like Invisible Children, Free the Slaves, and St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, whose work must be ongoing and important for the healing of the world. But we are an organization that is going to address that spiritual poverty I talked about, the idea that many of us may be walking in a disconnected way. As Mother Teresa knew, when asked to start a home in America, she said they have a different kind of poverty. I want three nuns to come and pray and send energy of love into America because they have material wealth but spiritual poverty.
We want to address poverty on all levels. So, with organizations like Invisible Children we’ll address physical poverty in the world. But we’re going to have programs that talk about the principles of I AM and how we can birth a more compassionate world and break out of this kind of spiritual and emotional poverty that I think grips much of the West.
TS: It’s both. And it’s new. We just launched it with the film. We are going to support charities like Invisible Children, Free the Slaves, and St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, whose work must be ongoing and important for the healing of the world. But we are an organization that is going to address that spiritual poverty I talked about, the idea that many of us may be walking in a disconnected way. As Mother Teresa knew, when asked to start a home in America, she said they have a different kind of poverty. I want three nuns to come and pray and send energy of love into America because they have material wealth but spiritual poverty.
We want to address poverty on all levels. So, with organizations like Invisible Children we’ll address physical poverty in the world. But we’re going to have programs that talk about the principles of I AM and how we can birth a more compassionate world and break out of this kind of spiritual and emotional poverty that I think grips much of the West.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
