Tom Shadyac
Tom Shadyac
Thomas Peter "Tom" Shadyacis an American comedian, director, screenwriter, producer, author and occasional film actor. Shadyac, who was the youngest joke-writer ever for comedian Bob Hope, is widely known for writing and directing the comedy films Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Nutty Professor, Liar Liar, and Bruce Almighty. In 2010, Shadyac departed from past comedic work to write, direct and narrate the documentary I Am, in which he explores his abandonment of a materialistic lifestyle following a bicycle accident in...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth11 December 1958
CityFalls Church, VA
CountryUnited States of America
If I end up homeless and penniless because of a shift in my behavior about sharing what's come to me, bring it on.
I don't want to be your hero. I want to be your brother. You know, I want to be your family member. I want to be your equal.
Truth can be a matter of perspective, but I also think there's a truth that exists, that there are laws to the universe the way Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King believed.
Christ is in all, meaning that the divine spark is in all things.
The truth is nobody can own anything. That was an unheard-of concept among indigenous people. We invented that.
There's one fundamental law that all of nature obeys that mankind breaks every day. Now, this is a law that's evolved over billions of years, and the law is this: Nothing in nature takes more than it needs.
I didn't want to hear the usual answers about what's wrong because I believe these are symptoms: global warming, genocide, hunger, poverty, war, environmental crisis. If we can identify the root cause, we can change our ways.
Look at native cultures - they've lasted for tens of thousands of years, not doing everything right. We wouldn't want to emulate them in many ways, but their basic philosophies - being a part of nature, a part of a tribe or group without elevating, not what you call dominator philosophies - they lasted for tens of thousands of years. It took us to come and put them asunder.
Communism didn't work because people weren't ready for it, it was corrupt, and because it squelched individualism.
I have not walked away from Hollywood. I'm walking away from the way I personally did business in Hollywood. The budget of whatever movie I do needs to be efficient; it needs to consider what kind of resources we're using and how to be as responsible as possible.
I come from a family of lawyers. I was expected to be a professional of some sort, not an artist. I was never uplifted for my art.
I was always kind of finding humor to be an access point to the conversation, to a pain relief, if you will. My mother was in a wheelchair since I was very young, so she was in pain and we used humor.
The bike accident caused me to start talking about spiritual truths. This accident - where I faced my own death - compelled me to talk about these truths and try to make a movie about them.
Illnesses are often times a reflection of an emotional place that needs healing or attention.