Tom Shadyac at the Steaming Bean. (Photo by Brett Schreckengost)
“I am so sorry I’m late,” he quickly breathed out as I extended my hand to greet him. He explained that his bike ride with friends along Boomerang Road went more slowly than expected and he felt terrible about keeping Watch Photo Editor Brett Schreckengost and this reporter waiting.
“Really, no worries,” I offered. “It’s Telluride, you’re not late.”
Still, could he buy us a coffee? Were we hungry?
“No, we’re good,” we said.
“Are you sure?”
“Seriously,” we assured him.
“Come on, man, is some part of you saying, ‘Cookie,’” he pressed Brett.
Wait a second, what’s wrong with this picture?
To start, Shadyac is a super-successful Hollywood director and the comedic creator of films including Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Liar Liar, The Nutty Professor, Patch Adams, Bruce Almighty, Evan Almighty and the list goes on.
Yet there he was, traipsing around Telluride wearing jeans and Ugg boots, and apologizing to us mere mortals about being late to a meeting for which he was not even really late.
How often does that happen?
That’s the dichotomy that is Shadyac, who is premiering a deeply personal documentary feature entitled I Am, his first documentary, at Mountainfilm (Saturday, 7:30 p.m., Palm; Sunday, 7:45 p.m., Nugget) this weekend.
How often is it, exactly, that someone who has made it to the top of the Hollywood heap decides that the trimmings and trappings of his high-flying, platinum-plated life are all an illusion, and more or less turns his back on the money-making machine that made him in order to explore the very basis upon which our society functions?
Indeed, that’s exactly what happened, when Shadyac essentially stepped away from the rat race following a devastating head injury from a mountain biking accident in 2007. Because of the cumulative effects of mild head injuries (of which the basketball player, surfer and mountain biker has had many) he ended up suffering a host of symptoms including mood swings, ringing ears and an inability to tolerate bright light and to concentrate, with a condition known as post-concussion syndrome.
“The only time I felt OK was when it was dead quiet and dead black,” he said.
Always a spiritual seeker, the injury coalesced something inside Shadyac, who, in questioning how it was that he could afford a 17,000 square foot home on a seven-acre estate in Southern California and private jet travel when much of the world lived in desperate poverty afflicted by disease, famine and war, had already traded in his Beverly Hills digs for a mobile home park in Malibu.
The accident ended up being a blessing.
“It knocked me out of my head and into my heart,” he said.
What followed was the growth of his conviction to pursue the answers as to why so few of us hold the world’s bounty while the majority struggles, and to share them with anyone who will listen.
“I had a theory that there was an identifiable cause,” he explained. “I wanted to explore that.”
The result is I Am, a series of conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers, authors, religious leaders and scientists whose work is upending the way we think about the world and our place in it.
What if, for example, we got Charles Darwin and his theory that only the strongest should survive all wrong? What if our belief that we are hardwired for competition is simply an excuse to behave badly? What if our true nature is that described by world’s great religions and mystics – that we find fulfillment and contentment when we are acting with compassion and serving one another?
What if love really is all we need?
Shadyac is convinced that it is, in part because of what he has experienced in his seven years attending Mountainfilm, where the films have lifted his spirits and the community has become a second family.
“There are people out there that really care. They’ve given me great encouragement that there are people out there that are in the trenches,” he explained.
“Mountainfilm is a dive into reality, when so much of the business that I am in is the skirting of reality,” he continued. “All those things are all invented.”
But at Mountainfilm, “The conversations are real,” said Shadyac, and I Am is his contribution to them.
“He has taken this festival to heart as much as anyone I know,” said Festival Director David Holbrooke.
“That he wanted to make this film a lot because of what he learned at Mountainfilm is really touching to me.”
“I would love for the film to reach as many people as possible and to have a conversation that lingers,” said Shadyac. “I believe deeply that we have to shift deeply,” he continued.
“We can’t last, behaving this way.”
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