Tom Shadyac’s new documentary “I Am” celebrates the tiny gestures, the ones that may seem small but can lead to big changes.
Don’t believe him? Consider the Middle East, a region once lorded over by dictators but now simmers with populist revolt.
“These little acts are what created those revolutions, people were changing,” Shadyac says. “It’s my belief, what you might label optimism, is that changes are happening all over that you and I are not aware of … when the change comes it comes exponentially fast.”
“I Am” examines these kinds of measures, the humanist ties that bind us no matter where we call home. And change is needed for mankind to survives, says Shadyac whose film assails the principles behind a consumer-driven culture.
“[Albert] Einstein said humanity needs a new way of thinking to survive. If you look at how we behave we are doomed,” Shadyac says. “Everything that thrives is in a cooperative. Either we’ll work that way into that cooperative, and there will be rogue cells and rogue this and rogue that, but it will be inside a cooperative shell and not this shell we have now that pits us all against each other. I think we’re gonna get there.”
One might disagree with Shadyac’s thesis, especially in light of the cooperative-style societies like Cuba and Venezuela which hardly seem Utopian. But give Shadyac credit for walking the walk on the lifestyle front.
The affluent director gave up much of his riches as well as his mansion to live in a modest mobile home. The first day in his new, smaller house proved traumatic.
“I was moving away from something I was taught was not the way to go … I thought I had made the biggest mistake of my life,” he recalls. “One day later the fear disappeared. I saw through the illusion, and I never wanted to go back. In hindsight It was not hard, it was wonderful.”
“I Am” doesn’t just take sides against consumerism. It shows that religion and science, often seen as mortal foes, can actually coexist.
“We have this idea that science and religion are enemies, but they’re saying essentially the same thing,” he says. “If I told you everything is connected … those are the underpinning of both science and religion.”
One of the more intriguing sequences in the movie has Shadyac getting wired up to a petri dish filled with yogurt. When he thought about topics he felt passionately about, a device measuring cellular movement in the dish starts to spike.
“We know we affect things, and then to see it …” he says. “The people I know who are uncovering the new discoveries in science, the people at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, the science makes them deeply more spiritual. At the end of all the science all you see is mystery.”
Shadyac emerged from making “I Am” a changed artist. He isn’t against making more comedies, but he hardly seems thrilled by the notion. But the experience did allow him to see the critical failure of one of his past comedies, “Patch Adams,” through a new lens.
“’Patch Adams’ is outside the paradigm,” he says, as was the classic film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The latter was deemed “at best sentimental and at worst an insult to humanity,” he says, referring to some early reviews.
“You don’t need material wealth that George Bailey thought you needed. You need a different kind of wealth,” he says of the film’s message.
“Patch got rich because he served people. That upset people,” he says. “When someone lives a life like Patch … it can feel threatening. You get a lot of sharp responses.“
(Photo: Director Tom Shadyac, left, interviews Desmond Tutu as part of his new documentary “I Am.”)
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
“These little acts are what created those revolutions, people were changing,”
You should have asked if he included the Tea Party in those revolutions.
The Institute of Noetic Sciences, alas, is more pseudoscience than true science.
The Institute of Noetic Sciences is a parapsychology think-tank; I wouldn’t necessarily say they’re pseudoscience, so much as they’re trying to use science to investigate something immaterial. There’s a reason psychology period is a “soft” science (except behaviorism, which involved torturing toddlers).
I’d argue that collectivism is emphatically not cooperative; there’s a reason those systems are called “command economies”. If you want to know what cooperative economics looks like, look at law and medicine: doctors and lawyers aren’t really competing, and, at least until very recently, they were all their own economic masters. That’s the real problem with collectivist economics: their workers are just as dependent on their employers (the techical term is “proletarian”) as in the corporate-capitalist system. And the states they’re in hobble their economies, so the employees don’t do as well as in a capitalist system. If I have to be a serf, at least let me be a serf on a prosperous estate.
How’s that for a stirring defense of capitalism?
I like the fact he “hooked up” a plate (petri dish) of yogurt and thought “unicorn and rainbow thoughts” and was able to gauge the yogurt’s reaction.
This is true religion (NO JOKE!). This similar experiment was done by L. Ron Hubbard (founder of The Church of Scientology) on tomatoes. Seems that L. Ron hooked up tomatoes to his “E-Meter” (a “religious” device used to this day by all Church members to check their “Theton” levels) and he then yelled at the tomatoes and then sweet-talked them and noticed they liked being kissed more than being eaten.
I am not joking.
That being said, can you guess what I think of Mr. Shadyac’s “sceintific” experiment with yogurt that clearly uses similar “modalities”?
That should have read “Scientific” experiment. Darn you, Toto, for no editing abilities when we err!
The extreme change in nature of his thoughts,actions and lifestyle sounds to me more like the reation of a man who hasn’t gotten over and dealt with his traumatic experience.
Let’s check back with him in a few years, I’ll bet he’s no longer living in a mobile home.
I didn’t notice before, but this guy is actually comparing Patch Adams to It’s A Wonderful Life? That’d be pretty damn rich from a fan of the film; when the guy who made it does it, he’s comparing himself to Frank Capra.
Sorry, but Capra was an agrarian populist firmly rooted in the Catholic tradition, like G. K. Chesterton or J. R. R. Tolkien. His criticism of commercial and industrial civilization is a lot deeper than that of pinko halfwits like Zinn or Chomsky; Capra, Chesterton, and Tolkien understood that collectivism is even worse than the things it attempts to cure. I see no evidence Shadyac actually understands anything about economics beyond “Collectivism nice, Capitalism mean”—which isn’t even a good oversimplification.
Also, people didn’t like Patch Adams because, as Michael J. Nelson put it, it’s about “an unfunny misogynist in loud pants”.
I’ll wait to catch this on cable. While Shadyac’s recent epiphany/lifestyle change has been overwhelming and exciting for him, a lot of what you’ve described in your review is not exactly groundbreaking.
For example, when he says “We have this idea that science and religion are enemies, but they’re saying essentially the same thing,” all I can say is that this maybe the conventional wisdom in the current secular culture – that you can either believe in science or God, but not both – but if he went to any church he would find a people of science (physicists, biologists – not linguists like Chomsky) who have no problem believing in both. There have been scientists in every church I’ve been a member.
And while his shunning of the Hollywood material lifestyle is admirable, I have to wonder who this impacts beside himself. This reminds me of a neighbor of mine when I lived in Boulder who was very environmentally aware – he rode his bike around town, lectured his family to open the fridge quickly to conserve energy, etc. Nice gestures, but none of this actually resulted in anything other than him feeling better about himself.
A changed artist or a change-artist. Beware of those who preach and want you to follow and give up your goods, period. One can learn all sciences on the many great PBS shows for free. This movie (I AM) reminds me of a Seth speaks groups.. Self-ordained oracles (usually over or bearing down on 50 yrs old) are a case study all on to themselves. A movie is put out like this every 5 yrs or so.. and Oprah promotes them. Why isn’t the director just ‘putting it out there’ and see if he likes how it serves him. Nah. Better to have Oprah hawk it. One has to laugh that he lives in such a lovely ? How hilarious. The average senior citizen, and numerous so-called middle class families do not enjoy the square footage he has (with his home and work trailers with a great water view). So happy he had a to reduce his environmental comfort zone.. I think of the zone around the nuke plants in Japan and the hundreds of thousands all over the world living on the bare ground. Who can be impressed or in awe that he lives where he chooses. What was the name of that last pseudoscience group that Oprah pushed at her viewers about 5-8 years ago? Oh yes, and how good it feels to hear millionaires say that we don’t need material wealth; Nice idea, only take what you need. Well, of course! Many do that already at the food banks all across America and the world. For the human majority, material wealth, translates into milk for the kids, rent money; gas to get to work, and .. actually owning, and not renting a trailer that is in rows with hundreds of other trailers side by side that rust out from under them, blow away in tornadoes or get flooded off their cement slab. Also, I AM was Stephen Cranes original call to the universe. This message is not new, (just a new messenger) and is understood by nearly every human being on earth without handing money over to see a slant-movie. It’ll be a DVD in record time for all the lost ones to buy… oh, wait, they should have laready given away their money.