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
I don't consider anything I'm doing as generous. In the new model of the world, I hope people will consider whatever I'm doing as just normal.
The way I think we were living is an invention. The truth is nobody can own anything. That was an unheard-of concept among indigenous people. We invented that.
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.
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.
If you bounce a tennis ball against a wall it will come back to you the same way every time. But if you shift the wall a few degrees it will come back another way.
Nature is an incredible cooperative. When things operate outside of that cooperative, they die off. It's a very simple rule that nature operates under.
There is no 'I.' That's an illusion we've got to get beyond.
To me, 'Ace Ventura' is as scriptural and sacred as any movie I've ever done because it's childlike.
Someone asked me the other day, 'What's the biggest influence on your filmmaking career?' And they started naming filmmakers. I went 'Naw, it's Jesus actually.'
Show business is part of a larger culture, a world-wide culture that must make up to the fact that the accumulation of things doesn't make a life necessary any happier or purposeful.
One of the challenges of the church is to accept humanity for all it is.
I don't see making films to entertain and making films to inform as separate things.
The second we define someone as a Democrat or Republican, it creates a whole set of limitations.
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.