Have you ever seen Ace Ventura: Pet Detective? How about the Nutty Professor? Liar Liar? (that’s my favorite). What do these films all have in common? Nope, not Jim Carey. Answer: Director, Tom Shadyac
Attractive dude right? Sweet hat
Several years ago, Tom Shadyac seemed to have a life many people dream about: a multimillion-dollar career, a 17,000-square-foot mansion, fancy cars, private jets, invitations to swanky Hollywood parties, and ugly hats. UNTIL, dum dum dummmm, Tom got in to a really bad bike accident, causing him post-concussion syndrome, a condition so painful it frequently leads to suicide. His near death experience inspired him to reassess his lavish lifestyle.
Cue famous Hollywood director to make a low budget documentary about life…
Tom moved out of his multimillion dollar mansion and in to a mobile home, in Malibu (still not too shabby, but quite a change). Within the next few months, he filmed interviews with notable academics, authors, historians, scientists and spiritual leaders, including Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Desmond Tutu. He posed two questions to them:
1) What’s wrong with our world?
2) What can we do about it?
The name of the documentary is I Am. It’s eye opening and at times, pretty damn funny.
The music industry (well, the entertainment industry in general) is ruthless and competitive. Though our culture may be built around competition, I Am strives to answer the question of whether it’s competition or cooperation that is the essential nature of humans. One of my favorite fun facts from the movie is that in Darwin’s book, On the Origin of Species, Darwin references “survival of the fittest” only twice, while he mentions “love” 95 times. Our model of success should not be built around competition, but cooperation and love.
The Belle Brigade sing it best:
For 4 years now, we’ve been trying to make music that not only people can relate to emotionally, but also connects people around the world. There is actually a science to this musical and emotional connectivity. We all have something in our bodies called the vagus nerve, a bundle of nerves that triggers strong emotions. Finally! A scientific reason for why Dan’s oh so sweet voice makes me cry whenever he sings “my heart is yours to have…”
Anyways, go see the movie! It really inspired me and hope it does the same for you. Hopefully it’s playing around you…
Find a theater near you:
http://www.iamthedoc.com/findatheater-date/
PS. If LD gets super famous and makes tons of money, I take all of this back. I’m still gonna buy 8 cars, 5 houses and an island 🙂
-matt(i)
the official lady danville blog 