Excess Hollywood

Tom Shadyac, director of blockbuster comedies, such as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Liar Liar, The Nutty Professor, and Bruce Almighty, has a new project. A documentary called I Am. It’s about stuff and status and our culture’s definition of success and how that success doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness.

April 25, 2011; 12:00 PM • by The Checkout Girl

More than once in my life, I’ve been stripped to nothing but a suitcase full of clothes.

The first time, I was the knocked up, nineteen year old, brand new bride of a sailor. Just as the I do’s were gulped and nodded, he was handed transfer orders to Hawaii. We were to pack up all our worldly possessions, send them on a boat to the island of Kauai, and live out of a suitcase for a month, until we would fly there and start our new life.

But tragedy struck in the time between “Aloha, possessions” and, well, “Aloha, possessions” (The same word means both “goodbye” AND “hello”? Madness!), in the form of Hurricane Iniki. The storm resulted in six deaths and over a billion dollars in damage. The military called my new husband to come help with the cleanup and told me to just sit tight. They said they’d call when I could come. Two months later, and now at DEFCON 2 of pregnancy, my suitcase and I arrived and sat in a hotel room, while people rebuilt their lives all around.

A month later, and just two days before my due date, our house was finally ready, and our household goods were to be delivered. I couldn’t wait to see all my stuffs and live a normal life again.

But that didn’t happen. The truck pulled up, offloaded the giant wooden shipping crates, pried them open, and a stench not known since the last time Carrot Top was on stage came pouring out. Along with toads. Lots of them. Turns out our goods had arrived the day before the hurricane and were blown all over the southeast side of the island. A good portion had been recovered and re-boxed, soaking wet. With, you know, toads.

I saw clothes, furniture, yearbooks, photographs, wedding mementos, all with a thick layer of pink mold on them. I saw the crib for the baby I was just days from having, reduced to sticks. I saw my life, laid out and swampy.

Tom Shadyac, director of blockbuster comedies, such as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Liar Liar, The Nutty Professor, and Bruce Almighty, has a new project. A documentary called I Am. It’s about stuff and status and our culture’s definition of success and how that success doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness.

Tom was in a traumatic bicycle accident in 2007, which left him questioning his jetsetting, Hollywood lifestyle, which included a 17,000-square-foot mansion, luxury cars, regularly flying in private jets, and invitations to extravagant parties.

“Facing my own death brought an instant sense of clarity and purpose,” he says in I Am. “If I was, indeed, going to die, I asked myself: What did I want to say before I went? It became very simple and very clear. I wanted to tell people what I had come to know. And what I had come to know was that the world I was living in was a lie.”

What he discovered revolves around three key concepts:

1. It is scientifically proven that the entire human race is connected.
2. It is human nature to be cooperative rather than competitive.
3. If you don’t do what your heart wants you to do and follow your passion, it will destroy you.

Today, Tom lives in a modest mobile home, bikes to work and flies commercial airlines—and he says he’s never been happier. “It’s a simple life,” hey says, “I haven’t given up everything. I don’t want to overdramatize this. I simply met myself at my needs.”

Sounds like a bunch of hippie bullshit, right? “Enjoy your free love, Moonbeam, I’ll just be over here, playing Angry Birds on my iPad and eating Outback steak, all while driving my SUV!”

But it’s not like that. It’s more about things, and how the overwhelming desire to get more things and the pressure to keep our things, will keep us unfulfilled. I mean, how can you be fulfilled when there’s always something “missing”? A thing, standing between you and true happiness?

But Tom’s not saying you should kill your big screen television or chuck your iPhone into a dumpster and start living in a commune, or, worse, an apartment. He’s saying you should stop for a minute and ask yourself what makes you happy. If it’s stuff, then go on with your stuff. If it’s exhausting, trying to keep up with your stuff, maybe it’s time to make some changes.

It took me losing nearly everything to realize that a suitcase-full was enough. After all, I’d been living out of it for months, so how much more did I need?

When my possessions were all gone, I grieved. But I didn’t grieve forever. I rebuilt, but more modestly, and felt a sense of freedom. Like I could take or leave it all, at any given moment. In the twenty years since then, I have been the girl who preaches that things are temporary and don’t bring happiness. Dying with the most toys doesn’t make you any less dead.

As for Tom, I kind of hope that this change of heart means that I will never have to see Jim Carrey’s wacky facial contortions, ever again, but I doubt it. However, at least someone is saying “enough” to the competing, gathering, and consuming that is going on in our current culture. Now, if only he had said “enough” to Eddie Murphy in a fat suit. Oh, well, can’t win ’em all.

April 25, 2011 12:00 PM 1