Falling off your bike can make you happy
The journey of the man who invented ass talking and answered some questions about how to help the world.
Ace Ventura: The Pet Detective, The Nutty Professor, Liar Liar, and Bruce Almighty are indisputably all true masterpieces. Ace Ventura might have been much more memorable with Jim Carrey talking to others by moving his ass cheeks, but the man who has been behind the comedic gold is Tom Shadyac. He’s used his talents to both written and direct all of these hit films. It is clear to see which movies he directed because of the unique form of humor he has!
Born in 1958, he is now 59 years old, but he’s still a comedian who wants to bring both joy and laughter to both the young and the old. Like many of us, Tom Shadyac was born in a town (Falls Church, Virginia), and was raised locally and was educated through the local schooling (at J. E. B. Stuart High School). Also like most of our class, he was an athlete (basketball), a club member (Key Club), and full of much academic success (National Honor Society.)
However, unlike most of us, Tom’s father and mother, Richard and Julie Shadyac were actually of Lebanese descent. Sadly, his mother spent most of Tom’s adult life in a wheelchair as a semi-quadriplegic until she died of cancer in 1998.
Very clearly, Tom Shadyac is another shining example of the success that you can attain if you dare to follow your dreams and passions. As a pre-law student at the University of Virginia, he graduated in 1981 and later received his master’s degree in film at UCLA Film School in 1989. This was his ticket to much bigger things.
In 1994, his first huge success was the infamous Ace Ventura: Pet Detective where he met his friend, Jim Carrey. The resonance in humor between Carrey and Shadyac produced a hilarious movie which grossed $12,115,105 in 1,750 theaters in its first week. When it stopped showing in theaters in the US and Canada, the total gross was $72,217,396. It went on to gross $35,000,000 internationally. Everyone who’s seen the film can and will testify to the comedic gold of Tom Shadyac and Jim Carrey. More and more opportunities were beginning to reveal themselves to him. Tom even bought a mansion in Los Angeles as well as a number of other things like a personal jet to celebrate his career advances in Hollywood. The multi-millionaire, Tom Shadyac was in his prime and he was unstoppable.
In 2007, he had a bicycle accident in Virginia which did not have a very laughable result: broken bones and a severe concussion. Tom began showing symptoms of post-concussion syndrome which included tension headaches, migraine-like headaches, and sensitivity to light and to sound. Tom had to sleep in the darkest closet in his mansion because of his concussion and he had a constant ringing in his ear for almost over 6 months. Doctors were clueless about when he would recover because post-concussion syndrome can last for years. Later Shadyac commented “It was a disaster, I felt suicidal at points.”
Thankfully Tom began to recover from the post-concussion syndrome. The journey he had been through had vast changes on him. Without hesitation, he sold the bulk of all of his possessions, and donated very large amounts of money to various charities. Furthermore, he also opened a homeless shelter in Charlottesville, Virginia, and had a key donation to an initiative in Telluride, Colorado, to preserve a natural area at the town’s entrance.
To help facilitate changes, he sold his Los Angeles mansion and moved to Paradise Cove Trailer Park in Malibu. After his tragic bicycle accident, he has undergone changes and now wants to change his surroundings.
In 2011, Tom directed a movie I Am which follows up on his bicycling accident. This, ladies and gentlemen, is where I learned about our hero, Tom Shadyac. The film asks two main questions: What’s wrong with the world? And what can we do about it? The film is about human empathy and happiness. It also explores Shadyac’s personal journey, the nature of humans and the world’s enslavement to modern materialism. Our favorite philanthropist also made the revenue from the film go to various charities.
In 2013, the former comedian left the film industry to write his own book Life’s Operating Manual. Now he is a professor at the University of Memphis who teaches film. Regardless of the crises in his life, Shadyac was motivated to impact the world with his transformed self. The hero’s journey can affect anyone at any point in their life as shown with a middle aged wealthy comedian, but the hero’s that are remembered are the ones who endow the world with their new abilities.
TLDR; Falling off your bike can make you happy!
