Back when Gardner's financial prospects were at their most bleak, he was accepted into an unpaid internship program at a brokerage firm, which only served to hurt his financial position. During the months of training and studying in hopes of beating the other interns out on the one available paid position, Gardner made due by devoting a few hours each week to selling specialized X-ray machines - the family's only source of income. Somehow by living in homeless shelters and even restrooms when absolutely necessary, Gardner managed to hold things together and never gave up on himself or on the idea of building a good life for his son.
The Decision to Write a Book About His Life: “I got approached by some folks who are now my agents. Jennifer Gates, after she saw the first 20/20 piece we did with Barbara Walters, she approached me with the idea to do a business/life lessons book,” explained Gardner. “I thought that could be interesting. It's a different kind of book. You can confine where you have to go with that book. A little while after that, I was getting an award from an organization - from the National Fatherhood Initiative in Philadelphia. They had an emcee who wanted to keep the program rolling and he kept citing all these statistics. He kept citing these things over and over: if you were born in this house, if you're from this family, if you lived in this neighborhood, this is who you're going to turn out to be. I sat there and I kept saying silently to myself, ‘That's bulls**t.’ I said it silently to myself to a point where I stepped up to the podium to get my award (and) you know what came out of my mouth. I felt it in my heart and I'm so glad that I said it because in a room full of 1,000 people, so many people came up to me later and said, ‘You know what? I'm glad you said that because I'm from that family and I lived in that house and I'm from that neighborhood, and just like you, I made a conscious decision to go the other way.’
The last guy that night to come up to me was this guy with an incredibly rich voice who said, ‘Yes, a lot of it bulls**t, isn't it?’ And it was James Earl Jones. So if Darth Vader says it's bulls**t, it's bulls**t. (Chuckling) It was then that I said, ‘I can do this book. I’ve got to do this book. To do this, I've got to own this. I'm probably the only person in here like this.’
I have all the stuff in my head in these nice little tight boxes that had the same thing on them: Do Not Disturb. In the process of doing the book, you take the lid off of one box and it's connected to another box, and all this stuff comes out. That's how the book came to be, and it was just a coincidence. These things happen simultaneously; it was not planned. I would like to also say I'm so happy I got a chance to do the book. As great as this film is, and personally, I could not be happier, I'm biased, of course… One of my favorite films of all time is Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life. Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I see parallels and I see this film becoming a classic.”
Chris Gardner on His Relationship with Will Smith: “I've been asked that question a few times, and there have been some surreal moments on this part of the journey. First one, I go to meet Will. I go to his house. I'll never forget. They sent a car to pick me up because it's one of those places up in the mountains you would never find. I guess that's the idea. We finally get close to the house and I look up at this tree and say to myself, ‘That's the biggest housecat I've ever seen.’ We sat down, talked and chitchat, and Will says to me, ‘Man, we don't have a cat that big. That was a mountain lion.’ (Laughing) That was kind of freaky.
When I first met him, we go to the house with the idea to discuss the script. I take along the script and my notes, but I also brought along a picture of my son and I sitting in front of the house where we first lived in after living on the streets a year. I say to Will, ‘We can talk about the script or we can talk about these two guys. What do you want to do?’ You know what he chose? ‘Let's talk about these two guys.’ We had a great conversation, a couple of hours, just he and I. Someplace in the conversation, he started looking at me like this [leaning back and holding his hand to his chin]. He had begun to study me. It made me uncomfortable. I'd never been studied.
I made a decision from the beginning I would trust him. I said to him, ‘I'm going to be as open as I can and I'm going to trust you as an artist to pick and chose, slice and dice, cut and paste, whatever artists do to tell stories.’ I'm very happy to tell people what they ask me about Will, what kind of guy is he: regular, sweet, kind, humble loving guy, but he has a sick, twisted perverted sense of humor. This cat said some things to me... I won't say what. (Laughing) No. I went, ‘Oh my God!’ When he's comfortable with you, he'll say things and you think he’s serious.”
Chris Gardner’s Son’s Reaction to The Pursuit of Happyness: “He's 25, and when you're 25, you don't have impressions. (Laughing) He is just so cool. He was so young [during that time]. You know what he remembers? I'm so thankful because maybe I did that thing right, he remembers that we were together every day. That's what he remembers. He remembers a lot of moving, he'll admit that, but he remembers we were together every day. As I've said many times, there are folks who live in multimillion-dollar houses with their children and their children can't say that.”
