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Chris Gardner’s Reaction to The Pursuit of Happyness: Will Smith recalls, “When he watched the movie, I sat behind him when he watched the movie, which is the most gut wrenching thing you could ever do is make a story about somebody’s life and then sit in the theater with him while they’re watching it… With Chris and with Ali, I’m not doing that anymore. Someone trusted you with their life story. It’s their family. It’s their experiences and it’s not like there’s going to be a second shot at it. It’s one time, and you’ll find that most people don’t even want to put the stuff out. It’s hard enough for them to even talk about it, let alone hand it to somebody to do what they want to do with it on the screen.
They have to love it. It’s a complete failure, if the movie makes X amount of 100s of millions of dollars and awards and all of that, and Chris doesn’t like it, it’s a failure. He turned around after the film. I’m sitting there and my heart is jumping and he looked and he said, ‘I can’t even talk to you right now.’ He got up and walked out. I was like, ‘Well, what the hell does that mean?’ But then we really went outside and he was crying. He just thanked me for the service to his family and he’s forever indebted for bringing his story [to the big screen]. And for me, it was a win from that point, so all of this is gravy time now.”
Working Opposite His Young Son: The elder Smith credits the younger one with helping him make it through particularly difficult scenes. “I was struggling with a scene. Seven, eight times [Gabriele Muccino] was coming up and giving me notes. With a particularly difficult scene I was struggling and Jaden said to me, ‘Psst, you just do the same thing every take, Daddy.’ And I was like, you know, I was a little offended by that. But what he was saying was that innately he couldn’t understand how I was reading everything exactly the same way every time. He was feeling like, ‘Well, that’s not real. I thought we were supposed to be trying to make this real.’
I started watching him and you know how kids are. If he decides he wants to get up and walk, he’ll get up and walk. The cameraman will just follow him. But I had my blocking; I knew my left leg was forward. I knew that I was saying it with my left hand every time so in order for them to make the edit, I would do it with my left hand every time. He broke me out of a mechanical space. I’ve always considered myself to be just average talent and what I have is a ridiculous, insane, obsessiveness for practice and preparation. My father used to say all the time, ‘Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.’ So if you stay ready, you ain’t gotta get ready. That is how I run my life. ‘Just stay ready.’ Stay in shape and then you don’t have to rush to train before the movie starts. I’ll show you my abs later because I’m in shape. But that idea, if you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready. So I had this preparation, I had this performance, I’ve seen it in my mind and I know I’m going to go out there and deliver this performance that way that I want to do it.
Gabriele told me one day, he said, ‘Don’t pose for my camera.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘You’re posing for my camera. I don’t want you to pose for my camera.’ He said, ‘You’re making faces like you are hurt. We will shut down, you go away, you come back when you hurt for real.’ I was like, ‘Wow.’ He and Michael Mann are the two directors that I’ve worked with that know all my tricks. They can see right through me and all of the Will-isms and the things that I know how to do to make the audience laugh or smile or cry. I know all of those things and they beat those things out of me. It’s interesting. It’s scary for me right now because I’m moving into a space where I just have no idea what’s going to happen when I’m going into these scenes. I’m living in the moments. I’m shooting I Am Legend right now and I’m excited about the possibilities of finding that artistic space.”
In a crucial scene in the film, Smith’s eyes get red but he doesn’t shed any tears. Asked if that was a Will-ism Smith said, “No, no, that is all authentic. Gabriele Muccino did a brilliant job of beating me away from my go-to moves. It’s like I felt like I’m thinking, I’m Allen Iverson in the acting world. How you gonna not let me do my crossover?’ He was like, ‘Nope, that’s not in this movie. You’re going to find other things. You’re Chris Gardner so you're going to create in a different way. You’re going to find different things and however long we have to shoot until you discover it, that’s how long we’re going to shoot. But what we’re not going to do is the same face you made with K at the end of Men in Black.’”
What’s Happening with I Am Legend?: “I’m working on I Am Legend right now. We’re kind of breaking form a little bit. I’m interested to see how people react to it. We’ve designed something completely aggressive and new and different. We’re sneaking a small art film character drama into the middle of a big summer blockbuster, so we’ll see how it works out.”
