The Pursuit of Happyness

Great movies are personal. I don't measure movies by the number of stars they got or how they did at the box office. My definition of a great movie is one that sticks with you, one that is memorable or makes you want to see it again. A truly great movie helps you connect more deeply with your own experience, helps you define and express what is really in your heart. Great movies become touchstones. And when you're trying to share the deepest, saddest, most hopeful or tender part of you with someone you can can say, "here, watch this with me." I couldn't be with someone who didn't get "The Princess Bride," "The Bucket List," "Second Hand Lions," or "As Good As It Gets." There are others, but those are four that will always stay with me.

This weekend I added another one to the list. It's not a famous movie or a highly successful one, but the story touched me and I thought it was beautifully acted by Will Smith and his son. They are in the homeless shelter and he's tucking the boy in and the boy reaches up and takes his father's chin, "You're a good papa," he says. Sometimes our kids know just what to say, right from their souls. Every parent has four or five moments like that tucked away in their hearts, moments when their children ministered to them with laughter or tenderness.

But the most powerful element of the movie for me is how it captured the frantic momentum of being working poor, where one broken bulb can create an avalanche of small disasters in your life, and just managing can be overwhelming. All of the sudden you find yourself lower than you ever thought you could be. In the spring of '86 I was sleeping on a piece of cardboard on a thicket on Swan Island, and bathing in the sink at the warehouse where I worked. You don't mean to get to such a low place. One thing happens and then another. You lose a job or quit a deadend one in a huff. The car breaks down. Your share of the rent is 325 a month your paycheck is 240 and you have three overdrafts on your account. The burger you bought on Thursday went through right away and wound up costing 38.75. When you're behind on everything the least little thing that comes up seems like a big deal. And you're always running and you're always late, and having to carry your stuff with you wherever you go. Most of all it takes tremendous energy merely to hide your embarrassment and desperation. Once I walked two miles carry a typewriter to a pawn shop. They didn't want it and I had to haul it back to the thicket. On Thursday there was a heavy spring rain.

Finding your way out of the low place takes courage and ingenuity and a little luck. Maybe someone comes along and provides you shelter from the storm. You're not fooling anyone but everyone manages to look the other way. A buddy comes along and tells you about a job, and you tell a good story and manage to get it. Life improves. But some never get the right combination of luck and opportunity. They slip away into Night Train or the needle. They lose their piece of cardboard in the wind. Things don't get better and one day they are caught in the winter rain, or worse.

Failure and despair have a frightful momentum. Will Smith's character, Chris Gardner, had exceptional gifts, determination, intelligence and resilience, and these gifts got him to a better place. In the movie's last scene, I saw him clapping his hands above his head, almost ready to break out into a dance or tears, and I felt I understood that moment more than anyone who had ever watched the film. It takes courage to be that broken. It takes unspeakable human courage to rise up and hope, to come to the moment where you don't have to hide anymore, the day you get the keys to a place of your own with two rooms and a shower, a patio that looks out onto a green manicured lawn. The apartment on 106th and Wygant had a pool and they kept it clean. The manager was nice. I had the rent on time and bought a dependable car, a Ford Escort with 60,000 miles, with I hatchback for my softball gear and golf clubs. My daughter could come over and go swimming. When it snowed Roger and I played broom hockey on the street. I bought him a yellow bike and taught him to ride it in the parking lot of the church. I was rich. I had quarters for the laundry and bought a suit.

Thank you Will Smith for sharing the gift of your soul. People get placed in movies because they look pretty and can change their faces in the light to depict another mood, but you did something far more remarkable. You got into the skin of another person, and lived their fear and possibility. Watching you do that helped me to remember how much of each lies within us all.