The papers are all over this in Chicago. “OMG this happened in Chicago.” Because you know, nothing ever happened here before Will Smith starred in a movie about it. Chicago wouldn’t be the tag-along little brother city if it would just get over its fucking stupid inferiority complex.

Anyhoo, the movie looks terrible.

wikipedia: The word “Happyness” in the title has been taken from the misspelling of “Fun Joy Happyness” on a mural children have painted on the Chinatown daycare center where Chris Gardner takes his son, Christopher. When Chris points out the mistake, Mrs. Chu replies that it is not important to the pre-schoolers how the word is spelled, only that they have happiness. This leads Chris to contemplate the inclusion of the concept of the individual’s right to “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence, and how to pursue a happier, more emotionally secure childhood for his son, than his own had been.

I read a brief interview with the man himself, and he came off badly. All his answers were brusque and dismissive. “Let me ask you this...” “WELL, let me ask you THIS INSTEAD...” I thought to myself, nice guys finish last. This guy placed pretty high up in the race. So.

That said, anyone who goes literally from being homeless to being a millionaire has to have brass balls roughly the diameter of car tires. So more power to the bastard.

just saw the guy on dateline (?). seemed alright.

thanks for the spelling info. that shit bothers me (see fergie)

It’s entirely possible he was balking at idiot reporters. I’ll youtube him on dateline tomorrow.

you sure this happened in chicago? because they have all this late 70’s-early 80’s period Bay Area shit in it, including fake BART stations. they shot a few scenes right outside both my front door and the front door of my workplace...

it was filmed in san fransisco i thot.

Still thinking autocatheterization with a rusty length of barbed wire is the preferable option to this movie.

You, sir, have no soul.

Always hard working and tenacious, a series of circumstances in the early 1980’s left Gardner homeless in San Francisco and the sole guardian of his toddler son. Unwilling to give up Chris Jr. or his dream of financial independence, Gardner started at the bottom. Without connections or a college degree, he earned a spot in the Dean Witter Reynolds training program. Often spending his nights in a church shelter or the bathroom at a Bay Area Rapid Transit station in Oakland, Gardner was the sole trainee offered a job at Dean Witter Reynolds in 1981. He spent 1983–1987 at Bear Stearns & Co., where he became a top earner, and then in 1987, he founded the brokerage firm Gardner Rich & Co in Chicago.

Weeeeee bit tenuous to claim this “happened in Chicago.”

“A millionaire has a part-time apartment in Chicago” would be more apt to say.

This movie looks like a bag of shit.

The thing I love about stories like this is how they unite everyone in thinking opposite things about the world: liberals can walk out thinking “yeah, a lot of fine decent people have it rough, and we should help them,” and conservatives can walk out thinking “see, decent hard-working people always get rewarded in the end, they don’t need our help.”

The other funny part is that ... didn’t the real guy’s divorce and homelessness stem from losing all his money on a failed business venture? So his go-get-em attitude fucked him over once, and paid off huge the next time. Though I suppose the ostensible moral is that if he’d failed the second time, he would have picked himself up and tried repeatedly until everything worked out.

I can’t be bothered to even read the plot synopsis here, but is this an inspirational movie about somebody who gets filthy stinkin rich?

only happy ending left in Hollywood = GET RICH

apparently Will’s performance isn’t up to his conveying absolutely none of the essence of Muhammad Ali.

a bunch of this was shot outside my house and I bet it sucks horribly

i was more confused by the fact that the post office DID mail the envelope with the old stamp. Even though it’s worth millions to collectors, wouldn’t it actually be insufficient for modern-day postage?

Yes Warren was gonna sue Monty for that 20 grand he had in the end if he lost but however, when Monty inherited that 300 million in the Nick of Time, he and Angela and Mr. Roundfield would have Grandville Baxter and also Warren sent to the showers which is an expression for Cooler or Hoosegow or Brig in navy term or jail. Angela would still have to use that 20 grand for the law school fee to earn that degree.

But however if Monty lost there was Spike with his savings who would have bought a ten grand car and went to some cabin out west. Then Spike would have tried to get that collection a second time.

couldnt he hire someone to do something outrageous for the entire amount? Say he wants to see someone eat a hamburger off of the floor in the subway. every one has a price, and while most would be below 30 million I’m sure if you took 100 hamburgers down to the subway you could spend a lot of money paying people to eat them. Thats just one example of course he could hire people to do anything.

How long has the burger been on the floor?

this is a bad movie.

i always wish i could just see a well made doc about the real person when i see a shitty “real life story” like this.

well, run out and get Grey Gardens before the Drew Barrymore-Jessica Lange version comes out, then.

it was filmed in san fransisco i thot.

— grady (goforgrad...), December 16th, 2006.

That’s the Pursuit of Hippyness.

There are certain movies that are so NOT intended for the ILX demographic that I often wonder a) Why did you bother to go see it? and b) Does posting mean things about a movie most people on this board don’t give two shits about make you feel clever?

I sometimes feel uncharitable for having these thoughts.

I honestly thought it would be something I’d halfway enjoy.

The story is still a good story, albiet one with the moral: “pursuit and achievment of high paying job = happiness.” that’s why I wouldnt mind reading more about the guy or seeing a well made doc. But seriously this movie has so much wrong with it that the fact Will Smith is in it was probably its best attribute. Heavy-handed and pointless voice-overs, shitty shitty use of music, anachronisms galore... blegh.

Weeeeee bit tenuous to claim this “happened in Chicago.”

haha You know, they didn’t tell that story in the Chicago newspapers. They just kept calling him a Chicagoan. Seriously. Like they could never admit it DIDN’T happen in Chicago. This city’s insecurity is so tiresome.

In Honolulu, “Hawaii-Born” is as inseprable from the front of Barack Obama’s name as “Hussien” is from the middle of it on FOX News.

This city’s insecurity is so tiresome.

I have no idea what you’re talking about. Then again, I’ve never seen any news items about The Pursuit of Happyness here in Chicago. I do get excited when movies are about or set in Chicago (like Stranger Than Fiction or High Fidelity) because I enjoy spotting locations that I know in real life, but I mean, doesn’t everybody?

Not if you live in LA.

Right, or New York probably, but I don’t think it’s evidence of my insecurity.

I saw Batman Begins at that newish AMC on Illinois. It was cool walking outside the theatre and seeing the real-life drawbridge that the Bat-SUV launched over in the movie.

but I don’t think it’s evidence of my insecurity

Not yours. What I meant was that the features about this movie way trumped up the Chicago aspect of it, and it turns out, there really isn’t one. That’s playing to some weird sense of Chicago pride that... well, come to think of it, may only exist in Chicago-specific media. But it’s still annoying.

But maybe every city does this to an extent. Cf. New York running any New-York-related sitcom endlessly long after anyone cares.

I saw Batman Begins at that newish AMC on Illinois. It was cool walking outside the theatre and seeing the real-life drawbridge that the Bat-SUV launched over in the movie.

ditto, all the way around.

that newish AMC on Illinois

Probably my most frequented theater. The sound is top shelf.

FILMED BY MY HOUSE TOO BITCHES. I AIN’T NO WINDY CITYING.

in other news i got to see the polar bear cages from LOST irl yesterday!!!

TBS is not “New York”

I didn’t say it. I was quoting someone else. Nabisco, I think. I don’t live in New York.

Saw this:

Funnily enough, a lot seemed ‘glossed over’...

Mother leaves, then leaves town for New York and Job.

Father “You know you can’t look after him”

Mother “OK” (leaves and is never seen again)

What seemed to have started as someone’s “how I succeeded in business and my attributes in doing so” memoir seemed to me to have become a “how I pissed on/over everyone I loved in return for kissing the right ass on the way up” film. Fact is, if he hadn’t succeeded (and it takes him virtually the whole film to do so), we’d all be slshing our wrists on the way out!

Anyone else seen it now?