Bet You Didn’t Know: Secrets Behind The Making Of “The Pursuit Of Happyness”

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Relationship with Will 

Once he agreed that Will was the man to tell his story, the two developed a rapport with one another pretty quickly. In another interview published on About.com, Gardner told the story of the trip he took to Will’s house and how the two were able to connect before shooting ever took place.

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.”

 

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