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

 Discrepancies 

Whenever there’s a movie based on someone’s true life story, people always leave the theater wondering just how much was true and what was embellished. Well it wasn’t that much. While the movie makes it seem like Gardner’s homeless was just a few months, he was actually in that situation for a few years. In addition to the time lapse of certain events, Gardner’s run in with the law was initially about police responding to a domestic violence claim and they later found he had unpaid parking tickets and was arrested. The film just shows him being arrested for parking tickets.

In the movie, Smith sells a bone density scanner, in real life Gardner sold medical equipment but never a scanner. And lastly, in real life Gardner’s son was a toddler, just two years old when the events depicted in the movie took place. They made him older in the movie so he could be more expressive. But Gardner did say that at just two, his son said some very important words to him.

“I’ve got to tell you I saw one scene last night where my son says something to me that is probably the most important thing he’s ever said to me in his life when he says, ‘Papa, you’re a good papa.’ In the book, I had a chance to talk about where I was emotionally, how frightened I was. To have this boy at 2 years-old stand up and say you’re a good papa, and have that incorporated into the script and the movie, that was the big thing for me.”