The Pursuit of Happyness, and Oprah's "Billionaire School"

Please, the movie and the book are very different. I believe in the story what I don't like is how the movie looks as if it was just put together in a month literally.

Here one point on the movie vs the book as mentioned above in the movie I got the impression that Chris was married to his son's mother there were no clues of this just being his girlfriend whom he cheater with on his wife who ended up pregnant.

In the book he was married, and left his wife for his son's mother. I have always known that the book is always better than the movie in this case for sure the movie is and was a great disappointment in my opinion. thanks

Asone

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I read the blog you mentioned and must say that it's not the first time I've read objections to the movie. I find the arguments of people who object to how certain people are portrayed in the "Pursuit" movie ( http://jerseygoddess.blogspot.com/2006/12/i-saw-pu... ) kind of silly. The movie's based on someone's true-life experience from that person's perspective. In the actual story about Gardner, the mother of his son, who I'm not positive he married, took the child at first then came back later and returned him saying she couldn't take care of the boy.

I think that people aren't really angry at the movie as they say. They're angry about life, about reality as they know it.

For all we know, the movie may be portraying Thandie's character in a more favorable light than the woman upon whom she's based deserves to be seen. We really won't have insight unless the actual mother surfaces and tells her side of the story, and even then we won't really know the truth because we ourselves weren't there in these people's lives.

As a writer, the argument about the mother's character makes me think of what would happen if I wrote my true life story. Some people would be pissed off probably saying my ex husband seemed like a stereotype of of black males. Well, damn it, it's my story! I'm going to tell it from my perspective based on how I saw him treating me and our children. If I go overboard trying to not portray him poorly simply because he is a black male, then I'll be subverting the truth of what happened. Furthermore, unless portrayed as leaving children as an act of great sacrifice "for the good of the child" because the person leaving knows he/she can't take care of a child, the person who leaves a child or children behind never comes off looking good.

We judge people who leave children behind because we instinctively know that if we condone this behavior, more people will adopt it. Raising children is difficult. If the human race condones leaving children behind, then it is in jeopardy of arriving at extinction sooner. And as we await expedited extinction, we'll suffer the wrath of abandoned children grown to adulthood, caring about no one but themselves.

Thandie's character is based on a real person who hasn't surfaced to tell her side or the story, and so, I suspect the real woman's either dead, has been paid off to not come forward, doesn't care how she was portrayed, is in no shape to face media, or she thinks the portrayal was fair. If she's alive and won't come forward, even if it turns out she was paid to keep her mouth shut, then Gardner's version gets a credibility nod.

Actually, as a black female who's been married and struggled through and who's now divorced, I thought she seemed real. It's hard to stick with someone who's dreaming, and that's how Gardner appeared to be to her with his bone density machine sales. She wanted him to get off his dream and get a real job that would take the burden off her. She was tired and right to challenge him about what the hell he was doing, but I'm not convinced her reasons for leaving are anything to be loved unless she honestly felt she couldn't make the marriage work. It would be nice if they'd stayed together as a family and fought for success together, but that's not what happened. It didn't happen because they were facing real life with all its stress, plus the stress of blackness in America.

I also think Gardner came off as self-righteous about keeping his son, but we can't have it both ways. We can't condemn men who leave their children and also condemn men who fight for their children. Neither can we applaud men who leave but condemn women who leave. What I'm asking is why do we want to applaud people who leave children at all? It seems that sometimes pursuing our own feminist ideals causes us to lose integrity in areas of basic human decency. Are we so anxious to be treated as male equals that we condone selfish behavior by any gender with the attitude of "it's okay if we do it because the men do it more"?

America's in crisis when it comes to families splitting for what amounts to adults' selfish quests to do as they please even when children are involved. I almost get the feeling that some people would like Chris Gardner's story more if Chris Jr. had stayed with his mother and we never heard from mother or child again. Or if he'd taken his son but ended up putting him in foster care--what a tear jerker that would be. All we'd hear is a story about a black man who sacrificed his child to do as he pleased. But, oh wait! Isn't that the stereotypical black male story? Is that what we want to hear?

Or maybe we prefer stories like man goes to homeless shelter; son is raped by homeless people; man gives up and dies of drug overdose. Yeah, I think for all our complaining about the ugliness of the nightly news, we like the ugly stories because it makes us feel that we're better than the poor suckers who normally make headlines.

The blogger you mentioned talked about Gardner himself being selfish in his pursuit of wealth. To a certain degree that's true. He showed more concern for pursuing his dream than he did for caring about the difficulties his wife faced as portrayed in the movie. But he's not nearly as selfish as men who pursue wealth and leave an underpaid wife behind, who deprive her of child support and expect her to take care of both herself and his children. No matter how you look at it, the Thandie character made a final choice to go it alone, without her significant other and without her child. So, do we blame Gardner for her decision? Should he have said, "Oh, you take him. I want to pursue my dream and I'll do that better without a child?" Indeed his pursuit would have been easier without a child.

I also wonder how people can say the wife in the movie is a stereotype of black females We're usually portrayed as the hard worker who keeps her children while men leave us, or a welfare mama who struggles with children while men leave us, or a crackhead who can't take care of our children while men leave us. The only way she seemed to be a stereotype to me is that she complained about the comings and goings of black man. She had legitimate complaints, so how can anyone object to her complaining? I would've complained too had I been working all those hours while my spouse pursued a dream that seemed to never bear fruit.

People also seem pissed because the wife in this movie left and she's told by the male "you know you can't take care of him," the child. The real mother of Chris Gardner Jr. must've agreed with this assessment. In real life, she brought the child back to his father and said, "I can't do this." In the movie, she agreed to leave the child behind after being begged to do so. Who are we really pissed at here, the movie or the truth about what actually happened?

As far as Hollywood movies go, the movie was what it should have been--a movie to say you can make it through hard times if you persevere. What were people expecting? A treatise on America's inequalities? If they left the movie angry, then they should look at their own emotional baggage. That's where the problem truly lies. Someone's true life is whatever it is.

I've also noticed that some people don't believe Gardner's life story at all. I get hits to my blog ( http://jerseygoddess.blogspot.com ) from people searching phrases like "Chris Gardner fake." Some people out there refuse to buy that anyone overcame such odds.

I have no trouble believing it. As a African-American who's read slave narratives and about the lives of people like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, I know that black men and women have survived far worse situations than those in Gardner's life and some have came out to be more successful than anyone expected them to be given their period of existence (in Gardner's real life he was beaten by his mother's boyfriend and sexually assaulted as a youth).

America today embraces the victim mentality; we spend more time thinking up excuses for why we can't do something than finding solutions that enable us to do the things we can. As a result, many of us despise those who overcome great odds, especially socioeconomic odds, rather than applaud them. I think it's because those people's success causes us to question ourselves and our own failures.

People say they want the truth.
I'll tell you the truth, too many black families are ripped apart by factors that can be overcome if we believe we can overcome them, and too many black babies grow up in poverty. That's the truth!

If someone comes forward and proves Gardner to be a liar about his life, then we have something to complain about. We can scream that he played us. Until then, the movie is what it is, a Hollywood adaptation of a real man's life.

I agree with a lot of what the blogger said in her Happyness post ( http://antiessentialistspeaksup.wordpress.com/2007... ), but I think that like most people who don't like the movie, she's grappling with her own issues about real life, not the movie itself. She seems to be more pissed off that people judge women who leave and seems to want society to applaud women who leave children behind the same way it doesn't penalize and sometimes applauds men who leave children behind to pursue "their dreams." She identifies with Newton's character more than Smith's character and compares the movie to other stories like A Doll’s House and Medea, great fiction about a wealthy woman and a king's daughter. If she wants to compare a real life story to fiction, then let her try Toni Morrison's Beloved ( http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/beloved/themes.html ) and not stories about financially well-off white females. Yes, like Medea Sethe kills her own child, but not because she hopes to make a man suffer.

When it comes to black children, black women can't afford to adopt fictional wealthy white females who put the quest for self or the need for revenge above all else as role models. And black men sure as hell need to stop leaving children behind and lying to themselves saying the children are better off. Our communities are in crisis. (Personally, I thought it was good to see a movie about a black father ( http://jerseygoddess.blogspot.com/2006/11/will-smi... ) who took a legal route to do right by his child instead of the dope dealer or gang-banger route. I would be equally happy to see a movie about a black female who pursued a dream with her children to financial success. Knock wealth all you want, but go hungry a while and see how you feel about it.)

In real life, people judge women who leave. Considering the state of the black family in America, I think we should continue to be harsh on both mothers and fathers who leave their children behind or break up their families for no more reason than "life is hard" or I want to be happy. If you want to be happy and do what you want to do regardless of the needs of others, then avoid siring or bearing children. Until African-Americans are doing as well as everyone else in the is country, we can't afford to applaud people who leave their families because life is tough. Part of the abomination of American slavery was the breaking up of black families.

When it comes to one's responsibility to one's child, selfishness is overrated. Folks need to grow the hell up.

PS: Why am up in the wee hours bitching about people's ideas about a movie? My cat woke me.

"Love is liquid. Brew and be drunkards!" ~~Nordette ( http://nexus.writingjunkie.net ) And here's a link to the blog ( http://jerseygoddess.blogspot.com/ ).

I'm with Gena, Atena and MataH on Oprah's South Africa school--see the comments on BlogHer CE Laina's original post: "Oprah Opens School For Girls In South Africa ( http://www.blogher.com/node/14178 ).

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I had a hard time buying Will Smith in the role (unlike in "Enemy of the State" where I thought he was well cast). Along those lines, I found it even harder to buy Matt Damon in "The Good Shepherd" - he just never seemed to age, regardless of how old his character was supposed to be!

-Bob
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I enjoyed the movie. I thought it was unlikely that you could re-do' the rather hackneyed "American Dream' and get away with it. That said, it plays on the lines - keep at it and you'll get there, which feeds into the American Dream, but what about all the people who 'follow the rules' but don't get that lucky break?
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With The Pursuit of Happyness, first of all why was there no soundtrack to this movie for at least 20-45 minutes in the movie. The music is definitely a key factor in the movie flowing as well as the story line; second, I felt they could have given more history on Mr's Gardner's mother, etc he spoke more on that on Oprah as mentioned on Oprah there were things left out of the movie that were in the books.

I left there thinking and feeling that I wasted my time and money, when I could have waited for the DVD to get my money later. It was a total let down, in my opinion it should have been a made for television movie.

Asone

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