Chris Gardner, the man whose rags to riches story inspired Will Smith’s box office hit The pursuit of happiness, went from living homeless to becoming a multimillionaire.
The film is roughly based on real events during one year of his life, when he was 28 years old. Chris Gardner had a difficult childhood, after growing-up in a household with a loving mother who was emotionally and physically abused by his alcoholic step-father.
Gardner ended up in foster care, after his mother (who worked multiple jobs to support the family) was sent to jail for committing welfare fraud.
The movie is set during his late twenties, after Gardner was accepted on a training program at a prestigious stock broker firm. Only receiving $1000 trainee stipend; he was forced
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military, the worst violence I ever saw in my life was in my home. There’s a school of thought that says you’re a product of your environment.
A lot of people would’ve said, ‘well, look where he’s from. He didn’t have a choice.’ I did have a choice. I made the decision at 5-years-old that when I had children; my children were going to know who their father was. And that no one would ever treat my child as I was being treated.
The film is based on your autobiography, ‘The Pursuit of happyness’, what would you like people to take from both the movie and your book?
When I look back at the journey from homelessness to prosperity, I hold one thing dearer than all else – my commitment to my son. Doing a movie with the top movie star portraying me, doing a book with an editor who's last book won the Pulitzer Prize – all that stuff is great, but the most important thing that I will have ever done in my life was break the cycle of men who were not there for their children.
You dedicated - your book ‘the pursuit of happyness’ – to your mom, Bettye Jean Gardner. In a previous interview, you mentioned she once said that you could become a millionaire if that’s what you wanted. How has she impacted your
The quests for gold at the end of the rainbow, the hopes of thousands to one day live the fabled American Dream. Worldwide, everyone who is capable looks for their chance to strike it rich. Some of the most successful people today, such as Apple’s Steve Jobs and OK! Magazine’s Richard Desmond, have risen from tough backgrounds (Serafina). Growing up in abject poverty, these individuals found ways to push past the glass ceiling in their respective fields. Interestingly, many of them share similar obstacles on their way to the top.
The main protagonist of the film, Scotty Smalls, is introduced as a straight-A, friendless young boy who has just moved into a new neighborhood in new state. While
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The character this film is primarily centered around is Will Hunting. Will lives in a tattered house in a bad neighborhood in the city of Boston. He grew up in foster care where he sustained continual physical abuse as a child. Will has a few close friends he is always with but never opens up about anything below surface level. Will is incredibly gifted with intelligence however he works as a custodian at the highly prestigious school, MIT. Professor Lambeau teaches advanced mathematics at MIT and is the one who discovers Will’s incredible talent for solving advanced mathematical theory. Professor Lambeau has high hopes for Will and pushes him into getting jobs with prestigious employers so that his gift is not wasted working as a custodian. Chuckie Sullivan is one of the closest of Will’s friends. They’ve known each other for years and Chuckie drives Will to work every day. Chuckie cares for Will and realizes the gift that he has and tries to convince Will he should be doing something of greater importance with his life. Skylar is a college stu...
Started From The Bottom “All men are created equal”. This is the foundation of the American Dream( Jefferson). The forefathers of the United States believed that all men have equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This appealed to those who needed a fresh start or that just wanted a better life and this ideal has become synonymous with the 20th century America because America prides itself on being the land of opportunity. America has many people from all over the world come to live there because they yearn for opportunity and freedom.
Candide by French novelist Voltaire, a master of literary satire, portrays a young man by the name of Candide who goes from a lavish, sheltered lifestyle to the real world and experiences all the hardships life has to offer. Through the story, the title character tries to acquire money and get back to his girl because he believes that is the key to his eternal happiness. He’s searching for what could make him happy but nothing seems to be the answer. Candide has many important themes such as the folly of optimism, the uselessness of philosophical speculation, and the hypocritical nature of religions. While each theme helps develop the plotline and no one is more important than the others, the principal reoccurring theme I observed was the human desire to seek and obtain happiness and how often that fails catastrophically.
In the book, The How of Happiness, author and researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky sets her book apart from other self-awareness books by being the first to utilize empirical studies. She uses data gained through scientific method to provide support for her hypothesis. This hypothesis consists mainly of the idea that we have the ability to overcome genetic predisposition and circumstantial barriers to happiness by how we think and what we do. She emphasizes that being happier benefits ourselves, our family and our community. “The How of Happiness is science, and the happiness-increasing strategies that [she] and other social psychologists have developed are its key supporting players” (3).
For some, simply having infinite wealth and popularity is enough for them to be happy. For others, they need something that money can’t buy. Two books that express these qualities are: The Wolf of Wall Street by Jordan Belfort and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Both of these books describe the life of a wealthy man but each of them have different ideas of the American dream. Examples from these books will show how the American dream differs from person to person.
The overall structure of the film was in chronological order. The film began with a legend of some nuns in 1923 who began the interest in baseball in a small town, Big Lake, Texas (this was to be the home of the main character later on in his life). Then the film switched to Jimmy Morris’ life by showing excerpts from his childhood. Then it jumped to the lead character’s life as an adult man (age 30 or so) dealing with everyday life in Big Lake, Texas. Finally the movie worked its way up to how Jimmy Morris got into the major leagues.
Happiness can be easily defined as the state of well-being and contentment gained by personal life experiences through either direct or indirect connections with the world around us. The people we meet and the trails we go through in life add together to create a hopefully happy life. To be happy in life is indeed the only way to enjoy it. Therefore it’s no wonder that we all strive to achieve this idea of happiness. This interest in the search for true happiness has become a major factor in our modern age. Looking back at our history, the moods of many Americans have seemed to become stagnate even when we experience a rise in salaries and overall life expectance. This begs the question as to what then
The film exhibits and analyzes the story of NFL player Michael Oher’s life through high school as he endures various adversities and difficulties in his life. It tells Oher’s story of being the son of a cocaine addictive mother and absentee father, who is homeless due the circumstances of his family. Despite not having either of his parents in his life he did have Big Tony, who was his friend’s dad. Big Tony would allow Michael to sleep on his sofa some days when he did not have anywhere else to live and he also was the main cause to Michael being admitted to the Wingate Academy Christian School. At this school Michael meets S.J., who is the son on the Tuohy’s. S.J. begins a friendship with Michael at a time when no one else would and on a rainy day after S.J.’s thanksgiving play, the Tuohys see Michael walking. They ask him ...
The movie is a very moving, sensitive and emotional story of redemption. The tale of how a young heartless thug can change into a softhearted guardian. This demonstrates that despite the poor living conditions, awful events and how heartless someone may seem. You can adapt to your surroundings and situations, you can also transform your life. Everyone has good in them you just choose whether to value it and utilize it or not appreciate it and discard it.
According to Webster dictionary the word Happiness in defined as Enjoying, showing, or marked by pleasure, satisfaction, or joy. People when they think of happiness, they think about having to good feeling inside. There are many types of happiness, which are expressed in many ways. Happiness is something that you can't just get it comes form your soul. Happiness is can be changed through many things that happen in our every day live.
As a child growing up, parents would teach their kids that realizing certain milestones in life, such as, getting A’s in school, getting accepted into an Ivy League college, having a respected career, having a trusted income, living in a two story home, marrying the love of your life, having well-rounded kids, pretty much living the American dream with the perfect family, will make us happy. The honest truth is that even obtaining all of these things listed above has nothing to do with happiness. The Oxford English Dictionary defined the word happiness as “the quality or condition of being happy;” it sounds fairly easy to define, but happiness isn’t just “being happy”. If the word was that easily interpreted, than many people wouldn’t misuse it in different contexts or scenarios. Happiness is different from happy moments. Even though the word happiness is debatable, at the end of the day, it is what everyone is trying to attain.
“The children have been a wonderful gift to me, and I’m thankful to have once again seen our world through their eyes. They restore my faith in the family’s future” (Anderson, 176). Her children were her world; everything she did was for them. She tried her best to be the perfect mother.