The Pursuit of Happyness

A struggling salesman takes custody of his son as he's poised to begin a life-changing professional career. Based on a true story about a man named Christopher Gardner. Gardner has invested heavily in a device known as a "bone density scanner". He feels like he has it made selling these devices. However, they do not sell well as they are marginally better than x-ray at a much higher price. As Gardner works to make ends meet, his wife leaves him and he loses his apartment. Forced to live out in the streets with his son, Gardner continues to sell bone density scanners while concurrently taking on an unpaid internship as a stockbroker, with slim chances for advancement to a paid position. Before he can receive pay, he needs to outshine the competition through 6 months of training, and to sell his devices to stay afloat. 1981, San Francisco. In what limited academic opportunities he has had in his life, Chris Gardner has demonstrated that he is a smart man. Yet he is struggling financially in his life. He has invested all his money on portable bone density scanners, which he personally sells to physicians. Despite being a better product than x-rays machines, they are also far more expensive, meaning that they are an unnecessary luxury for most physicians. He needs to sell three scanners per month just to meet the basic necessities to support his family, his wife, Linda, and their five year old son, Christopher, on who he dotes since he didn't know his own father when he was a child. But lately, that has been three per month more than he has sold, resulting in an increasing embittered Linda continually needing to work double shifts doing manual work at a laundry, which still isn't enough to cover those basic costs, they being currently behind three months rent. Chris can't afford to pay his parking ticket, meaning that he has to take the bus everywhere now as the clamp remains on the tire of his car. Feeling like the scanner is not the answer to their financial problems, Chris, with or without Linda's blessing, decides to take a chance by switching careers when he sees that brokerage and securities firm Dean Witter has a six month internship program, which only admits twenty applicants, leading to only one intern being hired at the end of the process. It isn't until he is well immersed into the process that he learns that the internships are non-paying. Based largely on his chutzpah, Chris, against the odds, gets one of the twenty positions. With some changes in their lives resulting in fewer expenses, Chris figures he needs to sell his remaining six scanners just to scrape by for those six months. But some unexpected issues arise which leads to the Gardners possibly not making it through this phase of their lives financially, something he has to hide from his superiors at Dean Witter if he has any chance at all of making it through the internship and getting that paying job with them. Already struggling to eke out an existence, against the backdrop of early-1980s San Francisco, the earnest and hard-working bone-density-scanner salesman, Chris Gardner, finds himself with the back to the wall. Left with nothing when his wife abandons the family, the financially hard-pressed father will have to take care of his five-year-old son, Christopher, all by himself when, unexpectedly, the prestigious stock brokerage firm of Dean Witter offers Gardner an unpaid six-month internship. Now, bent on becoming a stockbroker, Chris is willing to go to great lengths to succeed; however, life can be challenging and cruel. Will Chris' efforts pay off? Can the determined parent make his dream come true? A true story film about a middle-aged male doing everything that he can to keep himself and his family living off the streets in a dangerous city. He does everything that he can to gain every opportunity as he can to find a decent job and a good home for his growing family. In 1981 San Francisco, Chris Gardner (Will Smith) invests his family's savings in portable bone-density scanners which he demonstrates to doctors and pitches as a handy improvement over standard X-rays. Although he admits that the machine gives a slightly denser picture than an X-Ray for twice the money. The scanners play a vital role in Chris's life. Chris needed to sell 2 machines a month to pay for his home expenses. While he can sell most of them, the time lag between the sales and his growing financial demands enrages his wife, Linda, who works as a hotel maid. The investment proves to be a white elephant, which financially breaks the family and as a result, his wife Linda (Thandie Newton) leaves him and moves to New York. Chris had invested his entire life's savings on the machine and had purchased them in bulk. Their son Christopher (Jaden Smith) remains with his father. Linda worked at a hospital and was tired of just existing after working herself to the bone. Chris had also collected several parking tickets on his car, which was towed away, and had resorted to taking the public transport. Chris had met his own father for the first time when he was 28 years old, and he was determined to make sure that his own kid did not have to go through the ordeal of not having his father in his life. While Chris tries to sell one of the scanners, he meets an employee at Dean Witter. The person just pulled up next to Chris in an expensive car and Chris asks him what he does and how. He says that he is a stock-broker, for which one only needs to be good with numbers and people and no college degree is required. Chris decides to apply at the firm. He meets Jay Twistle (Brian Howe), a manager for Dean Witter. Chris impresses him by solving a Rubik's Cube during a short cab ride. Chris does not have enough money for the cab fare and flees the cab driver into a subway station where he barely escapes the cab driver but loses one of his bone scanners in the process. He left his machine with a hippie singer to watch over it as he attended his interview, but the hippie girl decided to run away with it. This new relationship with the Dean Witter manager earns him the chance to become an intern stockbroker. The day before the interview, Chris grudgingly agrees to paint his apartment for free to postpone eviction by his landlord for late rent. While painting, Chris is greeted by two policemen at his doorstep, who arrest him for failure to pay multiple parking tickets. Chris has to spend the night in jail, complicating his schedule for the interview the next day. Chris narrowly arrives at Dean Witter's office on time, albeit still in shabby, paint-spattered clothes. Despite his appearance, Chris still impresses the interviewers and lands a six-month unpaid internship. He is among 20 interns competing for a paid position as a stockbroker. A possible position at her sister's boyfriend's restaurant tempts Linda to leave for New York. With regret, she leaves Christopher in Chris's care. However, Chris's financial problems worsen when his already diminished bank account is garnished by the IRS for unpaid income taxes, and his landlord finally evicts him and Christopher. With only $21.33 in his bank account, Chris and Christopher are left homeless and desperate; Chris is able to get food and beds at the local shelter, and eventually scrapes together cash for a motel room, but the locks are then changed when he can't pay on time. They are forced at one point to stay in a bathroom at a subway station. Motivation drives him to find the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church, which has a homeless shelter primarily for single mothers and their children. The church's owner does not let him stay due to the fact that it is for women and children, although she tells him about a local church that also provides shelter but has very limited space. Due to demand for the limited rooms, Chris must frantically race from his internship work early each afternoon in order to land a place in line. Chris finds the bone scanner that he lost in the subway station from a demented man who believes it to be a time machine, and it is now damaged. He sells his blood to pay for repairs and then gets a local physician to purchase it, thereby freeing himself to focus solely on his stockbroker training. Disadvantaged by his limited work hours and knowing that maximizing his client contacts and profits is the only way to earn the one paid position that he and his 19 competitors are fighting for, Chris develops a number of ways to make phone sales calls more efficiently. He also reaches out to potential high value customers, defying protocol. One sympathetic prospect takes him and his son to a San Francisco 49ers game. Regardless of his challenges, Chris never reveals his lowly circumstances to his co-workers, even going so far as to lend one of his bosses five dollars for a cab, a sum he can't afford. He also studies for and aces the stockbroker license exam. As Chris concludes his last day of internship, he is summoned to a meeting with the partners. Mr. Frohm (James Karen) notes that Chris is wearing a nice shirt, to which Chris explains he thought it appropriate to dress for the occasion on his last day. Mr. Frohm thanks him and says Chris should wear another one the following day, letting Chris know that he has won the coveted full-time position and reimburses Chris for the previous cab ride. Fighting back tears, he shakes hands with the partners, then rushes to Christopher's daycare to embrace him. They walk down a street and joke with each other (and are passed by the real Chris Gardner, in a business suit). Gardner went on to form his own multi-million-dollar brokerage firm in 1987, and Gardner sold a minority stake in his brokerage firm in a multi-million-dollar deal in 2006.