The screenplay by Steven Conrad is based on the eponymous best-selling memoir written by Gardner with Quincy Troupe. The film was released on December 15, 2006, by Columbia Pictures. For his performance, Smith received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and a Golden Globe nomination.
Plot
In 1981, in San Francisco, the smart salesman and family man Chris Gardner invests the family savings in Osteo National bone-density scanners, an apparatus twice as expensive as an x-ray machine but with a slightly clearer image. This white elephant financially breaks the family, bringing troubles to his relationship with his wife Linda, who leaves him and moves to New York where she has taken a job in a pizza parlor. Their son Christopher stays with Chris because they both know he will be able to take better care of him.
Without money or a wife, but committed to his son, Chris sees a chance to fight for a stockbroker internship position at Dean Witter, offering a more promising career at the end of a six-month unpaid training period. During that period, Chris goes through a lot of hardship personally and professionally. When he thinks he is "stable," he finds himself $600 poorer when the government takes the last bit of money in his bank account for taxes. He is rendered homeless because he can't pay his rent. He is forced to stay in a bathroom at a train station and must scramble from work every day to the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church, which offers shelter to the homeless. He must leave work every day so that he is there by 5 in the evening along with his son so to be assured of a place to sleep. He is seen carrying his suitcase to work because he doesn't have a home. At work, there are nineteen other candidates for the one position.
One day, he is called into an office with the heads of Dean Witter. They tell him that he has been a good trainee and ask about him wearing a shirt. Chris responds that since it was the last day he felt he should wear one. This was a reference to his initial interview when he showed up with a t-shirt and jacket because he was just released from jail for unpaid parking tickets. The head of the firm asks him to wear a shirt tomorrow, because it will be his first day as a broker. Chris struggles to hold back tears. Outside he begins to cry as the busy people of San Francisco walk past him. He rushes to his son's daycare and holds him, knowing that everything is going to be all right.
The final scene shows Chris walking. His son is telling him a joke, when a man in a suit walks past. Chris looks back as the man continues on. The man in the suit is the real Chris Gardner.
Cast
Will Smith as Chris Gardner
Jaden Smith as Christopher Gardner Jr.
Thandie Newton as Linda Gardner
Brian Howe as Jay Twistle
Dan Castellaneta as Alan Frakesh
James Karen as Martin Frohm
Kurt Fuller as Walter Ribbon
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