The Pursuit of Happyness: A Father's Year Without a Home

Entertainment & Movies

Gardner's failing scanner business

Gardner sells portable bone density scanners in San Francisco. It is 1981 and he has put his entire savings into the machines, which he carries from one doctor's office to the next. They sell, but slowly, and the money never arrives when the bills do. His wife works long shifts as a hotel maid, and the strain wears their marriage down until she leaves for New York, handing him sole care of their five-year-old son.

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The Pursuit of Happyness

Planner: Gideon Fox

16 hours ago

Theatrical release poster

The internship and the descent

A chance meeting changes things. Gardner impresses a manager from a brokerage firm by solving a Rubik's Cube during a taxi ride, and the contact earns him a place on an unpaid internship for trainee stockbrokers. Only one intern will be given a job at the end. The night before his interview, he is arrested over unpaid parking tickets and held until morning, so he reaches the office in clothes still covered in paint.

The internship pays nothing. The tax authorities empty what is left in his account, and father and son are evicted with $21 to their name. They sleep in a shelter, on trains, and one night in a station restroom. Each morning, Gardner puts on a suit and tells no one at the firm where he has been, making his calls, studying for the licensing exam, counting down the days until the decision is made.

About the film

The Pursuit of Happiness was directed by Muccino and released in 2006 with Smith in the lead and his own son playing the boy. It is based on the memoir Gardner wrote about his year without a home. Watch it for Smith's performance, which critics praised for keeping a hard story honest rather than sentimental.