Success from Hard Work and Dishonesty

Yesterday, Pam and I had a date (I highly recommend taking your wife on a date at least once every couple of weeks), and we went to the movies and saw The Pusuit of Happyness, followed by dinner at Logan’s Roadhouse. Logan’s is great because you can eat peanuts at your table and throw the shells on the floor (not to mention the food is also good)! The movie stars Will Smith as a down and out father and husband struggling to sell the remaining inventory of a failed self-employment business venture while keeping his sanity and family together. Chris Gardner (Will) does find success in the end, but not after a lot of hard work and, sadly, a lot of deception and dishonesty.

The movie was really good, and the situations and struggles that Chris encounters and fights through are truly heart wrenching, but I was taken aback at the number of times Smith’s character used lies and deception when faced with various challenges that tested his moral character. These ranged from running from a cab without paying the fare, to deceiving a potential client about going to a football game, to flat out lying to a Dean Witter partner about going out to play golf with a prospect. And time after time when the rent comes due, excuses and avoidance are the formula for not paying. Chris faces struggle after struggle and bad break after bad break in this movie, and more often than not he seems to respond with dishonesty than with straight up truth. Granted, choosing to be truthful in each of these situations would have resulted in a less entertaining film, and also in Chris not getting as far as he did (winning the position with Dean Witter after the internship program). But, unfortunately this puts forth a rather negative image of the results of responding with the truth when faced with the opportunity to lie or deceive in order to get ahead. Chris’ son (played by Will Smith’s real son) is usually right there, too, watching his father and seeing how he handles these tests of moral character.

I thought the movie was really good overall, as far as entertainment goes. But I would definitely not recommend it for modeling what it takes to get ahead in this world. The message from the movie is that hard work is needed to succeed, but a little dishonesty (and sometimes, outright lies) here and there can result in getting a leg up on the competition and achieving financial success. If I was Chris Gardner, I would be ashamed for my son to have seen the way I got ahead and made something of myself the way Chris did.