(Photo: vlastula)
Will Smith is, at least according to legendary screenwriter William Goldman, the only real movie star left in the world. Why? Well, he’s the only lead actor who seems to guarantee a $150 million gross at the box office. No other actor can claim anything close to that. How’d he get there? In his own words, he figured out the system, then beat it:
Lassiter [his manager] told him, “‘Listen, if we’re going out to L.A., we probably should have a goal,'” Smith says. “I said, ‘I want to be the biggest movie star in the world.'” Lassiter, seeing promise that few others in Hollywood would, took his friend seriously and found a list of the 10 top-grossing movies of all time. “We looked at them and said, O.K., what are the patterns?” Smith recalls. “We realized that 10 out of 10 had special effects. Nine out of 10 had special effects with creatures. Eight out of 10 had special effects with creatures and a love story.”
“I look at movies in their essence,” Smith says. “Will that idea sell? The last man on Earth is the essence of I Am Legend. It’s a concept that’s primal and connects to all those ideas of loneliness and abandonment.”
Read more: time.com
Of course, this hack wasn’t the only key. Smith admitted in his 60 Minutes interview a few years back that he works tirelessly. In the Time article he acknowledges that today’s movies break even domestically and make their money overseas. This means a grueling worldwide marketing campaign, which of course Smith figured out how to hack as well:
He has built his global audience systematically: with each film, Smith introduces himself to a new people, often piggybacking on a local event that will attract worldwide attention. For Men in Black II, he toured in South Korea during the World Cup; for Hitch, he hit Brazil during carnival; for next year’s fallen-superhero tale Hancock, he’s trying to get into Beijing during the Olympics.
Is this shallow, or artistically bankrupt, or a waste of talent? Maybe. But it sure as hell worked. It afforded Smith the opportunity to do whatever he wanted, to make whatever art he could dream up. He chose to sit on his laurels and continue to pump out the same type of stuff, but that doesn’t mean the technique itself lacks merit.
There are some amazing insights to pick up here. First, Smith set a goal. It was huge, but that gave him something to aim at. Then, he broke down the problem, and figured out how to get there. Solid decision making. He didn’t listen to conventional wisdom or care what anybody else had to say. He just worked his ass off to make it happen. When he finally got to the top, he kept working his ass off.
His story also reveals a common dilemma: once you’re beloved, it’s hard to take risks that might damage that image. Will Smith makes plain, and lately pretty shitty, movies. Sure, every once in a while he makes a Pursuit of Happyness or a Seven Pounds, but if you break those down, they’re still very much in the same mold as his superhero-type movies. Quentin Tarantino was pursuing Smith hard to play a freed slave seeking revenge on an evil plantation owner in his latest movie Django Unchained, but Smith quickly turned it down. Why? An angry black guy hunting down white guys isn’t exactly his style. We see the same thing pretty frequently with politicians. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was voted into office as California’s Governor, he came up with some pretty bold plans. When the citizens vetoed every one of them, he said “fuck it”, pushed back from the table and spend 6 years pursuing vanity projects.
It’s always important to remember why you pursued that goal in the first place.
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