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Some quotes from Will interviews


Lerkot

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Yeah I was checking a couple of old interviews with Will... here is some quotes that I think is pretty nice or learning in some way.

cc How do you stay so buff? Oh, I train at lunch or after work, three, four, five times a week. It’s kind of a game that I play with myself. At the end of the day everybody is tired, and everybody is going home. I need to know that I am the one person that is going to the gym. It’s just that I need that mindset because I’ve been successful financially. It’s easy to get lazy, and then once you start to slip physically, you’re going to start to slip mentally and then inevitably you’re going to slip creatively, so I start with my body and my mind and it keeps my creativity [going].

What happened to you?

I was about 10 years old and Stacy Brooks promised me the last dance at Shawn Hollis' birthday party and I was prepared. I was there and ready for that last dance and the DJ announces that this is the last song and I turn around and she's on the floor with David Brandon! I've been scarred from that moment, you know? But hey, I'm getting over it. I think I'm going to be okay.

And like Hitch you had an allergic reaction that ruined your chances with a girl. Is that right?

Yes, and it's really weird because Stacy Brooks was that girl when I was growing up! Like all the bad stuff that happened... it happened around Stacy Brooks. Things were heating up as much as they can when you're 11 and I thought she was starting to like me and then I got stung by a bee. That allergic reaction in the movie is actually how I look when I get stung by a bee. So Stacy saw me like that and whereas in the movie it's like an endearing thing, when you're 11 it just freaks the girls out! When they see you looking like that they just want you to get the hell away from them. My eyes were all swollen up and I was like, "But I wove you!" Yeah, that didn't work out.

Do things go smoother when you were dating [Matrix star] Jada [Pinkett-Smith]?

It was one of those things where everything went perfectly - not perfectly in the sense of smooth and lovely - but everything that went wrong went perfectly wrong. In the beginning of our relationship everything that needed to go wrong went wrong very quickly. We learned early on who we were and who we wanted to be and decided on a path to get there. Normally at the beginning of relationship it's all flowers and butterflies but we didn't have that. I was coming out of a divorce and she was coming out of a bad relationship and there was just no time for bull***. It was just blatant, hard, cold honesty and that's the basis of our relationship: harsh honesty.

What's the worst dating advice you've ever been given?

It was from a friend of mine - his name is Charlie Mack. He's like my ghetto co-ordinator from back in Philly and he said, "No, no, no! Whatcha gotta understand man, is that women want a dude that can do anything, so what you wanna do is make 'em laugh. If you wanna make 'em laugh and then they need to see you, like, knock somebody the f*** out!" He says, "Generally on first dates that's what I do, you know? Going the whole night it's funny, funny, funny, then I just go outside and just knock somebody the f*** out 'cause they need to feel safe! Women need to feel safe when they with you." And I'm like, "Cool..." But listen. It works. I mean it's the worst most horrible advice I've ever heard, but when women see him knock somebody out they do really say, "Ooh, Charlie!"

This film combines the future with a retro sensibility...

Smith: I'm not really a retro guy, I'm a future guy. Most of my interaction with the past, or if I'm studying the past, is always to get a sense of what the future is gonna be. So no old sneakers! My old Technics 1200 turntable is pretty much the only thing that I have musically that's old. I'm completely into my computer, I-Pod, new music programmes, touch screen remotes, all that type of stuff. But I loved the Stevie Wonder music in the film -- that was a personal choice.

Is that kind of future possible within 30 years...

Smith: If you look at the technology of the last 50 years, it's actually advanced as a rate equal to the last thousand years. With the discovery of the microchip in the 1950s, technology is expanding exponentially. So I actually believe that the future we see in the film -- the robotic technology, the electro-magnetic cars -- may not even be 30 years in the future. I think we could be much closer to that. The robotic technology exists, and we studied it for the film. They have cameras in the States in some 7-Elevens that are programmed with body language. The camera can determine if someone is stealing through their body language. Now is that just a cool camera, or is that artificial intelligence? At some point, the camera is going to be a better judge of who's stealing than a person. The technology is there, it's just a matter of pooling it into one piece of hardware. Really, I think the absolute perfect use of a robot would be a golf caddy. I play a lot of golf but I'm really just not good. If you had a robot that could tell you the exact distance to the hole, and what the wind was doing, I'd probably still be bad, but I'd have a robot!

Moving into acting after being a musician...

Smith: I think I was always an actor that was rapping. The music that I made was always very theatrical. And with the videos I was making, Quincy Jones noticed. He essentially said to me, “You're already doing it, I need you to meet some people for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” Television was a really good training ground to work fast, and having the opportunity to move into films was a really gradual process. Six Degrees of Separation was the first real roll of the dice on everything, but up till then it was a really slow building and learning process. And I'd never had to do anything for money. I think that's what really gave me the opportunity to make the right choices. When people start offering you money, I think that throws a lot of people off. You find yourself in a lot of situations that may not be the right situation, because you need to get paid.

Are you ever in a bad mood?!

I was probably about 12 years old, my father and I would install… In supermarkets they have these long freezer cases and we would install those in supermarkets. And a supermarket basement is the nastiest, most horrible, disgusting, filthy place on the face of the earth. You wouldn't buy food from a supermarket if you went into the basement of a supermarket. I went with my father into one of these basements and there is this stuff called De-con and De-con was rat poison. So they would put this De-con all around supermarket basements and it would kill the rats from the inside. It would burn their intestines and stomachs out. So we go in and he is looking for the compressor and he has a flashlight. And in this guck, is a dead rat that had been dead for four days and it was half eaten. Like the back legs had been eaten away by the De-con but the top half was still full and was kind of stuck in the gunk. Right? That was the place where my father needed to get to. No hesitation at all. Flashlight. Finds the compressor, the rat is on the floor, under the compressor, hands me the flashlight and with his bare hands grabs the rat, snatches it from out of the gunk, tosses it to one side, and lays his bald head in the spot where that rat was. From that moment in my life, I decided I would never, ever complain about what I have to do for a living. I am always in a good mood because I don't have to pull rats out of gunk to feed my children. So you will rarely find me in a bad mood.

How did you avoid the temptation of beautiful women and drugs?

Well I had my time, I definitely had my time. There was a period for a while when I was trying to see what kind of numbers I could rack up with how many women I could date. That got really unfulfilling really quickly. Most people don't get a second time around, they end up dead, broke or on VH1 Where are they Now? I got a second time and I had the chance to figure out all those mistakes.

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