It's not rocket science ... Jaden and Will Smith work well together in the upcoming father-son drama, The Pursuit Of Happyness. (Graphic by Tim Peckham)

NEW YORK -- Long ago, in the decade we laughingly call the '80s, a rapper named Fresh Prince and his buddy Jazzy Jeff were all over the charts with a song called Parents Just Don't Understand.

Flash ahead two decades and the Fresh Prince has long ago morphed into movie star Will Smith, father of two. What does he think of the song's sentiment these days?

"Kids don't know nothin'!" he says, laughing out loud. "That's my new record."

He says that, then goes on at length about what he's learned from his 8-year-old son Jaden while filming the holiday heart-warmer The Pursuit Of Happyness.

The film is based on the story of Chris Gardner, a single father in San Francisco in the '80s who lost his home and ended up with his son sleeping in subway washrooms, before completing a stock brokerage apprenticeship. Gardner ended up owning his own brokerage and being profiled in a 20/20 episode that inspired the Smiths' father-son debut.

"I did more learning than he did," Smith says. "My entire approach to acting has been changed after working with Jaden. I was reading Zen & The Art Of Archery and there was an idea that the connection between yourself and your goal, you discover at play. One time, Gabriele (director Gabriele Muccino) kept giving me (performance) notes, and Jaden thought that was funny because he didn't get any. He took that as him winning.

"And Jaden looks at me and says, 'You just keep doing the same thing every time, daddy.' I was a little offended. But his feeling was like, 'I'm saying different stuff and doing different stuff every take. If we're supposed to be living in these moments, how come you ain't reacting to the new stuff that's happening?' And I started watching him and realized, 'I'm Will, the producer, a movie star and all this stuff and Jaden is just a character.' It's a block I've been feeling in my career all these years. So I decided to hell with (producer concerns like) continuity, to hell with whether we make the day. I'm finding that space where I'm commited to the truth of the character.

"I've been there two other times in my career, with Ali and with Six Degrees Of Separation, where I'm just completely free to create. And I'm just thankful to my son for showing me the way."

Getting out of the way may turn out to be another option. A few days before we spoke, Smith had been on Oprah with Jaden and daughter Willow.

"They were both on because she wasn't about to let Jaden be on Oprah and she wasn't. And I was looking at them and saying, 'I got Johnny Depp and Paris Hilton here.' "

Raising a next generation of smartass actors wasn't the plan when Smith and wife Jada Pinkett settled down to raise a family.

In fact, Jaden's interest in acting popped up out of the blue -- after Smith had seen and been affected by the 20/20 episode, had been conscripted by the film's producers and had exercised his choice of director by choosing a Hollywood newbie who didn't even speak English well (Muccino had directed the original Italian version of the indie film The Last Kiss).

"Jada and I were in bed one night and Jaden's between us, and I'm reading the script and he said, 'Tell me the story, daddy.' And I did, and he said, 'Phfft, I could do that!' and I'm like, 'Oh, really?'

"So Jada took him to the auditions, and he's one of 100 kids, 50 kids, 20 kids. Got to about 10, I said I might need to pay attention a little bit.

"So I went in and Gabriele fell in love with him. He said, 'I must have your baby, Will! I must have your baby!' And I went, 'Hold on, let me be clear about what you askin' me.' "

Smith's paterernal feelings strongly influenced his decision to accept The Pursuit Of Happyness. The 20/20 segment's emotional impact hinged largely on a scene in which Gardner, president of Christopher Gardner International Holdings, paid a painful visit to the Bay Area Rapid Transit washroom where he and his son Christopher Jr. had spent the night after showing up too late to get a bed at a shelter.

"As I sit here, I can't imagine I could have walked out of that bathroom the same person, or as Chris Gardner did, a better person. There's this bizarre naivete for 'the audacity of hope,' " Smith says, quoting a catchphrase of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama. "Chris and I share that belief in the power of our desires.

"Chris took me and walked me through these steps to the subway bathroom. There's a moment that actors look for, when you get it. It's like being in a dark room and feeling around, it's dark you can't see anything and you grab something and say, 'I got it!' "

A secondary touchstone in the film is Rubik's Cube, the '80s puzzle craze that, in The Pursuit Of Happyness, is used to indicate Chris Gardner's "giftedness." On Oprah, Smith amazed the host by solving one in minutes.

"It's a series of algorithms anyone can learn," Smith says. "We flew in these kids, the U.S. champ and the California champ, and they spent 12 hours teaching me, and 30 hours practicing before I could do it myself," he says.

But despite his son's career splash, Smith says not to expect a trifecta -- mother, father and son working together. "Jada prefers not to work with me," Smith says of his wife and Ali co-star. "I'll say, 'Baby, y'know what? The last take, you did this and this. And she goes, 'Boy, you worry about you. Let me worry about me.'

"We're trying to keep a happy home, so we're trying to avoid that."

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

Starring Will Smith, Thandie Newton, Jaden Smith

Directed by Gabriele Muccino

Opens Friday

Rating PG

A family man (Will Smith) struggling to make ends meet takes custody of his son (Jaden Smith) as he's poised to begin a life-altering professional endeavour.

sonypictures.com/movies/thepursuitofhappyness

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