Book: Will by Will Smith
Genre: memoir
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
For book club in July, we decided we'd have a "memoir" month, and each of us would choose a different book and then share what we learned about our person. I loved this idea! It was awesome!
Funny thing though was, two of us choose this book! HA!
Anyway, I got this book for Christmas from one of my kids and so I decided to go ahead and choose it for my book. (I had so many others I wanted to read too... next time!)
This book, of course, came out just before his big faux pas at the Oscars. But having that incident in my head (and I'm sure in everyone's head who reads this book) makes the book even more interesting.
Bottom line though is, I loved this story so much. He is not a perfect person by any means, but his thoughts and outlook on life are very interesting. I tabbed so many spots to share at our book club, but we ended up doing it on zoom (that was back when we had covid at our house for a minute) and it just didn't work as well. Maybe I can share some of those with you all here and now?
Talking about the look on his grandma's face when he played the piano in public for the first time:
"But I was only playing for one person. And the look on her face... I still struggle to describe it. The words "pride" or "approval" are pale and inadequate. I can only say I've been chasing that look in the eyes of every woman I've ever loved ever since."
Talking about his first girlfriend:
"The look in Melanie's eyes became the substitute for Gigi's (grandma's) approval. I've always needed a woman to achieve for. When I performed, I was now performing for Melanie...... If she was happy that meant I was a good person. If she was unhappy, that meant I was a monster."
Talking about his dream, that he didn't even realize he had :
"I need to know what the goal is," JL asked.
"The goal is not to be broke. To be able to have fun, to be able to travel and live how we want. To not have the IRS taking our stuff no more."
"So that's FIVE goals...but what is the dream? What are we trying to build? What do you want?" JL said.
"I want to be the biggest movie star in the world."
"Now THAT'S a goal, " JL said.
Talking about working on that dream:
Anyway. And so it goes. Fascinating the way things have gone up and down for him. And how he got all the gigs he got and yeah. Totally fascinating. I recommend if you are at all a Will Smith and even if you aren't.
Can't wait to read the rest of the memories on my pile!
