CHANGE OF FOCUS
Will Smith no longer fixates on ‘whether my movie is No. 1’
Just the mere mention of his sci-fi failure After Earth during a reporter’s question has Will Smith bouncing out of a chair.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” says Smith, pretending to be angry over the implication that he needs a hit film for a followup.
The actor is not really agitated. But back in 2013, he was devastated by After Earth’s poor reception and weak box office. In part, that sense of letdown came because he had collaborated with his son, Jaden, on the dystopian thriller. He admits the lack of success was also a major blow to his ego, although it led to a change in attitude.
“After the failure of After Earth, a thing got broken in my mind,” says a more serious Smith, returning to his seat. “It was all about Mr. July and that Big Willy Weekend. I was No. 1 eight (times) in a row at the box office,” after such blockbuster July openings as Independence Day and Men in Black.
“All of that collapsed with (After Earth),” Smith says. “But I realized I was still a good person.”
So Smith brought his don’t-worry-be-happy approach to his latest film effort, Focus. “You try not to listen to the voices saying Focus may not be as good as you think,” Smith says.
In the movie, he plays Nicky, an experienced con artist who gets mixed up with a gorgeous grifter, Jess (Margot Robbie). Things get complicated when he becomes romantically involved with her and then dumps her after a job.
Three years later, Jess, the jilted femme fatale, shows up in Buenos Aires with some unsettling results during Nicky’s scam of a billionaire race car owner (Rodrigo Santoro) and his abrasive assistant (Gerald McRaney).
The story is intricate and deceiving as a complex fraud plays out, with Nicky leading the way.
The movie is part love story, part comedy, part drama and contains action-oriented intrigue along with detailed depictions of how a con game works — say for instance at a Super Bowl.
Co-written and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, the manic mix in Focus shouldn’t be a surprise from the filmmakers who brought us the witty yet unconventional Crazy, Stupid, Love, the bizarre I Love You Phillip Morris, and the dark spoof Bad Santa.
Ficarra and Requa were vaguely familiar with the world of con artists. But to get the detail they needed, both spent a year researching the criminal activities of shysters both big time and small.
When Smith became interested in the project they didn’t hesitate to sign him to play the headliner.
The actor says he could easily grasp how to represent the persuasive charm of a flim-flam man. But he had to learn, over five days of intense training, the mechanics of the pickpocket tricks and the psychology behind a scam artist’s manipulations from magician and former con artist Apollo Robbins.
“My take-away now is how everything is perception,” says Smith of a hustler’s strategy. “Reality does not matter at all. It’s only what the (mark) perceives.”
Robbins confirms the grand design: “People see what they want to believe, rather than what is really there. If you control their focus, you control their reality.”
But the most difficult sequences for the actor turned out to be the intimate moments with Robbie’s character, Jess.
“I’ve always enjoyed that comedic aspect relating to women,” Smith says. “This is the first time in my career it’s been full-on steamy madness.
“It’s actually uncomfortable for me. My natural instinct is to make a joke when it’s really serious, but I had to pull away from that, and live in the seriousness of a moment.”
That’s in front of the camera. Off camera he tried to lead by example without stressing about whether Focus will be a hit or a miss.
Indeed, veteran McRaney applauds Smith for his good-natured energy with cast and crew. “There are those that suck all the oxygen out of the room,” McRaney says. “But Will brings an extra supply.”
So Focus may not reach the box office heights of his Men in Black movies, Independence Day, I am Legend or even Hancock, and chances are he’ll miss out on an Oscar nod — he’s earned two nominations, one for his portrayal of Muhammad Ali in the biopic Ali and the other for the depiction of a struggling salesman in The Pursuit of Happyness — but there are other ways to be a success.
“We had a brilliant time together,” Smith says of the Focus shoot. “We were in New York, New Orleans and Buenos Aires, and it was as much a party as making a movie can possibly be.”
Adjusting priorities after After Earth probably helped Smith’s Focus.
“I no longer measure the quality of myself,” he says, “on whether my movie is No. 1.”