I saw Will Smith in person tonight!

I saw Will Smith live and in person today. He was approximately 25 feet from me. Sadly, all I could do was say barely outloud, "That's Will Smith" to my friend Amanda. We had just gotten out of a sneak preview to see Will's new movie '7 Pounds', so it wasn't entirely shocking that Will was there, but I was in shock to see him. Will is probably my most favorite actor to watch. Not because he's the best, or because he's the funniest, or because he's the most dramatic, but just because he is Will Smith. Anytime you watch him in a movie, you see the character that he plays through and through, I mean when I watched Ali, I really though it was Cassius Clay in the movie. However, at the same time, when you watch a Will Smith movie, you watch Will Smith act. You know it's Will Smith. You enjoy it because it's Will Smith. He's not the hunkiest guy in the world, he doesn't have all the smooth lines, he doesn't make you fall on the floor laughing, but he does make you smile inside throughout the movie. I guess you could say, he makes you have a man crush on him.

Thus, when I saw him tonight, I was so excited I could barely move, much less anything more than a few syllables with only a few decibels to them. It's probably a good thing because I would hate myself if I would have 'gayed out' and started yelling and screaming... "Oh my God it's Will Smith, hey Will, HEEEEY". And then gone running toward him like a good crazed fan would. Not I sat in my chair at the conveniently placed bar just outside the movie theater and watched him walk into the elevator. I turned to my friend Amanda and we both simultaneously said, "That's Will Smith, oh my god".

As I said, I had just gotten out of watching Seven Pounds, starring Will Smith and Rosario Dawson. It was supposedly the very first showing of the movie to anyone. So, I guess it was a pretty special situation. We couldn't take our camera phones or cameras or any type of recording device into the theater. After the movie was over they made us fill out a questionaire that was sort of a movie review. I'm fairly certain that the movie got only fair reviews at best. I personally thought that the movie took to long to tell you what it was going to be about. With a name like Seven Pounds, I thought it might have something to do with giving birth, or with a heart transplant, but it could have been about something else completely. Once you get in about 20 minutes into the movie, you see what the movie is about and then it becomes a pretty predictable movie at that point. I don't want to be a spoiler so I'm trying to be fairly vague. I also thought the ending was a little cheesy. Overall I thought Will did a good job with his character although I thought his character came across as sort of creepy at times. The movie wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't good in my opinion. I think overall it was just sort of weird. I think the biggest problem with the movie was that it tried to be too many things at once. It was a drama, but it also tried to be artsy at times, then it turned to a love story, then drama again, and then it tried to have a deeper all around tie in, that kinda made you feel like, "Oh, yeah, I see all the tie in's though most were pretty easy to figure out, but now I can see what the whole movie was trying to be about."

Anyway, I guess I'm glad that Will didn't come closer to me because I might have been tempted to ask for his autograph and would have told him that I saw the sneak preview and he would have asked me what I thought. I would have been torn on whether to appease him and tell him that I thought it was pretty good, or whether to tell him the truth. (laughing to myself at this point) I should think that I would have told him most of what I said above, that while he did a good job with his role, as did all of the actors, the movie just tried to be too much and came off as weird. I would only hope that he would have taken that in stride and told the directors/producers to fix the movie.

So, like most of my life, I came so close yet I was still just a little bit away from something really cool happening to me. By the way, Will Smith isn't as tall as he looks in the movies, I'd say he's only about 6 foot tall, I expected 6'3", 6'4" Like Josh or Steve.