For the “I Am Legend” press junket last week, I participated in a press conference type interview with Will. What that means is a ton of people took turns asking questions. When I’ve done these types of interviews before, the results have been mixed. Sometimes the Q&A is a big waste of time, and sometimes, like the one posted below, the resulting interview is worth reading.

During the 30 or so minutes we had with Will, he talked about filming in New York City, his family, grey hair, his next film “Hancock,” acting alone on screen, working with the dog, and a lot more. If you're a fan of Will's you're going to like it.

As always, you can either read the transcript below or listen to the audio as an MP3 by clicking here. Finally, if you missed the movie clips I previously posted, you can watch them here.

“I Am Legend” opens this Friday at theaters everywhere. And remember, there is a special “Dark Knight” trailer attached to every print of the movie, so see it in IMAX if you can. It’s worth it.

Question: What was the experience of shooting in New York City?

Will Smith: Shooting in New York, especially something on this level, is difficult. I would say that percentage wise it’s the most amounts of middle fingers I’ve ever received in my career  I was like, ‘I’m used to people liking me, when I come (laughs) to town it’s fun, so I thought ‘Middle fingers?’ I was starting to think ‘f-you’ was my name. (laughs) We shut down six blocks of Fifth avenue on a Monday morning. That was probably poor logistics, which was poor planning. You realize that you have never actually seen an empty shot of New York. When we were doing it, it’s chilling to walk down the middle of Fifth Avenue. There is never an opportunity to walk down the middle of Fifth Avenue. At 2 o’clock in the morning on Sunday you can’t walk down the middle of Fifth Avenue. What happened is that it just created such a creepy energy. There are iconic buildings, there is a shot in the movie with the UN, there is Broadway, and it puts such an eerie, icky, kind of feeling on the movie when you see those shots. Logistically, it was a nightmare, but it absolutely created something that you can’t do with green screen, and you can’t do shooting another city instead of New York.

Q: How significant is that the last man alive is African American?

Will Smith: (Laughs) First and last, baby. (laughs) It’s funny, it’s almost a metaphysical idea for me. I rarely think about that until someone brings it up. Then I say ‘Oh, wow. That never actually crossed my mind in that way.’ I kind of feel like, for me at least, the acknowledgement of those kinds of ideas put a weird boundary on my thoughts. I can’t allow myself to be a part of it because it sort of makes me think smaller, if that makes any sense. I said all that to say that I’ve never really thought about the significance of that with the film.

Q: What about the loneliness of your character, Robert Neville, and the madness he begins to feel?

Will Smith: Basically, you are acting for the first half of the movie by yourself. It was such a wonderful exploration of myself. What happens is that you get in a situation where you don’t have people to create the stimulus for you to respond to. What happens is that you start creating the stimulus and the response. There is a connection with yourself, where your mind starts to drift to in those types of situations, that you learn about your self things you would never even imagination. In order to prepare for that we sat with former POWs and we sat with people who had been in solitary confinement. That was the framework for creating the idea. They said, ‘The first thing is a schedule. You will not survive in solitary if you don’t schedule everything.’ We talked to Geronimo Ji-Jaga, formerly Geronimo Pratt of the Black Panthers, and he was in solitary for over three months. He said that you plan things like cleaning your nails. You will take two hours, which you have to because it’s on the schedule, which you have to just clean your nails. He said that he spent about six weeks and he trained roaches to bring him food. I’m sitting there like, ‘Oh my God.’ The idea of where your mind goes to defend itself. Either he really did train the roaches, which is huge, or his mind needed that to survive. Either way, you put that on camera and it’s genius. For me, that was the thing, to be able to get into the mental space where whatever the truth was for Robert Neville didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered is what he saw and what he believed. How many people picked up on the mannequin shot at the end with the little turn of the head? You saw that? There are probably like six or seven of those in the movie. It was such a great exploration of what happens to the human mind that is trying to defend itself. For me, I’m a better actor for having had to create both sides of the scene, with no dialogue.

Q: A couple of questions here, you have had a passion for “I Am Legend” since you were going to do it with director Michael Bay. Why has Neville stayed with you for the past twelve or thirteen years? Finally, the grey hair you have in the film, was that a special effect or the real Will Smith?

Will Smith: That was a special effect. We had the worlds best grey hair people come in from -- uh, they were uh, from Europe.

Q: The cover of “Men’s Vogue” alluded to the idea that you may have converted to Scientology?

Will Smith: No, wow, that’s what you got? (laughs) Well, that is a broad array of questions. On the first one, Robert Neville staying with me this long. I think with movies I am really connecting to the Joseph Campbell idea of the collective unconscious. There are things that we all dream, there are things that each one of us has thought, that connect to life, death, and sex. There are things that are beyond language. To me, this is one of those concepts. Times that you have been on the freeway many times and wished that everybody were dead. (laughs) There have been times where things have gone and you just wish you were by yourself. You don’t need any of these assholes. You just want to be by yourself. That coupled with, that separation from people, being ripped away from people, being separated, connected with the dark and unknown of the dark. It’s how we would fair against whatever is in that unknown is a really primal idea. I couldn’t always articulate it like that but I’ve loved this concept. It connects to ideas that a four year old can understand. The one in the middle?

Q: And, the grey hair.

Will Smith: Yes, that is a European, they are, GHI, or Grey Hair International and they just do that, because this is what it normally is. (laughs) I can prove it! I can prove it! (laughs) As far as Scientology. I don’t necessarily believe in organized religion. I was raised in a Baptist household, went to a Catholic church, lived in a Jewish neighborhood, and had the biggest crush on the Muslim girls from one neighborhood over. Tom (Cruise) introduced me to the ideas. I’m a student of world religion, so to me, it’s hugely important to have knowledge and to understand what people are doing. What are all the big ideas? What are people talking about? I believe that my connection, to my higher power, is separate from everybody’s. I don’t believe that the Muslims have all the answers. I don’t believe the Christians have all the answer, or the Jews have all the answers, so I love my God, my higher power. It’s mine and mine alone. I create my connection and I decide how my connection is going to be.

Q: What was it like working with your daughter Willow (Smith)?

Will Smith: You kind of don’t work with Willow, you work for Willow. (laughs) It’s interesting, Jada (Pinkett-Smith), and I debate the age old debate of nature versus nurture. Is it because two actors went to Mexico and drank some tequila and made a baby? Does that make the baby an actor? Or, did she grow up in a house where that is what is in her house, that is just the life, and that’s the experience that she knows. When I look at Willow, I just believe that it has to be neither one of those. There has to be something else. She just knows (a glass drops). See? That’s the problem, see? A black man starts to make a good point and you got to keep him down. Trying to keep me down, I get it, I get it. How often does the soundman make that much noise? (laughs) With Willow, she just loves it. We watched, I don’t remember the building, but we were shooting the bridge sequence. There is a building that had a temperature gauge on it and we watched it. You started at sunset, and it was probably twenty-nine degrees or something. Then we watched it go down to one, and then negative. Willow is out there, she has her stuff on, and she’s cold. She is getting a little irritable. She looks at me and says, ‘Daddy, I don’t care how low it goes, I’m going to finish.’ I was like, ‘Wow!’ I said, ‘That’s good baby, because Daddy is leaving if it go any lower than that one.’ She just wants it, she has a drive, an energy, and she just connects to human emotion. I think a big part of it is probably Jaden. After ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’ and she saw what Jaden did, she thought, ‘I want that.’ (laughs) The night we told Willow that she got the role, because we make our kids audition and all of that, we don’t do the whole nepotism thing, so Jaden was sitting where you are. I’m Willow. We always call the family in and we announce all the good things that happen with everybody in the house and everybody has to share in it. Willow is there, Jaden and I are here, and Willow is behind her. We say, ‘Everybody, we just want to congratulate Willow. She got, ‘I am Legend’.’ She immediately turns around to Jaden and smiles and I went ‘What’s that? What was that?’ Never had she talked about any feelings she was having, but it was like ‘Okay, I’m plotting on you dude.’

Q: What would you do in a real life disaster? Have you ever had to play the hero in the real world?

Will Smith: That is always a tough question. That is what is interesting about playing a character like this. You get to explore and wonder how you would react. For me, ‘Ali’ was the greatest time of asking myself that question. When Ali didn’t step forward because they wouldn’t call him Muhammad Ali, and he knew he was going to jail, he knew what the situation was going to be, but still he couldn’t step forward. I just remember thinking, in that moment, ‘What would I do?’ I just don’t know if I would be enough man to give up everything I have right now, the way Ali did, for that principle. When I look at Robert Neville, I think, ‘What was there to live for? What was there to hope for? To wake up everyday and try to restore something that is good and gone?’ I like to believe that I would put my chest up and stand forward, just march on and continue to fight for the future of humanity. I would probably find a bridge and say ‘I’m coming to join you Elizabeth.’ (laughs) It’s a tough question, and I guess the answer is, ‘I don’t know.’ I don’t think so. You want to be tested to know what you would do, but you really don’t want to be tested. That is sort of the space that I have lived in with quite a few of the roles I have played.

continued on page 2 -------->

Page 2 >>>