Smith, with an air of wounded righteousness, pushes the issue. ““Did you ever notice,’’ he says, ““that they always find the most inarticulate black person to talk on the news?’’ Suddenly he slips into a character: his shoulders slump, his eyelids flop and he gesticulates vaguely. "” “Yeah, um, I was over at Thelma and them’s when the dude had shooted. And, uh, Johnny B. and Ree-Ree, they had came out, and they seen him shoot, bam, bam, bam! ‘Cause I thought he had shooted at me, but really he had shooted at them other dudes’.’’ Smith rolls his eyes in exasperation. ““It’s like, where did they get that guy? There’s always a black doctor and a black lawyer standing behind him, but the news never talks to them.’'
Phew - at least Smith’s not perfect. Because except for a case of grammatical uptightness - and, OK, he does button his polo shirt all the way to the collar, and he does keep his laser-disc movie library alphabetized with letter tab dividers - there’s not a darn critical thing to be said about him. Right now, Smith is almighty. His career is untouchable. He carried last summer’s movie megalopolis, ““Independence Day’’ - go back and watch it now, and except for fireballs and flying cars there’s little to relish except Smith’s affably off-center hero. This summer, he rewrangles aliens in ““Men in Black.’’ He’s in impeccable company: director Barry Sonnenfeld’s twisted humor and Tommy Lee Jones’s gruff understatement are at the movie’s heart, but the audience will be watching the action through Smith’s incredulous eyes. ““Here’s how I become funny,’’ Jones says. ““I follow Barry’s directions and stand as close to Will as I can get.''
Smith isn’t stopping here. He’s reteaming with Sonnenfeld for ““The Wild Wild West,’’ based on the ’60s TV show; his salary has ballooned to $10 million. He’d like to do more serious drama, like his highly acclaimed role as a gay con man in ““Six Degrees of Separation.’’ And he’s got a new solo record deal with Columbia, which released the soundtrack to ““Men in Black.’’ Smith’s charm is simple comedic brilliance. His sensibility is built around taking the hot air out of people. Black people, white people, rich people, poor people, government agents, aliens - nobody gets to act self-important when he’s around. He’s a great leveler. He’s done it on record, in the pop-rap duo DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. He’s done it on the TV sitcom ““The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,’’ playing a sweet-faced street kid putting a benign scam on his rich relatives. He’s perfected it with ““Independence Day’’ and ““Men in Black,’’ as the reluctant hero who’s always one step from bailing on his exhausting moral duties. ““That whole super-guy thing, the super-macho man who jumps in front of a bullet just to be tough, is not really appealing,’’ Smith says. ““It’s more appealing when you duck.''
Smith has been methodically constructing that comedic sensibility for years. His range of influences crosses racial lines, genre lines, generational lines: he draws on Bruce Willis and Charlie Chaplin, Richard Pryor and Cary Grant, Eddie Murphy and Ernest Borgnine. Standing in front of his meticulously arranged movie library, he pulls out his copy of ““The Poseidon Adventure.’’ ““I watched Borgnine’s performance about 20 times before “Independence Day’,’’ Smith says, and he’s not kidding. ““Because he was funny in a life-and-death situation. But he wasn’t funny ha-ha - he was deadly serious. What I learned from Borgnine is you can stand there straight and just say a line, and let the moment make it funny.’’ He’s chosen his roles just as shrewdly and methodically. ““I look for trends,’’ he says. ““I looked at the top 10 movies of all time, and 7 of the top 10 had creatures in them. You had “E.T.,’ “Jurassic Park,’ “Close Encounters,’ “Jaws.’ So it was like, I want to make movies that have creatures. It’s very obvious to me.''
That phenomenal focus has been with him from an early age. He grew up in West Philadelphia, where his father owned a refrigeration company and his mother was a school administrator. Even though his parents separated when he was 13, they remained constants in his life. ““There’s a certain level of confidence and self-esteem that comes from knowing for a fact that someone loves you,’’ he says. ““It’s not based on whether or not I break a window; it’s not based on whether or not my homework’s done. Just because I’m me, these people love me. So it’s like, I know I’m good. How can I let the world know?''
Along with that love came a rigid sense of discipline. Smith’s father had been in the air force, and he ran ““a very military household,’’ Smith says. ““Hospital creases on the bed, all that stuff.’’ From first grade until ninth, his parents shipped him out of his black, middle-class neighborhood to a Catholic school 40 minutes away; then he transferred to the local high school. ““For my first nine years I went to school with all white people, and then I went to school with all black people,’’ he says. ““So I have a really good sense of the bridge - the racial bridge. There are some jokes that are directed to a white audience, that black people aren’t going to think are funny. And then there are jokes that are so specific to the black audience that white people aren’t going to know what you’re talking about. And then there’s that bridge, the joke that is right in the center, that is a red-line belly laugh for everyone. We used to call it the No. 1 answer.''
Smith looks around his beautiful house in the desert hills. It’s impressive, yet not ostentatious: Jada has draped soft fabrics around the windows; the walls and tabletops bear family photos, African masks and pretty decorative objects. He walks into his backyard: there’s a golf hole for practice swings, a swimming pool and gazebo, flowering vines threading trellises. Smith is proud of what he’s achieved. He knows he’s good; now the world knows. The No. 1 answer brings some rich rewards.
What can’t he do? From left: cultivating high society with society with Donald Sutherland and Stockard Channing, cutting up with Martin Lawrence in Miami, battling alien intruders with Jeff Goldblum
