Being There

Being There
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Hal Ashby
Produced by	Andrew Braunsberg
Screenplay by	Jerzy Kosinski Uncredited: Robert C. Jones
Based on	Being There  by Jerry Kosinski
Starring	Peter Sellers Shirley MacLaine Jack Warden Melvyn Douglas Richard Dysart Richard Basehart
Music by	Johnny Mandel
Cinematography	Caleb Deschanel
Editing by	Don Zimmerman
Studio	Lorimar Film Entertainment
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	December 19, 1979 (1979-12-19)
Running time	130 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$30,177,511[1]

Being There is a 1979 American comedy-drama film directed by Hal Ashby. Adapted from the 1970 novella by Jerzy Kosinski, the screenplay was by Kosinski and the uncredited Robert C. Jones. The film stars Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden, Richard A. Dysart, and Richard Basehart.

Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and Sellers was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role.^[2] The screenplay won the 1981 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Film) Best Screenplay Award and the 1980 Writers Guild of America Award (Screen) for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium. It was also nominated for the 1980 Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay.

Being There was the last Peter Sellers film to be released while he was alive. The making of the film is portrayed in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, a biographical film of Sellers' life.

Plot[edit]

Chance (Peter Sellers) is a middle-aged man who lives in the townhouse of an old, wealthy man in Washington D.C. He seems simple-minded and has lived there his whole life, tending the garden. Other than gardening, his knowledge is derived entirely from what he sees on television. When his benefactor dies, Chance is forced to leave and discovers the outside world for the first time.

Chance wanders aimlessly, wearing his former employer's expensive clothes. Chance passes by a TV shop and sees himself captured by a camera in the shop window. Entranced, he steps backward off the sidewalk and is struck by a chauffeured car owned by Ben Rand (Melvyn Douglas), an elderly business mogul. In the back seat of the car sits Rand's wife Eve (Shirley MacLaine).

Eve brings Chance to their home to recover. Drinking alcohol for the first time in the car ride home, Chance coughs as he tells Eve his name. Eve mishears "Chance the Gardener" as "Chauncey Gardiner". Judging from Chance's appearance and manners, Rand assumes that Chance is an upper class, highly educated businessman. Chance's style and seemingly insightful ways embody the qualities Rand admires. Chance's simplistic utterances about gardens are interpreted as allegorical statements about business and the state of the economy.

Rand is also a confidant and adviser of the U.S. President (Jack Warden), whom he introduces to "Chauncey". The president interprets Chance's remarks about how the garden changes with the seasons as economic and political advice. Chance, as Chauncey Gardiner, quickly rises to national public prominence. He becomes a media celebrity with an appearance on a television talk show and soon rises to the top of Washington society. Public opinion polls start to reflect just how much his "simple brand of wisdom" resonates with the jaded American public.

Rand, dying of aplastic anemia, encourages Eve to become close to Chance. At his funeral, while the president delivers a speech, members of the board of Rand's companies hold a whispered discussion over potential replacements for the President in the next term of office. As Rand's coffin is about to be interred in the family mausoleum, they unanimously agree on "Chauncey Gardiner".

Oblivious to all this, Chance wanders through Rand's wintry estate. He straightens out a pine sapling and then walks off across the surface of a small lake. The audience now sees Chance physically walking on water (a metaphor for Chance's being a modern messiah). He pauses, dips his umbrella into the water under his feet as if testing its depth, turns, and then continues to walk on the water as the president quotes Rand: "Life is a state of mind."

Cast[edit]

• Peter Sellers as Chance the Gardener, a.k.a. Chauncey Gardiner
• Shirley MacLaine as Eve Rand
• Melvyn Douglas as Ben Rand
• Jack Warden as The President
• Richard A. Dysart as Dr. Robert Allenby
• Richard Basehart as US Soviet Ambassador
• David Clennon as Thomas Franklin
• Ruth Attaway as Louise
• Denise DuBarry as Johanna Franklin
• Sam Weisman as Colson
• Arthur Rosenberg as Morton Hull
• Jerome Hellman as Gary Burns
• James Noble as Kaufman
• Fran Brill as Sally Hayes
• Elya Baskin as Karpatov
• Oteil Burbridge as Lolo (Boy on Corner)

Production[edit]

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2010)

During the several years between the novel's publication and the film's production, Peter Sellers reportedly engaged in a determined quest to obtain the rights to bring the story to the screen and portray its lead character, sending several postcards and letters signed "Chance" to Jerzy Kosinski and Hal Ashby.

One cut of the film includes bloopers from a deleted scene, played during the closing credits: Sellers, lying on a gurney, tries in vain to recite the "message" given by the gang leader (one of the gang members is played by future Allman Brothers band bassist Oteil Burbridge), which includes quite a bit of swearing, with a straight face. Sellers ends up flubbing the lines and laughing instead. Such outtakes being shown in a major Hollywood production were very rare at the time, and Sellers reportedly disapproved of the decision to include them since, by all accounts, it was his desire with this film to display his skills as a serious dramatic actor. There is another cut of the film that has a shot of television static over the end credits.

There was a serious disagreement between Lorimar Films, the production company, and Ashby with respect to the final scene of the film, before the end credits. The original screenplay ended with Chance wandering down from the Rand funeral site and simply regarding the trees and leaves near the lake. Ashby thought of the "walking on water" ending and incorporated it into the production and the final cut. Lorimar hated the idea, and it nearly led to Ashby being fired from the picture; but Ashby prevailed, and his ending is now regarded as a brilliant mock-allegorical coda.

Additionally, there was substantial unhappiness over the final award of sole screenplay credit to Kosinski, since it was widely recognized that Robert C. Jones, the film editor of many of Ashby's pictures, had substantially revised Kosinski's very literal screenplay adaptation of his novella, and was really responsible for the screenplay that was filmed.

The film makes continued use of actual television clips throughout. These clips are part of the ambient visual and audio background, presented as a natural occurrence of a television being on in the room where the scene is taking place. The clips were chosen by Dianne Schroeder, and are referenced in the film credits as "Special Television Effects". These clips are an essential element of the film. They provide a window into the mind of Chance, who knows nothing of the world outside the old man's home except from what he's learned on television. They are also a comment on the addictive quality of television, as the film's audience begins to realize that they are drawn to the clips just as Chance is.^{[citation needed]}

Music[edit]

Incidental music is used very sparingly. What little original music is used was composed by Johnny Mandel, and primarily features two recurrent piano themes based on "Gnossiennes" No. 4 and No. 5 by Erik Satie. The other major piece of music used is the Eumir Deodato jazz/funk arrangement of the opening fanfare from Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, in the scene where Chance leaves the house and ventures out into the world for the first time.

The film opens with Chance watching a televised performance of Franz Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony No. 8.^[3]

Reception[edit]

The film opened to positive reviews and helped revitalize Sellers' comic career after he landed many movie flops, except for the Pink Panther movies. Film critic Roger Ebert mentions the final scene in his 2005 book The Great Movies II (p. 52),^[4] stating that his film students once suggested that Chance may be walking on a submerged pier. Ebert writes, "The movie presents us with an image, and while you may discuss the meaning of the image, it is not permitted to devise explanations for it. Since Ashby does not show a pier, there is no pier — a movie is exactly what it shows us, and nothing more."^[5]

Sellers won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his performance in Being There. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor as well at the 52nd Academy Awards, but he lost to Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer. Hoffman, upon receiving the award, remarked that he refused to believe that he had beaten Sellers.^[6]

Melvyn Douglas won his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance.

The film is ranked number 26 on the AFI's 100 Years…100 Laughs list, a list released by American Film Institute in 2000 of the top 100 funniest films in American cinema.^[7]

A parody of the film, "Being Not All There", was published in Mad magazine. It was illustrated by Mort Drucker and written by Larry Siegel in regular issue #218, October 1980.^[8]

See also[edit]

Film portal

• Forrest Gump
• Politics in fiction
• The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma

References[edit]

Bibliography

• Finkelstein, Joanne (2007). The Art of Self Invention: Image and Identity in Popular Visual Culture. I.B. Tauris. pp. 9, 98–99. ISBN 1-84511-395-0. 
• Neupert, Richard (1995). The End: Narration and Closure in the Cinema. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0-8143-2525-4. 
• Nichols, Peter M.; A. O. Scott, Vincent Canby (2004). The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made. Macmillan. pp. 93–94. ISBN 0-312-32611-4. 
• Sikov, Ed (2002). Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers. Hyperion. ISBN 0-7868-8581-5. 
• Tichi, Cecelia (1991). Electronic Hearth: Creating an American Television Culture. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507914-0. 

External links[edit]

• Being There at the Internet Movie Database
• Being There at AllRovi
• Being There at Box Office Mojo
• Being There at Rotten Tomatoes