Being There is a 1979 American comedy-drama film directed by Hal Ashby. Based on the 1970 novel of the same name by Jerzy Kosi?ski, it was adapted for the screen by Kosi?ski and the uncredited Robert C. Jones. The film stars Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine, and features Jack Warden, Melvyn Douglas, Richard Dysart, and Richard Basehart.
Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Sellers was nominated for Best Actor. The screenplay won the British Academy Film Award for Best Screenplay and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium. It was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay.
In 2015 the United States Library of Congress selected Being There for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Video Being There
Plot
The middle-aged and simple-minded Chance lives in the townhouse of an old, wealthy man in Washington, D.C. He has spent his whole life tending the garden and has never left the property. Other than gardening, his knowledge is derived entirely from what he sees on television. When his benefactor dies, Chance naively tells the lawyers that he has no claim against the estate and is ordered to move out.
Chance wanders aimlessly, discovering the outside world for the first time. Passing by a TV shop, he 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, an elderly business mogul. In the car is Rand's much younger wife, Eve, who mishears "Chance, the gardener", in reply to the question who he is, as "Chauncey Gardiner".
Eve brings Chance to their home to recover. He is wearing expensive tailored clothes from the 1920s and '30s, which his benefactor had allowed him to take from the attic, and his manners are old-fashioned and courtly. When Ben Rand meets him, he takes "Chauncey" for an upper-class, highly educated businessman who has fallen on hard times. Rand admires him, finding him direct, wise and insightful.
Rand is also a confidant and adviser to the President of the United States, whom he introduces to "Chauncey". In a discussion about the economy, Chance takes his cue from the words "stimulate growth" and talks about the changing seasons of the garden. The President misinterprets this as optimistic political advice and quotes "Chauncey Gardiner" in a speech. Chance now rises to national public prominence, attends important dinners, develops a close connection with the Soviet ambassador and appears on a television talk show. During the latter, Chance goes into detail about what a serious gardener should do and is misunderstood as giving his opinion about what would be his presidential policy, given the chance.
Though he has now risen to the top of Washington society, the Secret Service and some 16 other agencies are unable to find any background information about him. During this time Rand's physician, Dr. Allenby, becomes increasingly suspicious that Chance is not a wise political expert and that the mystery of his identity may have a more mundane explanation. Dr. Allenby considers confiding this to Rand but, realizing how happy Chance is making him during his final days, he decides not to.
The dying Rand encourages Eve to become close to "Chauncey". She is already attracted to him and makes a sexual advance. Chance has no interest in or knowledge of sex, but mimics a kissing scene from the 1968 film The Thomas Crown Affair, which happens to be on the TV. When the scene ends, Chauncey stops suddenly and Eve is confused. She asks what he likes, meaning sexually; he replies "I like to watch," meaning television. She is momentarily taken aback, but decides she is willing to masturbate for his voyeuristic pleasure, thereby not noticing that he has turned back to the TV and is now imitating a yoga exercize on a different channel.
Chance is present at Rand's death and shows genuine sadness at his passing. Questioned by Dr Allenby, he admits that he "loves Eve very much", and also that he is just a gardener. When he leaves to inform Eve of Ben's death, Allenby says to himself, "I understand", but it is left to the viewer to work out exactly what that means.
At Rand's funeral, while the President delivers a speech, the pall-bearers hold a whispered discussion over potential replacements for the President in the next term of office and unanimously agree on Chauncey Gardiner as successor. Oblivious to all this, Chance wanders off through Rand's wintry estate. He straightens out a pine sapling flattened by a fallen branch and then walks off across the surface of a lake. He pauses, dips his umbrella deep into the water under his feet (confirming for the viewer that it is not just a skim of water on the ground), then continues on, while the President is heard quoting Rand: "Life is a state of mind."
Maps Being There
Cast
Filming
Principal filming occurred at the Biltmore Estate, the largest private home in America, located in Asheville, North Carolina.
Melvyn Douglas's granddaughter, Illeana, had a chance to visit the set and got to meet Peter Sellers, who is her favorite actor. She has since credited the film for inspiring her to pursue a career in acting. According to Illeana, Sellers and Douglas had known each other since the 1940s when they first met in Burma during World War II. They often reminisced about their war days while on the set.
Burt Lancaster was Ashby's first choice for the role of Ben Rand. Laurence Olivier was also considered for the role, but he turned it down because of the masturbation scene.
According to MacLaine, "(Peter) believed he was Chauncey. He never had lunch with me... He was Chauncey Gardiner the whole shoot, but believing he was having a love affair with me."
The making of the film is portrayed in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, a biographical film of Sellers' life.
Music
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. 6 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.
Mandel was also assisted by his late cousin and fellow composer Miles Goodman with the orchestration of the film.
Reception
The film opened to positive reviews and helped revitalize Sellers' comic career; many of his recent films outside of the Pink Panther series had flopped. Film critic Roger Ebert mentions the final scene in his 2005 book The Great Movies II (p. 52), 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."
Sellers won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a 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 for Kramer vs. Kramer.
Melvyn Douglas won his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture.
The credits at the film's end roll over an outtake, known as the "Rafael outtake". Sellers was later displeased that the outtake ran because he believed it took away from Chauncey's mystique. He also believed the outtake was what prevented him from winning the Oscar.
An alternative credit sequence has waves on a television set as they would appear on an "unoccupied" channel.
The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:
- 2000: AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs - #26
Home media
A 30th Anniversary Edition was released on DVD and Blu-ray on February 2009. The Criterion Collection issued the film on DVD and Blu-ray in March 2017.
In popular culture
- The Wolfgang Press sampled the final line of the film on the original release version of their song "Mother Valentine" from their 1991 album Queer.
- The 1996 album Being There by the American alternative rock band Wilco was named after the film.
- In early 2017, Being There was cited by several political commentators, including Sam Harris and Malcolm Jones of The Daily Beast, in comparison to the rise of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States.
Two men who are almost purely the creatures of television. Two men who both glean what they know of the world from what we once so quaintly called the idiot box. One man reads very little, and the other cannot read or write at all. TV frames their views of life. You might even say that for them, TV is life. Simultaneously, TV has made both men celebrities. But it's not merely that TV allows this pair to find fame and flourish. More than that, this medium that deals almost exclusively in images and surfaces is the only venue through which either man could ever have ascended so meteorically to celebrity. So, is Donald Trump our Chauncey Gardiner?
See also
- Blast from the Past
- Politics in fiction
- The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma
- Forrest Gump
References
Notes
Bibliography
- Beech, Christopher (2009). The Films of Hal Ashby. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8143-3415-7.
- Finkelstein, Joanne (2007). The Art of Self Invention: Image and Identity in Popular Visual Culture. London: I. B. Tauris. pp. 9, 98-99. ISBN 1-84511-395-0.
- Nichols, Peter M.; A. O. Scott; Vincent Canby (2004). The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made. New York: Macmillan. pp. 93-94. ISBN 0-312-32611-4.
- Sikov, Ed (2002). Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 0-7868-8581-5.
- Tichi, Cecelia (1991). Electronic Hearth: Creating an American Television Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507914-0.
External links
- Being There on IMDb
- Being There at AllMovie
- Being There at Box Office Mojo
- Being There at Rotten Tomatoes
Source of article : Wikipedia
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