- Chauncy Gardner (Peter Sellers) to Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine)
Major Awards:
Academy Awards 1979 -
Best Supporting Actor: Melvyn Douglas
Entertainment Reviews:
Entertainment Weekly - 01/15/1999
"...Deadpan farce....Sellers in his greatest performance..." -- Rating: A-
New York Times - 12/20/1979
"...A stately, beautifully acted satire....Sellers never strikes a false note..."
Chicago Sun-Times - 05/25/1997
"...A rare and subtle bird that finds its tone and sticks with it. It has the appeal of an ingenious intellectual game..."
Premiere - 04/01/2004
"[Chance] is a cipher both funny and frightening, making utter vacancy look like Zen inscrutability."
Empire - 03/01/2009 4 stars out of 5 -- "[A] strange, evocative swan song whose charm is still strong after 30 years....It's an uncanny part for Sellers, who by repute was an empty vessel into which characters were poured."
Total Film - 04/01/2009 4 stars out of 5 -- "Peter Sellers redeemed himself with one last major turn in BEING THERE....This is an exceptional comedy..."
Product Description:
BEING THERE is based on Jerzy Kosinski's short comic novel about a simpleton, Chance (Peter Sellers), raised in isolation whose only education came from watching TV. When he's forced out of the house where he worked as a gardener by the death of the wealthy recluse who raised him from infancy, he's fortuitously struck by a limousine carrying Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine), the wife of a wealthy industrialist. He's mistaken, because of his well-tailored suits, for a man of means and taken to dinner with her husband, Ben Rand (Melvyn Douglas). There, as Chauncy Gardner, his blank affect is taken for seriousness and his literal pronouncements about gardening for metaphoric economic predictions. Soon he's meeting the president (Jack Warden) and becoming a star on TV--where he's a natural.
Kosinski was well known to be personally fascinated by the power of television. In BEING THERE, which he adapted for the screen himself, he presents a comic fable about a man whose entire sense of reality came from watching television. Sellers is marvelous as the always-deadpan cipher in whom everyone he meets sees whatever it is they need to see. Shirley MacLaine, Jack Warden, and Melvyn Douglas give outstanding performances in this biting satire directed by Hal Ashby.
Plot Keywords:
Character Study |
Classic |
Politics |
Recommended |
Satire |
Theatrical Release |
Wise Fools
Production Notes:
Theatrical release: December 19, 1979.
Director Hal Ashby's former producer, Jerome Hellman, plays the role of Gary Burns, a talk show host.
The film was cited for Best Screenplay by BAFTA.
Jerzy Kosinski actually performed experiments in schools with young children, trying to see if TV creates culture or is a reflection of it.
Film Collectors & Archivists: Alpha Video is actively looking for rare and
unusual pre-1943 motion pictures, in good condition, from Monogram, PRC,
Tiffany, Chesterfield, and other independent studios for release on DVD. We
are also interested in TV shows from the early 1950s. Share your passion
for films with a large audience.
Let us know what you have.
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