Being There ***** (1979, Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden, Richard Dysart, Richard Basehart) – Classic Movie Review 819

Director Hal Ashby’s extremely witty and deliciously satirical 1979 black-comedy gives Peter Sellers a wonderful chance to create a serious character in his penultimate film as an illiterate, TV-mad (‘I like to watch’), simple gardener called Chance (you work it out). It inspires Sellers to achieve some great character acting, patterned after his idol, Stan Laurel.

Forced to leave his Washington D.C. house for the first time when his old employer dies, and walking bewildered and threatened on the streets, Chance is knocked into by the limousine of the very rich society matron Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine).

Eve insists he comes back to her stately home to be checked over by the live-in doctor (Richard Dysart), who recommends he stay for a couple of days till he is fully better. A character in its own right, the marvellous mansion used in the movie is The Biltmore Mansion in Asheville, North Carolina.

Then Chance meets and enchants Eve’s politically influential businessman husband Benjamin ‘Ben’ Rand (Melvyn Douglas), and the couple soon befriend him.

The Rands quickly become entranced by Chance’s natural sincerity and apparent simple wisdom, and Ben even introduces him to his visiting friend, the admiring American President, ‘Bobby’ (Jack Warden), who repeats his simple gardening wisdom in a national speech.

Now renamed Chauncey Gardiner, Chance becomes friend and confidant to Ben, and an unlikely political insider. And eventually Chance is turned into a national celebrity after appearing on his beloved TV, renowned everywhere for his supposedly brilliant, inspiring, life-enhancing homespun philosophy.

Sellers was Oscar-nominated as Best Actor but it was Douglas who won an Oscar for his Best Supporting Actor role as the dying millionaire who takes in but is taken in by Chance. Jerzy Kosinski took a BAFTA award for his smooth and polished Best Adapted Screenplay, taken from his own novel.

Co-starring Jack Warden, Richard Dysart, Richard Basehart (as the Russian ambassador) and Ruth Attaway as the maid Louise, it has the just right ensemble cast and all the acting is sensational. And Being There, which can be viewed as an older relative of Rain Man and Forrest Gump, is a triumph too for its painstaking, sensitive director, Ashby. Caleb Deschanel’s cinematography makes it look a delicious treat too. It is an incredibly stylish, as well as thought provoking, funny and entertaining film.

Laurence Olivier is said to have turned the film down because he didn’t want to be in a film in which Shirley MacLaine masturbates. If this is true, you kind of see what he meant. The scene is jarring in such a smart movie, yet it is as undeniably funny as it is disturbing. It lasts a long time and goes a long way. But, it’s funny, and this is a comedy.

Also in the cast are Dave Clennon, Fran Brill, Denis DuBarry, Oteil Burbridge, Ravenell Keller III, Brian Corrigan, Alfredine Brown, Donald Jacob, Richard Venture and Arthur Grundy.

Sadly Sellers didn’t live to enjoy the fruits of his success. He died of a heart attack on July 24 1980, aged 54. Sellers had read the novel in 1972, but it took seven years to get it made and he finally could use his renewed favour with the Pink Panther films to realise his dream of filming it when Lorimar Pictures finally greenlit the project.

It was his second Best Actor Oscar nomination (after Dr Strangelove), but he lost to Dustin Hoffman for Kramer vs. Kramer. However, he did win the 1980 Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actor in a Musical or Comedy. The Fiendish Plot of Dr Fu Manchu was completed just a few months before his death.

Sellers recorded his voice over and over again to experiment with different styles and tones, but finally chose a monotonous blank style for Chance. It is simple but brilliantly effective, like his whole performance.

The end credits show Sellers giggling uncontollably as he messes up take after take of a scene. When he attended the film’s screening at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival, he was angry with Ashby and the producers for including this. He said the outtakes broke the spell of the movie – and he is right. Later the end credits were removed, leading to a crash on the soundtrack after the film’s final line. This version was replaced with the credits shown over TV white noise and the film’s main theme by composer Johnny Mandel. The original is restored on the home video version.

[Spoiler alert] ‘Life is a state of mind’ is inscribed on Rand’s tomb and is the last line in the movie. It is also inscribed on Sellers’s own tomb.

Hal Ashby (1929–1988).

Ashby has a director cameo as the bearded man by a filing cabinet in the newsroom just before Chance’s TV appearance. Ashby was the film editor of The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) that Chance is watching when he decides to try kissing Eve.

He is the director of The Landlord (1970), Harold and Maude (1971), The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), Coming Home (1978), Being There (1979) and the Rolling Stones concert film Let’s Spend the Night Together (1982).

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review  819

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