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Format: VHS
May 1992
Rated PG
Recording Mode: (unknown)
Sound: HiFi
Closed Captioned
130 min.
UPC: 012569093836 |
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* ML=ships from multiple locations, AE/AP/AA=ships from U.S. Military location.
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* ML=ships from multiple locations, AE/AP/AA=ships from U.S. Military location.
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Movie 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.
Synopsis
Adapted from Kosinski's novel, a mentally deficient gardener, who knows the outside world only through television, rises to a position of considerable political power when his idle aphorisms are interpreted as philosophical wisdom by a wealthy industrialist and, soon after, swallowed whole by the American public.
Film 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.
Industry Reviews
"...A stately, beautifully acted satire....Sellers never strikes a false note..."
New York Times - Janet Maslin (12/20/1979)
"...A rare and subtle bird that finds its tone and sticks with it. It has the appeal of an ingenious intellectual game..."
Chicago Sun-Times - Roger Ebert (05/25/1997)
"[Chance] is a cipher both funny and frightening, making utter vacancy look like Zen inscrutability."
Premiere - Premiere Staff (04/01/2004)
Quotations
"I like to watch."--Chauncy Gardner (Peter Sellers) to Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine)
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