Being There

United States

1979

130 Min

Color

1.85:1

English, Russian, Italian

Currently 4.1/5 Stars.
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PROD Andrew Braunsberg, Charles Mulvehill

SCR Jerzy Kosinski, Robert C. Jones

CAST Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden, Richard Basehart, Richard Dysart, Ruth Attaway, David Clennon, Fran Brill, Denise DuBarry, Sam Weisman, Fredric Lehne

MUSIC Johnny Mandel

Cannes (In Competition), Berlinale (Special Screening)

Synopsis

A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television. After a run in with a limousine, he ends up a guest of a woman (Eve) and her husband Ben, an influential but sickly businessman. Now called Chauncey Gardner, Chance becomes friend and confidante to Ben, and an unlikely political insider. –IMDb

Director

Hal Ashby

Hal Ashby was born the fourth and youngest child in a Mormon household in Ogden, Utah, on September 2, 1929. His father was a dairy farmer. After a rough childhood that included the divorce of his parents, his father’s suicide, his dropping out of high school, getting married and divorced all before he was 19, he decided to leave Utah for California. A Californian employment office found him a printing press job at Universal Studios. Within a few years, he was an assistant film editor at various other studios. One of his pals while at MGM was a young messenger named Jack Nicholson. He moved up to being a full fledged editor on The Loved One (1965) and started editing the films of director Norman Jewison.

A highlight of his film editing career was winning an Oscar for the landmark In the Heat of the Night (1967). Itching to become a director, Jewison gave him a script he was too busy to work on called The Landlord (1970). It became Ashby’s first film as a director. From there he delivered a series of well-acted, intelligent human scaled dramas that included The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), Coming Home (1978) and Being There (1979). Great reviews and Oscar nominations became common on Ashby films.

Ashby was always a maverick and a contrary person and success proved difficult for Ashby to handle. He became unreliable due to his dependence on drugs and a reclusive lifestyle. He actually collapsed while making the Rolling Stone concert film Let’s Spend the Night Together (1983) in Arizona. Although he recovered, he was never the same after that. He began taking too much time in post production on his films and actually had a couple of his later projects taken away from him to be edited by others. He tried to straighten himself out, but in the 1980s, he was considered by many to be unemployable. Just when he felt he was turning a corner in his life, he developed cancer that spread to his liver and colon. He died on December 27, 1988. Actor Sean Penn dedicated his first film as a director, The Indian Runner (1991) to Ashby and John Cassavetes, even though Penn was never directed by either one. Because he did not have a set visual style, many mistake this for no style at all. His career is not discussed as often as the careers of some of his contemporaries. —IMDb

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Mohtar

18May13

Slightly better sexier forrest gump.

jamie-scott-dyson

6Apr13

Like all the Ashby films i've seen, the audience is invited to the main chareccters interpratations of reality so you are inevitably on their side. This story that you follow and support is one of pure unassuming intentions and warmth much like the charecter Sellers brings to the screen. Sellers as 'Chance' is up there as one of the finest perofrmances i've seen. lovely film- Impossible to dislike. 4/5

the.deft.one

27Jan13

This works as a straight up, Forrest Gump-esque comedy, complete with a brilliant Peter Sellars performance but it also works as a satire on both a political level and as a probe on the human psyche. It’s not flawless – infact the second half of the film contains a few weak spots – most noticeably the seduction subplot, but the final curious shot is a perfect ending.