Being There (1979)

Director: Hal Ashby
Writer: Jerzy Kosiński, based on his novel
Stars: Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Warden and Melvyn Douglas

Index: 2025 Centennials.

I knew very little about Being There going in. I knew that it was a late Peter Sellers movie, it was something of a departure from his typical comedy and it landed him an Oscar nod. And I knew that it was still highly regarded, comedy often dating poorly but this one not so much.

I certainly hadn’t realised that it can viably be considered a cult film; that it was directed by Hal Ashby, who had made Harold and Maude; that it was written by Jerzy Kosiński, he of The Painted Bird fame; or indeed that it had won an Oscar for Melvyn Douglas, a Golden Age actor I’ve enjoyed in many films from the thirties.

Not knowing the story certainly helped. It’s a subtle comedy, meaning that one departure for Sellers was a need for him to underact for once. It’s an unpredictable comedy too, much of the fun for me arising through his character always telling the exact truth without anyone actually realising that.

They think he’s ribbing them, talking about something else or maybe just delivering some sort of metaphor. What they hear says a good deal more about them than it does about him, making me wonder all the more about the last scene. If Jesus ever came back and said some of the things that he said in the Bible, what would we hear? Suddenly that seems weirdly topical, with the American vice president disagreeing with the Pope on Catholic theology.

These discrepancies go as far as the name of the lead character. He’s Chance the gardener, a simple man whose only pleasures in life are plants and television, which he enjoys in equal measure at a Washington, DC house that he’s never left. He may have been born there and he certainly stays there until the old man dies, in fact until the lawyers throw him out.

However, after wandering the streets for a while, he’s bumped by the car of Eve Rand and she hears his name as Chauncey Gardiner, who he promptly becomes. Eve is the young wife of Ben Rand, some sort of old industrialist, and to avoid being sued she invites Chauncey to stay with them to be treated for whatever.

Suddenly, he’s a part of their lives and they continue to misinterpret the simple words he says in ways that keep on growing in import. Ben thinks that Chauncey’s a businessman and so asks questions. He gives the best answer he can to one of them and suddenly it’s national policy, the financial editor of the Washington Post is calling him and he’s invited onto a talk show after the vice president cancels. He met the president at the Rand house when he came to visit. That’s how connected they are.

There isn’t much point diving deeper into a synopsis, because that’s it. He starts out on his own and soon ends up with the Rands. He’s a gardener who says simple things but everyone hears something more and acts accordingly. It really doesn’t go much further than that.

However, there’s so much depth there that a discussion group would need more meetings to touch on everything else.

They could talk about his weird relationship with Eve Rand, a gift for Shirley Maclaine. This could serve as a textbook on how couples (and the neurodivergent) struggle to communicate. The Russian ambassador thinks that Chauncey knows Krilov’s Fables in their original Russian, but he can’t even read English.

They could talk about how much fun it is to watch rumour mills run wildly out of control and news outlets and alphabet agencies fail to identify even a single detail of Chauncey’s life. Then again, we don’t exactly know much, just that he lived with the old man all his life, wore his spare suits and never saw a doctor.

They could even talk about how there’s very little in the way of score, which gives way to a deluge of background noise in the form of TV, not just shows but commercials that my wife remembers. Never mind its own merits, this is worthy of preservation because it’s a snapshot of American cultural history. What the heck is Basketball Jones and why have I never seen it?

And, of course, they have to talk about the ending, which generates questions but gives no answers. That’s up to us. And, just like that, we’re in religious territory. Is he the Messiah? Has he reached enlightenment? Does being “a truly peaceful man” have fringe benefits? And what does “Life is a state of mind” mean?

All that discussion comes from a comedy, an astonishingly subtle comedy that doesn’t lend itself to pop culture quotes, though I must say that “I like to watch” has a lot of connotations for me now. I may have known little going in but I know I’ll be going back to it in the future and I think it’s only ever going to grow.

Of course, I knew about Peter Sellers, as he’s a British comedy icon spanning eras. Few Brits my age haven’t experienced his work.

He was born to a music hall family, debuting on stage at the tender age of two weeks, when he cried while the audience sang. During the Second World War, he worked a progression of jobs at his uncle’s theatre, working on up from caretaker at fifteen. After learning the drums there, he toured with jazz bands while starting to do comedy on stage, ending up in the Gang Show of the Royal Air Force.

He was hired by the BBC in 1948 and, three years later, The Goon Show with Sellers, Spike Milligan, Michael Bentine and Harry Secombe became what The Guardian rated “probably the most influential comedy show of all time.”

He’d already made it to the movies by then but The Goons gave him impetus. Suddenly, he was in British classics like The Ladykillers, The Smallest Show on Earth and The Naked Truth, the latter in a variety of disguises, something he’d often come back to.

He’d also often portray multiple roles in the same films, surely as a throwback to the many characters he played in The Goon Show and as a homage to Alec Guinness who he idolised. He played three roles in The Mouse That Roared, Dr. Strangelove and The Prisoner of Zenda and two in I’m All Right Jack, The Millionairess and his final film, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu.

Of course, disguises, albeit bad ones, were a mainstay of the Pink Panther movies. He played the iconic Inspector Clouseau in five features, enough to cement his comedy fame, on top of everything else mentioned and Heavens Above!, Two Way Stretch, Lolita and Murder by Death.

Even with a filmography that deep, Chance may be his greatest performance. He could do over the top and subtle simultaneously, but he only did subtle here and it’s memorable.

He died in 1980, having influenced almost every single comedian who came after him.