Being There: Be there

Veteran filmmaker Hal Ashby was on one hell of an unprecedented hot streak during the 1970’s. Though he personally won only a single Oscar in his entire career, (not for his direction, but for his editing of 1967’s eventual Best Picture winner, Norman Jewison’s In The Heat of the Night) the ten year period that followed his directorial debut with The Landlord in 1970 saw six of Ashby’s films accomplish to rack up 7 Oscar wins and manage 16 other nominations, all in a decade that boasts the release of arguably some of the greatest films of the last century.

More remarkably, of the 50 directors nominated in the Best Director category during that decade, Ashby was listed among them only once, for 1978’s Coming Home. While elsewhere, his films earned 4 separate nominations for The Palm d'Or at Cannes in each even numbered year beginning with The Last Detail in 1974 and ending with Being There in 1980. A lofty total of 4 nominations for the highest honor, at the world's most celebrated film festival, in 7 years. To illustrate what a feat that was and to put all of his film's Oscar nominations in proper perspective, I have listed below the ten films that won the Oscar for Best Picture during that same ten year span and their respective directors; the mere upper-most segment of the talent he was nominated with:

1970 Patton - Franklin Schaffner

1971 The French Connection – William Friedkin

1972 The Godfather - Francis Ford Coppola

1973 The Sting - George Roy Hill

1974 The Godfather II - Francis Ford Coppola

1975 One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest - Milos Forman

1976 Rocky - John G. Advilsen

1977 Annie Hall - Woody Allen

1978 The Deer Hunter - Michael Cimino

1979 Kramer Vs. Kramer – Robert Benton

Though not all directed by legends, each of the films listed above have a certain amount of legendary status, are critically acclaimed works of the silver screen and were pitted against the most formidable field of also-rans of any ten year period in the history of the Oscars. It would be easy to argue that the years 1970 to 1979 were the very best ten years in the history of American cinema. Though there are plenty of variables that may have contributed to the consistent brilliance of those ten years, a notable turning point was the 1969 Oscar for Best Picture going to John Schlesinger’s groundbreaking and heavily controversial film, Midnight Cowboy. Schlesinger's film helped usher in an era of bold filmmaking that favored darker subject matter, contemporary storytelling and more true to life characters in juxtaposition to the wholesome, squeaky clean, song and dance pictures that dominated the Academy Awards during the decade of the 60's.

With the abbreviated Academy Award’s history lesson out of the way, we can get back to the real subject of this entry, Being There, Hal Ashby's 6th consecutive note-worthy effort of the decade and one of the finest films to be utterly forgotten in the last 40 years.

Written by doomed novelist Jerzy Kosinski and adapted from his own book of the same name, Being There is the story of Chance, (Peter Sellers) a simple-minded gardener who is put out into the street after his wealthy caretaker and employer succumbs to old age, leaving the house and adjacent garden that Chance has lived and worked in his entire life to be sold by unscrupulous developers. Compounding Chance’s sudden homelessness is that he isn’t a terribly broad thinker, surviving only by the watchful care of others and subsisting in a perpetual state of childlike wonder within the warm embrace of the only friend he’s ever had; the television. In fact, the only thing apart from gardening that Chance does understand IS television, and upon his expulsion from the old man’s house, he sets out into the world alone, armed only with a suitcase, an umbrella and his remote control.

In a delightful example of art imitating life, Chance’s limited understanding leaves him without the ability to explain himself or his circumstances in broader context. But following a minor accident and a number of misunderstandings, one of which is perpetuated by a fit of sneezing, Chance finds himself again in the company of the well-to-do and, unbeknownst to him, that his simple references to gardening and television are mistaken for genius among a number of men of industry and influence. Only now, Chance the gardener has a new identity; that of a thoroughly unknown and untapped economic philosopher, Chauncy Gardner. Thanks to a quality supporting performance by Shirley MacLaine, Ashby's careful direction and Sellers' charming portrayal of Chance, the story slowly unwraps a poignant message that is as timeless and true thirty years later as it was the year of it's release.

Though Melvyn Douglas won the Best Supporting Actor honors for his performance in Being There, Peter Sellers was also nominated in the Best Actor category, but was edged out by Dustin Hoffman for his performance in that year’s big favorite, Kramer Vs. Kramer. As fate would have it, Sellers died in July of 1980 after completing what turned out to be his final picture, the underachieving flop, The Fiendish Plot Of Dr. Fu Manchu, still having never won an Oscar despite having been nominated three times. In the clear light of 30 years worth of reflection, the Best Actor award should have gone to Sellers rather than Oscar’s perennial sweetheart, Hoffman. But Milli Vanilli should never have won a Grammy Award either and sometimes colossal mistakes happen even at the best awards ceremonies. Still, regardless of the number of awards Being There may have deserved, Hal Ashby and company hit another long ball in 1979 that just missed clearing the fence. With a flawless performance by the human chameleon Peter Sellers, and complete with yet another memorable Hal Ashby ending, Being There is still one of the best films of the era and should be credited on the official score card as a bases-clearing triple.

NOTE: Be sure to watch the end credits that feature a series of sure-to-please outtakes of Sellers breaking character and laughing out of control. They alone would have been worth the price of admission.