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Being There
on DVD (1979)
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| Starring: |
Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Warden, Melvyn Douglas, Richard Basehart, Richard Dysart |
| Director: |
Hal Ashby |
| Studio: |
WARNER HOME VIDEO |
| Run time: |
124 mins |
| Certificate: |
 |
| User collections: |
TOP 10 MOVIES, Films that stand out from the crowd, ...the ones I bought., Desert Island DVDs, My Top 20 Films, The films I like are better than the films you like, The Revolution Will Be Televised - Or Watched on DVD |
| Genres: |
Comedy |
| Languages: |
English |
| Released: |
10/02/2003
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| Also Available on: |
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Brief synopsis of Being There
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.
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Related
Critics Reviews
Radio Times
Hal Ashby's satirical parable on the way the USA surrenders itself to homespun evangelicalism gives Peter Sellers the role of a lifetime as the naive, illiterate gardener thrust into an outside world that takes his ignorance for philosophical depth. TV-nurtured, he comments to a seductive Shirley MacLaine that he likes watching and gives her entirely the wrong idea. Veteran Melvyn Douglas refuses to be upstaged by Sellers and thoroughly deserved his Oscar for best supporting actor.
Halliwell's Film Guide
A serio-comic parable hinging on a Sellers' star performance as a blank character on whom others force an identity. Chance made it a popular urban success.
Time Out
Sellers' performance - as the innocent neuter figure who rises accidentally to political power on the strength of...
Read more on www.timeout.com
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