He is saved by Society's assumptions, the vanities of others of social prominence, and by dumb luck. When he shockingly discovers that the TV Remote won't simply make people and unpleasant situations "go away," he somehow adapts, where others would have been crushed under. He plays a character eerily similar to his real-life ability to assume a chameleonlike "hero." He's a hero in all eyes but his own.and those who knew him "back when." His performance as an autistic, simple Everyman, and his ability to convince everyone around him after he is "let out into the wild" (having lived a very secluded TV-oriented life) is exquisite. I saw this movie which was still in theaters at the time of Peter Sellers very tragic death.He died too young, but his legacy and scope live on.This was his most intellectually challenging role, right up there with Dr. Shirley MacLaine, Jack Warden, and Melvyn Douglas give outstanding performances in this biting satire directed by Hal Ashby.īeing There.with Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, et. Sellers is marvelous as the always-deadpan cipher in whom everyone he meets sees whatever it is they need to see. 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. 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. There, as Chauncy Gardner, his blank affect is taken for seriousness and his literal pronouncements about gardening for metaphoric economic predictions. 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). 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. 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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |