Better In Your Head?--BEING THERE

 

Spoiler Alert: ignorance never loses relevance.

THE BOOK-Written by Jerzy Kosinski*, released 1970

THE MOVIE-Directed by Hal Ashby, written by Jerzy Kosinski** released 1979

THE STORY-This is a story of Chance. Chance the gardener, AKA Chauncey Gardiner--storyteller depending. Guy's a dolt with a solid-gold heart who becomes an accidental political darling. No one knows him, yet everyone loves him, and it's clear that the man without a past will soon become the man shaping the future.

MIND THE GAP-A great satirical work is like a traffic light with all but the top bulb busted. The first strike is a fantastic premise. Being There boasts one of the best.*** Misnamed and misunderstood, Chance/Chauncey the boob-tube baby literally stumbles upward in infantile wonder as VIPs scurry to piece together his background. 

Next, you need prose that is urgent and unyielding, driven by wit, irony and exaggeration. Oops.

Luckily for the film, Peter Sellers said "yes." With no offense toward Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden, or Shirley MacLaine, Being There is The Peter Sellers Show. He's remarkable as the man-child bestowed savior status (although the actor's own insistence he was Chauncey in real-life might suggest less of a feat). 

Chauncey Gardiner is a Capitol Critter's dream. He is not a pre-packaged deal. He does not give pat answers or ask circuitous questions. He is not a beneficiary of nepotism--in fact, his family tree was seemingly drawn out in invisible ink. This guileless, succinct, able-bodied white guy is absolutely Presidential material.

Amazing how so many viewers take the film's ending at face value, ergo making themselves the equivalent of those high-society dopes they doubtless deride. Chance is obviously walking on either a submerged pier or a sandbar. (Note that he dips the umbrella into the water at his right side, rather than behind or in front of him.)

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Being There is a short book. A short, dry, disappointing book, virtually devoid of the screenplay's lacerating wit and palpitating humanity. 

Kosinski describes gardening well, is all I'll give him.

 

 

*Rather, plagiarized The Career Of Nikodemus Dyzma by Tadeusz Dolega-Mostowicz.

**Rather, rewritten by an uncredited Robert C. Jones

***Rather, The Career Of Nikodemus Dyzma boasts one of the best premises.