Being There (1979) on Netflix
Chance, a gardener who has never left his Washington house, knows the world only from television. When his employer dies, he is put out and taken for a gentleman named Chauncey Gardiner.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.9/1082,630 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes95%
Trailer
Plot summary
Mr. Jennings' townhouse in Washington, D.C. is the only home Chance has known. He tends the garden there, takes his meals from the maid Louise, cannot read or write, and learns about the world only from television. When Jennings dies, the lawyers send him out into the city, where a limousine carrying Eve Rand strikes him. The much younger wife of the financier Ben Rand mishears his name and takes him for Chauncey Gardiner, bringing him to the Rand estate, where Dr. Robert Allenby looks after the ailing Ben. Chance's dated clothes and formal manners lead Ben to think he is a wealthy businessman whose fortunes have slipped, and the powerful friends Ben introduces him to treat his talk of a garden as wisdom.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Being There (1979)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
Hal Ashby rejected the ending as originally scripted, in which Eve finds Chance by the lake and they walk back together; instead he had a platform submerged in the lake for Sellers to walk on, creating the film's enigmatic final scene.- According to Shirley MacLaine, Peter Sellers "believed he was Chauncey": he never had lunch with her and was Chauncey Gardiner for the whole shoot, believing he was having a love affair with her.
- Peter Sellers was displeased that an outtake ran in the film, because he believed it detracted from Chauncey's mystique and that it prevented him from winning the Oscar.
- Burt Lancaster was Ashby's first choice for the role of Ben Rand, and Laurence Olivier was also considered for it, but Olivier turned the part down because of the masturbation scene.
- Being There is said to bear a strong resemblance to the 1932 Polish novel Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy by Tadeusz Dolega-Mostowicz, and the film's originality became a subject of controversy in 1982.
- Principal filming for Being There occurred at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, which is the largest private home in the United States.
