Word: kosinski
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...does the badinage with Kermit seem to be entirely fortuitous in its timing. Sellers taped his Muppet appearance not long before he went to work on Being There, the film version of Jerzy Kosinski's novel about how a totally blank, isolated man, whose only knowledge of the world comes from television, emerges from the Edenic walled garden he has tended all his life to become a presidential adviser, media pundit and, finally, presidential timber himself. Sellers has indicated that in this character of Chance the gardener (Chauncey Gardiner, as his fancy new friends later take to calling...
BEING THERE Directed by Hal Ashby Screenplay by Jerzy Kosinski...
Being There is a spectacular balancing act. For almost two hours, Writer Jerzy Kosinski, Director Hal Ashby and Star Peter Sellers keep a single, scorchingly witty joke floating miraculously through midair. Though the joke ultimately crashes to earth too early-about 15 minutes before the movie ends-the final letdown does not spoil what has gone before. Here is a comedy that valiantly defies both gravity and the latest Hollywood fashion. There isn't a single laugh in Being There that owes anything to Animal House...
...film is an adaptation of Kosinski's 1971 novel. Its hero is Chance, a gardener, an illiterate and a 30-year shut-in whose entire knowledge of life comes from watching television. What might happen, Kosinski wonders, if such a man were suddenly forced to leave home and become a citizen of the real world? The answer to that question is Being There's single joke: no sooner does Chance venture out than he is mistaken for a philosopher, a sex symbol and a potential presidential candidate. The secret of his success is TV. Having been nurtured...
Being There is not flawless, however. Jack Warden was cast terribly as the president and several of his scenes in bed with the first lady lack the precise timing and vigor that MacLaine and Sellers bring to their roles. Kosinski has also padded the script with the geneses of several subplots and characters that he leaves hanging forever, an annoying trait that does not occur in his novels, in which all loose ends are cleverly macramaed by the last page. Like Kosinski's novels, however, the film playfully and insightfully taunts our plodding culture at the same time it entertains...