"Being There" (1979)

It reminds me of that snap…”you so dumb, you broke the laws of gravity.” Which I'm sure is not the message. And how “Forrest Gump” wasn’t sued back to the stone age for aping Peter Sellers’ schtick here is beyond me.

This movie is a unique one, with the understanding that…Chance is a gardner…but…through mis-communication, he’s been dubbed “Chauncey Gardiner.” He interacts with the normal public as a simpleton. As his long time boss dies, he is released into the unsuspecting world that has turned harsh and 70’s. Everything he says is misconstrued (the comedy).

Sellers exists in the vacuum of his mind. In that, most people go to him and not vice versa. It’s frustrating but entertaining to watch how people will bend the dullard, since it speaks so little and is very vague. The comparison to “Forrest Gump” really goes off here, when he is constantly running into important people and changing their lives through his…simple way. Did I mention he watches television around the clock? Maybe the message was that our minds are melted by all the garbage of media (cough cough).

So where would a nitwit go if he can’t go anywhere else?...Washington D.C. of course!

In a chance accident, he meets Eve Rand (Shirley McClaine) to which she introduces him to her husband, a high powered business man who is dying. Chauncey stumbles from moment to moment, often confusing people with vague statements that people take to mean something else more profound. The man is an child. His statements are repetitive and hard to believe not a single person understands he's a broken record is beyond me. Perhaps it was the time. But it only makes sense if you consider the garbage that we're being spoonfed now, we put them on a pedestal...Lady Gaga for instance. She's no Christ figure. She says things that are so rudimentary that people have to agree. It's the same as someone shouting how against child abuse they are. DUH! But for whatever reason idiots...our present society laps it up as philosophy.

I don't care though, it's a better message and harmless. Just annoying how we put dimwits with sound bites into power to cater to masses. But I'm sure that's not the message either.

I'm really not sure what this movie is about. Probably made sense to Peter Sellers back in the mid-70's to late-70's. The universal theme of existing through life as a simpleton is somehow more peaceful. DUH!

Directed simply by Hal Ashby.