Being There

Being There is a 1979 American satirical comedy-drama film directed by Hal Ashby, based on the 1970 novel of the same name by Jerzy Kosiński. It was adapted for the screen by Kosiński and the uncredited Robert C. Jones. The film stars Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, and Melvyn Douglas and features Jack Warden, Richard Dysart, and Richard Basehart. Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Sellers was nominated for Best Actor. The screenplay won the British Academy Film Award for Best Screenplay and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium. It was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay. In 2015, the Library of Congress selected Being There for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Plot Middle-aged, simple-minded Chance lives in the townhouse of a wealthy old man in Washington, D.C. He has spent his whole life tending the garden and has never left the property. Other than gardening, his knowledge is derived entirely from what he sees on television. When his benefactor dies, Chance naively tells the lawyers that he has no claim against the estate and is ordered to move out. Chance wanders aimlessly, discovering the outside world for the first time. Passing by a TV shop, he sees himself captured by a video camera in the shop window. Entranced, he steps backward off the sidewalk and is struck by a chauffeured limousine owned by elderly business mogul Ben Rand. In the car is Rand's glamorous and much younger wife Eve, who mishears "Chance, the gardener" in reply to the question who he is, as "Chauncey Gardiner".