Being There (1979)

A simple-minded gardener named Chance (Peter Sellers) has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television. After a run in with a limousine, he ends up a guest of a woman, Eve (Shirley MacLaine) and her husband Ben (Melvyn Douglas), an influential but sickly businessman. Now called Chauncey Gardner (Chance The Gardener), Chance becomes friend and confidante to Ben, and an unlikely political insider as hilarity ensues.

Trivia: Every contract that Peter Sellers signs includes a clause which stipulates that his accommodation must have the bed facing East-West. Chance says: "I like to sleep with my head facing North". The attorney he's with says "But this bed is facing west!" Despite Sellers' repeated requests, the producers would not remove the out-takes (played underneath the credits) from the version they submitted to Cannes. Peter Sellers patterned the voice for Chance the gardener after his idol, Stan Laurel. The Mansion used in the movie was The Biltmore Mansion in North Carolina. Originally there was a different last shot planned for the funeral sequence at the end of the film. Director Hal Ashby was chatting with another director one day about filming when he commented how well everything was going. "It's like walking on air," he said, then suddenly was struck with a thought. He changed the last shot to the one that appears now in the movie. The inscription "Life is a state of mind" is on Rand's tomb and also serves as the last line in the movie. These words were also inscribed on Sellers' own tomb, when he died a year after the movie was released. Peter Sellers was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor. Some said the reason Sellers lost was because of the outtakes at the very end of the movie as the credits are rolling. Sellers himself later said the outtakes "broke the spell" of the movie.

This was a strange little movie. Peter Sellers, a comic genius, plays a quiet, slow witted slow talking plain spoken gardener. It was funny, but just a little strange, I mean Shirley MacLaine had a masturbation scene (that they had to film 17 times). It is one of those movies with mistaken identities where people ascribe certain characteristics to a person just because they expect that person to have those abilities and as long as he doesn't contradict them, everything is ok. Now we get to the end which I still haven't quite figured out. Warning: I usually just change the color of the text on spoilers, but I have to tell you, this is a major spoiler so you have been warned. Chance walks on water. What is up with that? Are they saying he is an angel? Is he Jesus? Is he God? He does come in and changes everyone's life. Or are they saying that everyone ascribed God like powers to this innocent childlike man? It caught me off guard because nothing else in the movie even hinted at it. Oh well, It was an okay movie.