864 Being There

[Werewolf by Night]

Not an interview, but it didn't take long to find this.

[Mooney]

Thanks guys!

[Roger Ryan]

The "promo reel" that appears on the Criterion release of Being There (which I believe showed up on the Warners Blu-ray under the heading "Gag Reel") also features Ashby speaking and reacting to Sellers doing some improvisation.

[Rayon Vert]

Also this bit in France promoting Coming Home. There's an overdub but you can still hear Ashby's voice.

[Ribs]

Beaver

Yes, that will do quite nicely. As I said before this would never have been a release I asked for but I'm very glad to have it.

[jbeall]

I wouldn't consider this film a classic, but I liked it all the same. Sellers is quite good, but IMHO Shirley MacLaine is fantastic in her role. She has to play things relatively straight for the first ~90 minutes, and then has to shift to almost-slapstick comedy while still maintaining the history for her performance in the first half of the film. She's riveting.

As for the rest of the film, the screenplay doesn't quite have the satirical edge I was hoping for, but then again, I'm judging it against its closer peer Network and against the more recent... well, the more recent elevation of Donald Trump to POTUS. So I feel that this film might not seem so dated had 2016 not happened.

[FrauBlucher]

Bluray.com

[Oedipax]

Looks pretty good - a little extra info on the sides, punchier contrast, improved detail, no grain reduction as far as I can tell. The improved contrast does come at a cost of a slight loss of information in the deepest blacks, but comparing the similar screencaps side by side, the old blu-ray looks gamma boosted.

[Ribs]

This release will likely spawn several terrible thinkpieces about how this movie predicted Donald Trump, at least mostly missing the point

Deadline's Peter Bart comes in with the not-very-good Being There - Trump comparison the day after release seemingly having not even been spurred into it by the release.

[colinr0380]

Revisiting Being There on the television last night, I still really like it. It is one of those films that always feels as if it speaks to the current moment because of how vague it sketches in its politics but now rather than seeming like an anti-Trump allegory from my last post, that final funeral scene hits much harder for its resonances of the power behind the throne having a private conclave amongst themselves as they are carrying the coffin of their previous figurehead to its final resting place about who to put their power and influence behind next. Not Jack Warden's current President, despite him holding grandstanding court currently with his bombastic eulogy, but a 'new politics' of a beatific innocent whose gnomic responses allow everyone to see what they wish (and only what they wish) out of his presence, whilst the real power behind the scenes gets on with business undisturbed. The type of fellow who not only will go on chat shows, but watches them fervently and will be a perfect guest because he simultaneously fulfils the function of a perfect interviewee whilst also saying absolutely nothing of substance that could be deemed to be controversial!

You could apply that to the current interest in the 'elites' (however defined) holding the reigns of power and pre-agreeing amongst themselves on the direction of the country (countries) that prevents any change they do not agree with from occurring; or someone like the beatifically robotic Keir Starmer being parachuted into becoming Prime Minister of the UK, although in being unable to conceal the obvious manipulation behind simple homilies that can be given the benefit of the doubt, a figure like Starmer shows the danger of revealing the man behind the curtain that can come from putting an absolutely empty vessel, rather than a distracting and simple naive homily spouting one, at the heart of your figurehead role!

And I particularly like that whilst the main thread is a kind of fairy tale one of a simple man drifting through the world, that it is always about the effect that Chauncey Gardener is having upon those he happens across - he is the mirror for their solipcism which lets characters such as the couple of attorneys from the "Old Man"'s estate kicking him out of his house at the beginning to be able to feel better about having done so (which feels very like the Poet and the Painter in Timon of Athens not taking any responsibility themselves for their behaviour, except when the occasion arises for them to be able to absolve themselves from feeling any lingering guilt for their past deeds because the person they wronged is 'obviously' thriving. Which also lets them go back to feeling jealous and wronged themselves!); or Louise, the Black maid shown watching Chance's TV interview and talking about how all it takes is being a White Man to get all the breaks in America (which I guess is demonstrably proven, so she is correct! But in that scene she is also allowed to confirm and wallow in her own bitterness and a kind of partisan racism on her own part, as she gets all of her views of how the world obviously works proven to be correct).

The President himself seems very insecure, knowing that he is just a figurehead and needing "Kingmaker" figures such as Rand (quite a pointed name in itself!) to give him advice on the best course of action to take, though Rand's rhetoric looks worn out, unfit for the current moment and ready to die with him. So President Bobby is passed across to Chauncey with Rand's blessing, although not being of the political class and without the web of connections and obligations, the President is very suspicious! More suspicious than the Russian diplomats are! That is perhaps the aspect that most looks back towards the Kennedy and the Camelot myth that got brutally shut down, seemingly by an American with no past and under Russian influence! So no wonder President Bobby is nervous about being backstabbed, or worse, by Chauncey! Although ironically it looks more likely that such a thing will come from an ideological shift from Kingmakers within rather than without.

We get the more benign forms as well, such as Chauncey and the lift attendant talking at cross purposes about the 'little room', where in terms of small talk it does not really particularly matter if one person is talking about "how long do we have to be in here?" as being about the elevator; whilst the other thinks they are talking about how long they have to be in the wheelchair, if both parties are using the interaction to mull over their own thoughts. And whilst the idea of Eve Rand being passed over like a chattel from Rand to Chauncey might be a bit iffy, that works in the sense that she represents metaphorically the house (and lady-garden!) that needs to remain open to flowering again, rather than withering away along with its previous owner. And in her masturbation to orgasm scene, using Chauncey as a catalyst for grasping the opportunity of a return to sexuality almost in spite of Chauncey's lack of response to her appeals in any form, that is the (literal!) climax of the idea of people reflecting their own needs and desires through the unresponsive obscure object of desire.

The Doctor figure is perhaps the balancing figure in the middle, where he is initially suspicious of Chauncey's motives, but comes to see him as not a threat but being just what Rand needed in his final days, as well as the best for Eve to move forward as well. Chauncey just being there is all that was needed to give them a benediction during that period, much as he presumably had been for the Old Man and the OG garden that he was expelled from at the beginning of the film.

In that way Chauncey is only what others bring to him - if they are cynical or bitter, insincere or deceitful, or have a bad faith approach to the world, that is what the presence of Chauncey proves; if people are looking for opportunity, decency, some sort of way forward or sense that there may be a future (or just a laugh and a joke to bridge what could be an awkward silence!), he proves that too. Which is sort of what makes the final religious 'walking on water' moment so audacious, suggesting that is true purpose of organised religion itself - to provide guiding light in the darkness when it feels as if there is no way forward left open, but it still remains gnomically open enough to be in the laps of what each Believer (or those opposing such beliefs!) brings to it to use its guidance for better or worse.

[Roger Ryan]

Revisiting Being There on the television last night...

This is a really nice appreciation that provided some fresh insights on a film I've been very fond of since seeing it on first release. Thanks.

[colinr0380]

Thanks Roger Ryan! Something else that got me thinking whilst watching was that whilst some aspects have aged to our modern eyes as being quaintly passé now (the television remote most obviously: just think of what Chauncey would be able to do with a streaming video equipped smart phone! Instead of searching out TVs he would never be off the one in his hand! The early moment in the car when he asks if he can watch TV would have been outrageously extravagant luxury at the time, and serves along with the chauffeur as the early indication of the people who knocked into Chance being members of the upper echelon, but which now seems rather quaint in having a CRT TV in the back seat!), especially once we get into the mansion there are still things that are way beyond most people's everyday lives such as the indoor elevator or the oxygenated room with full med bay annex that still capture that sense of people being cut off from each other, or using the objects that their wealth affords them to insulate themselves from any intruder other than the most blandly benign (at least in appearance) one! The coffin being grandly conveyed to the en site mausoleum in the grounds of the mansion at the end being the ultimate example of such extravagance!

[therewillbeblus]

Colin gives a great reading of this film, and yet I still can't quite connect with it. I greatly appreciate what Ashby and Sellers are doing here, and there's a sense of warmth that will keep me coming back every so often to indulge in its goodnatured charm, but I don't hold it up there with Ashby's best works. The empty vessel provoking emotional response doesn't elicit the same pleasures or engagement as a fully fleshed out character, and Ashby is so good at helping to craft those types that it's curious he took an alternate path here. In a sense, this is a warning sign of Ashby's career decline - characters gradually becoming thinner and his core talents taking a backseat for other ideas. I still really like the movie, but it's interesting to think of it as a farewell of sorts, and quite sad in contrast with its beating heart.

[colinr0380]

Thanks therewillbeblus, and I really liked your recent post about The Last Detail in the Indicator thread for the film as well, which is a film that feels a lot warmer towards its characters (and ironically therefore more devastating at its inevitable climax) than the wintery and more distant Being There does (Henry Jaglom's Tracks also contrasts against The Last Detail interestingly as a colder journey, with a dead rather than living charge, and a retreat into one's own mind during the solitary journey to the final destination). There was a moment of human connection dashed by societal demands and obligations in that film; whilst Being There feels a lot about divining some kind of lasting meaning from random chance and coincidence in a world where that may, or may not, be enough to build a future from.

[flyonthewall2983]

Think we’ll ever get a version with Ashby’s preferred end credits?

[beamish14]

Think we’ll ever get a version with Ashby’s preferred end credits?

The bloopers ARE his preference. The compromise he reached with Peter Sellers was to remove them from European prints, but they really are a blight

[Roger Ryan]

Think we’ll ever get a version with Ashby’s preferred end credits?

The bloopers ARE his preference. The compromise he reached with Peter Sellers was to remove them from European prints, but they really are a blight

Due to the mild profanity of the bloopers, the European end credits were used when the film was given a U.S. network broadcast and I still remember how the slow motion shots of television static and interference behind the rolling credits seemed like the perfect compliment to everything that came before. I suspect Ashby found Sellers breaking character in the outtakes to be a unique insight into the actor who often claimed he had no personality of his own, but Sellers was right that it breaks the spell created by the film. Had the film been made during the DVD era, would Ashby had been content to include the outtakes only as a extra on a home video release?