Completely illiterate gardener Chance has been raised by a wealthy dweller of Washington D.C., and has spent his entire life tending the old man's gardens and watching television. In fact, Chance has learned his entire language, personality, manners and everything else from the tube, and he responds better to television than he does to the few people he has encountered. When the old man dies, Chance is forced to move out of his house by an attorney. Chance wanders aimlessly through the streets of Washington, and while standing entranced in front of a shop window full of TV sets, he backs into the street and is hit by a car carrying Eve Rand, the wife of a successful but terminally ill businessman. Eve insists on taking Chance to her husband's home so their in-house doctor can look him over. She gives Chance his first shot of liquor as she asks his name, and his rather strangulated reply comes out "Chauncey Gardener" - which becomes his name. Dr. Allenby, Ben Rand's personal physician, gives Chance a mostly clean bill of health and invites him to stay on the premises for a couple of days, mainly to forestall any legal hassles regarding the accident. Chance gets to meet the elderly Ben Rand, who takes to him immediately and regards Chance's innocent simplicity as a great inner peace and thoughtfulness. Ben keeps Chance around for a meeting with the President of the United States the following day, and again, the chief executive mistakes Chance's simple talk of gardening as a deep metaphor for the country's economic growth - and the President is impressed enough to quote "Chauncey Gardener" in his State of the Union address, making an overnight sensation out of the oblivious Chance. A couple of cryptic interviews and one television appearance later, "Chauncey" is the talk of Capitol Hill. Reporters and even the President himself try to track down the new celebrity's background to no avail - since Chance was raised by the old man without ever leaving his house. Ben Rand notices that Eve is becoming attracted to Chance, and offers his tacit approval to save her the pain of suffering through his death alone. In the midst of the uproar, Dr. Allenby takes note of Chance's behavior and his many references to gardening and quietly begins to realize the truth. The nation is mystified, Eve Rand is enchanted, and Ben Rand feels much more at ease with Chance around. Washington holds its collective breath waiting for Chance's next words of wisdom - but Chance is only looking for a garden to take care of.

This has to be one of the most unusual comedies ever committed to film. In fact, I have to confess that I'm sometimes amazed that this movie ever got filmed, and that it manages to be so successful at the same time. The story deals with some very somber subjects and does so very quietly, yet it's side-splittingly funny. Sometimes, the laughter and depressingly sobering scenes arrive so close together that the sudden change of emotional gears almost hurts, but seldom is this accomplished with any thick barrage of lowbrow verbal humor. The entire movie depends on the viewer being in on one enormous in-joke, and a less than savvy viewer might not catch on to the joke, and the entire experience would be wasted. I also have to praise the person responsible for going through all the video clips to find just the right ones - and there are a lot of them! - which occasionally complement and more frequently jar against the rest of the movie. Probably the most hilarious example of this happens when Shirley MacLaine tries to seduce Sellers to the soundtrack of a "you're my special friend"-type song being sung by Mr. Rogers! Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this movie is the thought that Shirley MacLaine is almost, not quite, but almost, hot. I think this probably just means I've been sitting in front of a computer writing movie reviews too long...

This is an exceptionally difficult movie to describe, though one neat thumbnail description I've found handy is to refer to Being There as a much more mature, sophisticated ancestor of Forrest Gump. In a way, they both share the same premise - a dumb but lovable innocent stumbles into numerous circumstances in which their naivetè is the cause of much hilarity. Being There hinges only on a single coincidence - that the owner of the car which hits Chance is owned by a confidant of the President - whereas Gump swings from one vast coincidence to another, almost becoming unbelievable by the end of the movie. And perhaps the most amazing feature of Being There is Peter Sellers' remarkably subtle performance. Smiling dumbly through the whole thing, feeding one double entendrè after another, and engaging in some of the most absolutely masterful Chaplinesque physical gags I've ever seen. Despite being the main character, Sellers graciously allows every other actor to overpower and out-bluster him and draw as much attention as they like from the viewer, and delivers his responses with impeccable comic timing and infinite reserve. Perhaps the gay character in the party scene is a little over-the-top, perhaps the "I like to watch" joke is twisted into a slightly, ahem, different meaning one too many times, but at the center of it all, Sellers simply oozes class. (By comparison, in Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks just simply...oozed.) I also have to single out L.A. Law's Richard Dysart for praise. His character is ambiguous and intriguing, and you don't know until his last scene whether or not he's a sympathetic character. Like Sellers, Dysart accomplished this with an economy of words and facial expressions, and again a large measure of class.

Another classy element of Being There is the small amount of original music composed for the movie by Johnny Mandel (writer of Suicide Is Painless, better known as the theme from M*A*S*H). One piece accompanies Chance in his more whimsical moments, but by far the most beautiful piece is heard when Chance confronts the death of the old man early in the movie, and the death of Ben Rand at the end of the movie. Both are piano solos, though in the final moments of the movie, there are hints of orchestral gloom as Chance takes a walk.

That final scene before the end credits is totally unexpected, and leaves much open to interpretation. Put simply, Chance walks out onto a pond, and remains walking above the clearly non-frozen water. It's a simple enough illusion to achieve with certain camera angles, as Ric Ocasek later did much the same routine in a swimming pool in a Cars video not long afterward. But what does it mean? Is it a less than subtle hint that Chance, despite all that has happened and despite the many motivations others have superimposed onto his actions, retains some sort of Christlike innocence? This is the moment in which, according to my friend Shane Vaughn who introduced me to Being There several years ago, "the movie goes right off the weird scale." It is a far better tribute to Peter Sellers' talents than any of the Pink Panther films ever were. Slapstick genius the man may have been, he was positively sublime with his subtlety here.

I would hate to have been put in charge of this movie's promotional push. Sure, I do promotions for television, and as such I should have some ideas on how this movie could have been advertised. But honestly, I haven't a clue. There's so much packed into this film, and so much of it is so hard to get across in words...I wouldn't know where to begin. I still don't. This may very well be the best movie made in the past twenty years - it's still a mind-blower and a howler at the same time, and it's a pity that it seems so obscure these days.

• screenplay by Jerzy Kosinski
• based on the novel by Jerzy Kosinski
• directed by Hal Ashby
• music by Johnny Mandel
• Cast: Peter Sellers (Chance), Shirley MacLaine (Eve Rand), Melvyn Douglas (Benjamin Rand), Jack Warden (President "Bobby"), Richard Dysart (Dr. Robert Allenby), Richard Basehart (Vladimir Skrapinov), Ruth Attaway (Louise), Dave Clennon (Thomas Franklin), Fran Brill (Sally Hayes), Denise DuBarry (Johanna), Oteil Burbridge (Lolo), Ravenell Keller III (Amaz), Brian Corrigan (Policeman by White House), Alfredine Brown (Old Woman), Donald Jahob (David), Ernest M. McClure (Jeffery), Kenneth Patterson (Perkins), Richard Venture (Wilson), Arthur Grundy (Arthur), W.C. "Mutt" Burton (Lewis), Henry B. Dawkins (Billings), Georgine Hall (Mrs. Aubrey), Nell P. Leaman (Nurse Constance), Villa Mae P. Barkley (Nurse Teresa), Alice Hirson (First Lady), James Noble (Kaufman), Timothy Shaner (Presidential Aide), William F. Williams (Presidential Aide), William Dance (Presidential Aide), Jim Aar (Presidential Aide), William Lubin (Presidential Aide), Gerald C. McNabb Jr. (Secret Service Agent Woltz), Hoyt Clark Harris Jr. (Secret Service Agent Buff), Ned Wilson (Honeycutt), Stanley Grover (Baldwin), John Harkins (Courtney), Katherine DeHetre (Kinney), William Larsen (Lyman Stuart), Jerome Hellman (Gary Burns), Arthur Rosenberg (Morton Hull), Sam Weisman (TV Makeup Man), Frederic Lehne (TV Page), Gwen Humble (TV Guest), Laurie Jefferson (TV Reporter), Allen Williams (Reporter), Janet Meshad (Reporter), Paul Marin (Reporter), Melendy Britt (Sophie), Hanna Hertelendy (Natasha Skrapinov), Elva Naskin (Russian Aide), Thann Wyenn (Ambassador Gaufrum), Richard McKenzie (Ron Stiegler), Sandy Ward (Senator Slipshod), Danna Hansen (Mrs. Slipshod), Mitch Kreindel (Dennis Watson), Richard Seff (Pallbearer), Terrence Currier (Pallbearer), Leon Greenberg (Pallbearer), Austin Hay (Pallbearer), Mark Hammer (Pallbearer), Maurice Copeland (Pallbearer)