The Fake Mustache of Peter Sellers: (1) Being There and That's All?

Years ago I bumped into a funny movie on TV and got a good laugh. I checked the program and it is called After the Fox. A friend told me it’s an old movie with Peter Sellers. Peter Sellers? I’ve heard the name but have no idea who he is.

Months ago I started to watch movies in the fashion of taking a stroll. Lack of admiration for masters, loyalty to stars, and the determination to exhaust classics, I play a movie when I have a meal and all too often the first 20 minutes I don’t understand a thing because I am too hungry.

That’s how I watched Being There. A middle-aged gardener is hired and confined in a mansion since he was a kid. He is not allowed to leave the mansion so he watches TV all day and tries to make sense of the reality out of it. One day the employer died and the lawyers informed him that the mansion is shut down and he’s got to go. Chance, the name of the gardener, walks the streets of Washington D.C. He has no last name, no family, no money, no friends, no skills other than gardening, and no common sense about city life except what he sees on TV. His simplicity in the complexity of the city discloses the menace of everyday life.

Being There is slow. Peter Sellers is so void in the face. When in the mansion there was a black maid bringing meals to him, so he walks to a random black woman in the street and asks, without a trace of emotion, “Can you bring my lunch? I am very hungry.”

When leaving the mansion the lawyers asked Chance if he has any claim, he said no with a blank face. Having been hit by a car then brought to examination he was asked again if he has any claim, he said no, with a blank face. He appears to be modest but when the rich family invited him for dinner he didn’t hesitate for a second, “Yes, yes, please, I am very hungry.”

Being There is classified as a comedy but I didn’t laugh a lot. I am so worried and concerned that for a person with no claim the world is so much a jungle. Each time he said “I am very hungry” my heart aches. Why can’t it be just plain and simple.

Chance is so much an empty mirror that people see what they want to see. He is defenseless to any interpretation and that earns him the reputation of a guru. He introduces himself as “a gardener” and people take that his last name is Gardiner. He comments on the elevator to be “a very small room” and it is perceived as a good sense of humor. He talks about plants in the garden and the President takes it as a metaphor for the national economy. The journalists and securities couldn’t figure why they are not able to find anything about the background of this celebrity, not even a driver’s license or credit card.

The rich family is a loving couple. The husband is considerably older than the wife and he is so ill. There is an unspoken agreement between the couple that Chance will be an ideal candidate as a successor. But Chance has no idea about such delicacy. He asked the wife, Shirley MacLaine, “Are you going to leave and close the place when Ben dies?”

Ben died. Chance strolled away from the funeral and came to a pond in the woods. He bent over to try the depth of the water with his umbrella and the whole umbrella submerged in. He walked on the water, leaving a few ripples behind and nothing more.

The director Hal Ashby fought hard against the studio for the ending. The original ending is Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine meeting in the woods, but before the scene was shot Hal Ashby came up with the idea of having Chance walk on the water. The ending was shot on a flat land with a thin layer of water and the total cost is no more than $10,000. Aside from the improvised ending, Hal Ashby wanted to add outtakes at the end but the studio prohibited. Ashby went to every theater and said, “I'm Hal Ashby, the director of the film. The studio put in the wrong ending, but I've got the right one with me. How about if we edit it in?”

Peter Sellers was nominated for the Oscar for Being There but lost to Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer. Hal Ashby was never paid for the directing for the studio charged him with violating the contract.

Peter Sellers is best known as the French Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther Series. The series was meant to be a story of a smart thief played by David Niven, but the Inspector Clouseau received such wide popularity, as a result the series was stolen from the thief and became the story of the incredibly stupid inspector. The series also gave life to the animated figure the Pink Panther.

Other than that the Pink Panther series doesn't have much to talk about. I mutter to myself, is this all, the legend of Peter Sellers? I watched The Party in which he plays an Indian guy who is naïve, friendly but always out of context. The opening is very funny but still I mutter, is this all?

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