Being There
Chance is a character raised in isolation, whose only education has come from television. He works as a gardener for a wealthy recluse, and this is the only life he knows. When his employer/guardian dies he is forced out into the world.
Unused to traffic he is hit by a limousine in which Eve Rand, wife of a wealthy businessman, Ben Rand, is traveling. Because he’s well dressed – in his dead employer’s clothes – he’s assumed to be rich and sophisticated. In fact he’s a man completely lacking in identity. Those to whom he talks fill in the gaps in his conversation to create a character from the blank slate they see.
He becomes Chauncey Gardner. He meets the president of the United States. Everyone Chauncey meets thinks he’s very serious because he’s so blank. When he talks about gardening everyone listening thinks that he’s making predictions about the economy. But really he’s talking about the only thing he knows.
His “style” is so seductive because people see in him exactly what they want or need to see. And so he quickly becomes a TV star. He was a child of TV so it makes sense for him to end up on TV.
While the powerful and credulous people who meet Chaucey take him for a great intellect, Ben Rand’s doctor suspects that Chauncey may have a child’s mind. Ben’s frustrated wife is sexually attracted to Chauncey. Ben, it turns out, has a fatal illness and so he encourages a liaison between Chaucey and his wife.
Ben dies and his powerful friends talk of Chauncey as alternative president. It’s his lack of any past, his untarnishedness, that makes him so attractive a candidate from their point of view.
Chance is a character raised in isolation, whose only education has come from television. He works as a gardener for a wealthy recluse, and this is the only life he knows. When his employer/guardian dies he is forced out into the world.
Unused to traffic he is hit by a limousine in which Eve Rand, wife of a wealthy businessman, Ben Rand, is traveling. Because he’s well dressed – in his dead employer’s clothes – he’s assumed to be rich and sophisticated. In fact he’s a man completely lacking in identity. Those to whom he talks fill in the gaps in his conversation to create a character from the blank slate they see.
He becomes Chauncey Gardner. He meets the president of the United States. Everyone Chauncey meets thinks he’s very serious because he’s so blank. When he talks about gardening everyone listening thinks that he’s making predictions about the economy. But really he’s talking about the only thing he knows.
His “style” is so seductive because people see in him exactly what they want or need to see. And so he quickly becomes a TV star. He was a child of TV so it makes sense for him to end up on TV.
While the powerful and credulous people who meet Chaucey take him for a great intellect, Ben Rand’s doctor suspects that Chauncey may have a child’s mind. Ben’s frustrated wife is sexually attracted to Chauncey. Ben, it turns out, has a fatal illness and so he encourages a liaison between Chaucey and his wife.
Ben dies and his powerful friends talk of Chauncey as alternative president. It’s his lack of any past, his untarnishedness, that makes him so attractive a candidate from their point of view.
