sign in sign up
<<
Home , 8 Million Ways to Die, Jack Warden, Jerome Hellman, Lynn Stalmaster, Madame Sousatzka, Melvyn Douglas

November 1, 2016 (XXXIII: 10) : (1979), 130 min.

(The online version of this handout has color images and hot url links.)

Academy Awards Best Actor in a Supporting Role National Film Registry

Directed by Hal Ashby Written by Jerzy Kosinski (novel & screenplay), Robert C. Jones (uncredited) Produced by Andrew Braunsberg, Charles Mulvehill, Jack Schwartzman, Merv Adelson Music Johnny Mandel Cinematography Caleb Deschanel Film Editing Don Zimmerman Casting Lynn Stalmaster Production Design Michael D. Haller Art Direction James L. Schoppe

Cast …Chance The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966), Shirley MacLaine…Eve Rand The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and even earned himself a Melvyn Douglas…Benjamin Rand Best Editing Oscar for 1967’s In The Heat of The Night. Itching …President 'Bobby' to become a director, Jewison gave him a script he was too busy …Dr. Robert Allenby to work on called (1970) and it became Ashby's …Vladimir Skrapinov first directorial film. From there he delivered a series of well- Ruth Attaway…Louise acted, intelligent human scaled dramas that included The Last David Clennon…Thomas Franklin Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), Fran Brill…Sally Hayes Coming Home (1978) and Being There (1979). Ashby was Denise DuBarry…Johanna Franklin always a maverick and a contrary person and success proved difficult for Ashby to handle. He became unreliable due to his Hal Ashby (b. September 2, 1929 in Ogden, Utah –d. December dependence on drugs and a reclusive lifestyle. He actually 27, 1988, age 59, in Malibu, ) was the fourth and collapsed while making the Rolling Stone concert film Let's youngest child in a Mormon household. After a rough childhood Spend the Night Together (1982) in Arizona. Although he that included the divorce of his parents, his father's suicide, his recovered, he was never the same after that. He began taking too dropping out of high school, getting married and divorced all much time in post production on his films and actually had a before he was 19, he decided to leave Utah for California. A couple of his later projects taken away from him to be edited by Californian employment office found him a printing press job at others. He tried to straighten himself out, but in the 1980s, he Universal Studios. Within a few years, he was an assistant film was considered by many to be unemployable. Just when he felt editor at various other studios. One of his pals while at MGM he was turning a corner in his life, he developed cancer that was a young messenger named . He moved up to spread to his liver and colon. He died on December 27, 1988. being a full-fledged editor on The Loved One (1965) and started Because he did not have a set visual style, many mistake this for editing the films of director . Ashby edited five no style at all. Laid-back, doobie-inclined, scruffy and shooting of Jewison’s finest films incuding The Cincinnati Kid (1965), from the hip mavericks: while many of his peers went on to Ashby—BEING THERE—2 much greater success in the — Steven Spielberg, Warren novel with which Americans would be presumably unfamiliar. Beatty, Francis Ford Coppola, , George Lucas, The Voice article also alleged that Kosinski relied upon editors etc. — perhaps no one director typfies the groovy, uber-chill to make exhaustive corrections and rewrites without giving Easy Riders and Raging Bulls generation of filmmakers more them credit. Following this scandal, many friends supported than Hal Ashby. He also directed 10 different actors in Oscar- Kosinski, but his reputation was irrevocably damaged. On May nominated performances: Lee Grant, Jack Nicholson, Randy 3, 1991, Kosinski wrote a note that said: "I am going to put Quaid, Jack Warden, , , , myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call the time Penelope Milford, Melvyn Douglas and Peter Sellers. Grant, Eternity." With a fatal dose of barbiturates and his usual rum- Fonda, Voight and Douglas won Oscars for their performances and-Coke, he placed a plastic bag over his head and taped it shut in one of his movies. around his neck, a method of suicide suggested by the Hemlock Society. He was found dead in the bathtub of his New York apartment.

Caleb Deschanel (b. September 21, 1944 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is a cinematographer and director, known for The Patriot (2000), National Treasure (2004) and Jack Reacher (2012). To a younger audience, Deschanel might be known as the father to his two famous actress daughters, Zooey and Emily. He got a chance at directing Emily for a 2007 episode of her hit show, Bones. ). He’s been nominated for 5 Oscars for Passion of the Christ (2004), The Patriot (2000), Fly Away Home (1996), The Natural (1984), and The Right Stuff (1983), but never won. He has over 30 cinematographer or DP credits in addition to the above including Unforgettable (2017, post- production), Werk Ohne Autor (2017, post-production), Rules Don't Apply (2016, completed), Winter's Tale (2014), : Vampire Hunter (2012), Dream House (2011), Killer Joe (2011), My Sister's Keeper (2009), Killshot (2008), The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008), Ask the Dust (2006), The Jerzy Kosinski (b. June 14, 1933 in Lódz, Lódzkie, Poland—d. Timeline (2003), The Hunted (2003), Anna and the King (1999), May 3, 1991, age 57, in , New York) was a Message in a Bottle (1999), Hope Floats (1998), Fly Away writer and actor, known for Being There (1979), Lodz Ghetto Home (1996), It Could Happen to You (1994), The Slugger's (1988) and Reds (1981). Born in Poland, Kosinski moved to Wife (1985), Let's Spend the Night Together (1982, New York in 1957, and later become a U.S. citizen. As a Documentary), Being There (1979), The Black Stallion (1979), Guggenheim Fellow, he studied at the Center for Advanced More American Graffiti (1979), Trains (1976, Documentary Studies at Wesleyan University. Later he taught American prose short), The Hello Machine (1974, Short), Lanton Mills (1969, at Princeton and Yale. He served two terms as President of the Short) and Rodeo (1969, Documentary short). American Center of PEN, the international association of writers and editors. A best-selling novelist, he was also a prolific Peter Sellers (b. September 8, 1925 in Southsea, Hampshire, photographer whose work was exhibited in Poland and the England –d. July 24, 1980, age 54, in London, England) Often States. He once conducted an experiment in the difficulties new credited as the greatest comedian of all time, Peter Sellers was writers went through to get published: eight years after it won born to a well-off English acting family in 1925. His mother and the National Book Award, he allowed another writer to change father worked in an acting company run by his grandmother. As the title of his novel "Steps" and market it as his own. It was a child, Sellers was spoiled, as his parents' first child had died at rejected by 13 agents and 14 publishers, including the one that birth. He enlisted in the and served during had originally bought it. On August 8, 1969, he was scheduled World War II. After getting out of the service, he burst into to fly from Paris to Los Angeles to join some friends for dinner prominence as the voices of numerous favorites on the BBC at the Roman Polanski- home in Hollywood. radio program "The Goon Show" (1951-1960), and then making Because his luggage had accidentally been sent to New York, his debut in films in Penny Points to Paradise (1951) and Down the delays caused him to miss the party. His dear friend Voytek Among the Z Men (1952), before making it big as one of the Frykowski, Sharon Tate and the rest of the guests were criminals in The Ladykillers (1955). These small but showy slaughtered that evening by the Manson Family. Kosinski later roles continued throughout the 1950s, but he got his first big addressed the twist of fate in the novel entitled "Blind Date". break playing the dogmatic union man, Fred Kite, in I'm All For several decades, Kosinski was famous as a wit, a great Right Jack (1959). The film's success led to starring vehicles raconteur, and a media celebrity. His first three novels were big into the 1960s that showed off his extreme comic ability to its hits. However, in June 22, 1982, "Jerzy Kosinski's Tainted fullest. In 1962, Sellers was cast in the role of Clare Quilty in Words," an article by Geoffrey Stokes and Eliot Fremont-Smith the Stanley Kubrick version of the film Lolita (1962) in which in The Village Voice, accused Jerzy Kosinski of plagiarism and his performance as a mentally unbalanced TV writer with dishonesty. 'Being There', which was adapted as a successful multiple personalities landed him another part in Kubrick's Dr. film, was shown to have been plagiarized from an earlier Polish Strangelove (1964) in which he played three roles which Ashby—BEING THERE—3 showed off his comic talent in play-acting in three different Best Actress Oscar for Terms of Endearment (1983). After a accents; British, American, and German. He earned an Oscar five-year hiatus, she made Madame Sousatzka (1988), a critical nomination for The Pink Panther (1963), in which he played his and financial hit that took top prize at the Venice Film Festival. signature role of the bumbling French Inspector Jacques In 1989, she starred with Dolly Parton, Sally Field and Julia Clouseau. Sellers was the first male to appear on the cover of Roberts in Steel Magnolias (1989). She received rave reviews Playboy Magazine, in April 1964 His difficult reputation and playing Meryl Streep's mother in Postcards from the Edge increasingly erratic behavior, combined with several less (1990) and for Guarding Tess (1994). She also has written successful films, took a toll on his standing. By 1970, he had books, notably, The Camino in 2001, and Out On A Leash in fallen out of favor. He spent the early years of the new decade 2003 and her most recent Sage-ing While Ag-ing in 2008 which appearing in such lackluster B films as Where Does It Hurt? the actress shares her quest for the meaning of life. After taking (1972) and turning up more frequently on television as a guest a slight hiatus from motion pictures, she returned with roles in on "The Dean Martin Show" and a Glen Campbell TV special. that were small, but wonderfully scene-stealing: Return of the Pink Panther (1975) was a major hit in the (2005) with Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, In Her summer of "Jaws" and restored Seller’s career. He would play Shoes (2005) with Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette, in which Clouseau in two more successful sequels, The Pink Panther she was nominated for a Golden Globe in the best supporting Strikes Again (1976) and The Revenge of the Pink Panther actress category, and Rumor Has It... (2005) with Jennifer (1978), and Sellers would use his newly rediscovered clout to Aniston and . In a career that has spanned for realize his dream of playing Chauncey Gardiner in a film over 60 years, MacLaine says she is now most known for her adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's novel "Being There." Sellers had role as Lady Cora Crawley's outspoken mother Martha Levinson read the novel in 1972, but it took seven years for the film to in Downton Abbey. "My whole identity is now Downton reach the screen. Being There (1979) earned Sellers his second Abbey," she told The Sunday Times Culture magazine. "All that Oscar nomination, but he lost to in Kramer vs. I've done - how many films? All my books? I'm no longer a Kramer (1979). new-age giddy dingbat. I am now 'the one on Downton Abbey'. In airports and other places I go, they say, 'Downton Abbey, Shirley MacLaine (b. April 24, 1934 in Richmond, VA) was when are you coming back?' I say, 'Well, all right. But what born Shirley MacLean Beaty. Her mother, Kathlyn Corinne about my last picture?' Then I can't remember what it was (MacLean), was a drama teacher from Nova Scotia, Canada, and anyway." her father, Ira Owens Beaty, a professor of psychology and real estate agent, was from Virginia. Her brother, Warren Beatty, was born on March 30, 1937. Just after she graduated from Washington-Lee High School, she packed her bags and headed for New York. While auditioning for Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's "Me and Juliet", the producer kept mispronouncing her name. She then changed her name from Shirley MacLean Beaty to Shirley MacLaine. She later had a role in "The Pajama Game", as a member of the chorus and understudy to Carol Haney. A few months into the run, MacLaine was going to leave the show for the lead role in "Can- Can" but ended up filling in for Haney, who had broken her ankle and could not perform. She would fill in for Haney, again, three months later, following another injury, the very night that movie producer Hal B. Wallis was in the audience. Wallis signed MacLaine to a five-year contract to Paramount Pictures Melvyn Douglas (b. April 5, 1901 in Macon, Georgia—d. (Exceptional timing or even a bit Eve Harrington, perhaps). August 4, 1981, age 80, in New York City, New York) would With Shirley's career on track, she played one of her most enjoy cinema immortality if for no other reason than his being challenging roles: "Ginny Moorhead" in Some Came Running the man who made laugh in 's classic (1958), for which she received her first Academy Award (1939). He was also a two-time Oscar- nomination for Best Actress. She went on to do The Sheepman winner along his Tony Award and an Emmy win. Douglas made (1958) and The Matchmaker (1958). In 1960, she got her second his Broadway debut in the drama "A Free Soul (1931)" at the Academy Award nomination in ’s The Apartment Playhouse Theatre on January 12, 1928, playing the role of a (1960). Three years later, she received a third nomination for raffish gangster (a part that would later make Clark Gable's Irma la Douce (1963). In 1969, she brought her friend Bob career when the play was adapted to the screen). "A Free Soul" Fosse from Broadway to direct her in Sweet Charity (1969), was a modest success, running for 100 performances. He was from which she got her "signature" song, "If My Friends Could much luckier with his next play, "Tonight or Never," which See Me Now". After a five-year hiatus, MacClaine made a opened on November 18, 1930, at legendary producer David documentary on China called The Other Half of the Sky: A Belasco's theater. Not only did the play run for 232 China Memoir (1975), for which she received an Oscar performances, but Douglas met the woman who would be his nomination for best documentary. In 1977, she got her fourth wife of nearly 50 years: his co-star, Helen Gahagan. The movies Best Actress Oscar nomination for The Turning Point (1977) came a-calling in 1932 and Douglas had the unique pleasure of and after 20 years in the film industry, she finally took home the assaying completely different characters in widely divergent Ashby—BEING THERE—4 films. He first appeared opposite his co-star Greta Garbo in the Warden was dissatisfied with his life aboard ship on the long screen adaptation of Luigi Pirandello's As You Desire Me convoy runs and quit in 1942 in order to enlist in the U.S. Army. (1932). He came into his own in such films as She Married Her He became a paratrooper with the elite , Boss (1935) and Garbo's final film, Two-Faced Woman (1941), and missed the June 1944 invasion of Normandy due to a leg showing he could play both straight drama and light comedy. badly broken by landing on a fence during a nighttime practice Well-connected with the Roosevelt White House, Douglas jump shortly before D-Day. Recuperating from his injuries, he served as a director of the Arts Council in the Office of Civilian read a play by given to him by a fellow soldier Defense before joining the Army during World War II. who was an actor in civilian life. He was so moved by the play, Returning to films after the war, Douglas' screen persona he decided to become an actor after the war. He was evolved and he took on more mature roles, in such films as Elia demobilized with the rank of sergeant and decided to pursue an Kazan’s directoral debut, The Sea of Grass (1947), and Mr. acting career on the G.I. Bill. He moved to New York City to Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948). His political past attend acting school, then joined the company of Theatre '47 in caught up with him, however, in the late 1940s, and he –along Dallas in 1947 as a professional actor, taking his father's middle with fellow liberals such as —were "gray-listed" name as his surname. This repertory company, run by Margo (not explicitly blacklisted, they just weren't offered any work). Jones, became famous in the 1940s and '50s for producing After appearing in six films as a and second lead in Williams’s plays. After several years in small, local A-List pictures from 1947-49, Douglas made just two films in productions, he made both his Broadway debut in the 1952 the decade of the 1950s - supporting roles at RKO in 1951 - Broadway revival of Odets' Golden Boy and, three years later, until he reappeared a decade later in 's Billy Budd originated the role of "Marco" in the original Broadway (1962). While he was in movie exile, Douglas was keeping production of Miller's A View From the Bridge. On film, he and busy on Broadway in the late 1940s and 1950s, and he won a fellow World War II veteran, (Marine Corps, South Tony for his Broadway lead role in the 1960 play "The Best Pacific), made their debut in You're in the Navy Now (1951), Man" by . His years of movie exile seemed to deepen uncredited, along with fellow vet , then billed him, making him richer, and he returned to the big screen a as "Charles Buchinsky". With his athletic physique, he was more authoritative actor. For his second role after coming off of routinely cast in bit parts as soldiers (including the sympathetic the graylist, he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as Paul barracks-mate of Montgomery Clift and in the Newman's father in Hud (1963). Other films in which he shined Oscar-winning (1953). He played the were 's The Americanization of Emily (1964), coach on TV's Mister Peepers (1952) with . Perhaps CBS Playhouse (1967) (a 1967 episode directed by George his most noted role was as Juror #7 in 12 Angry Men (1957). He Schaefer called "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", for went on to play the bigoted foreman in Edge of the City (1957) which he won a Best Actor Emmy) and The Candidate (1972), and one of the submariners commended by Clark Gable and in which he played 's father. It was for his Burt Lancaster in the World War II drama, Run Silent Run Deep performance playing 's father that Douglas got (1958). In the 1960s and early ‘70s, his most memorable work his sole Best Actor Academy Award nod, in I Never Sang for was on television, playing a detective in My Father (1970). He had a career renaissance in the late 1970s, (1961), The Wackiest Ship in the Army (1965) and N.Y.P.D. appearing in The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979), Being There (1967). He opened up the decade of the 1970s by winning an (1979) and Ghost Story (1981). He won his second Oscar for his Emmy Award playing football coach "" in Brian's supporting role in tonight’s film. Song (1971), the highly-rated and acclaimed TV movie based on Gale Sayers's memoir, I Am Third. He appeared again as a detective in the TV series, Jigsaw John (1976), in the mid- 1970s, The Bad News Bears (1979) and appeared in a pilot for a planned revival of Topper (1937) in 1979. His collaboration with Warren Beatty in two 1970s films brought him to the summit of his career as he displayed a flair for comedy in both Shampoo (1975) and Heaven Can Wait (1978). Other memorable roles in the period were as the metro news editor of the "Washington Post" in All the President's Men (1976), the German doctor in Death on the Nile (1978), the senile, gun- toting judge in ...and justice for all. (1979), the President of the United States in Being There (1979), the twin car salesmen in Used Cars (1980) and 's law partner in (1982). In the ‘80s, Warden moved mostly to the small screen and shone in his ‘90s return to film in Woody Allen’s Jack Warden (b. September 18, 1920 in Newark, New Jersey– (1994). After appearing in Warren d. July 19, 2006, age 85, in New York City, New York) was Beatty's Bulworth (1998), Warden's last film was The born John Warden Lebzelter, raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Replacements (2000). He then lived in retirement in New York and at the age of seventeen, expelled from Louisville's DuPont City with his girlfriend, Marucha Hinds. Manual High School for repeatedly fighting. In 1938 he signed up for the Navy before joining the Merchant Marine in Richard Dysart (b. March 30, 1929 in Brighton, 1941.Though the Merchant Marine paid better than the Navy, —d. April 5, 2015, age 86, in Santa Monica, Ashby—BEING THERE—5

California) maybe best known for his lovable portrayal of He proved his versatility in playing Ishmael in Moby Dick Leland McKenzie on L.A. Law. He also holds the distinction of (1956), but his probably best remembered by the public for his being the only actor to appear in every episode of that TV show. starring role as Admiral Nelson in Voyage to the Bottom of the Dysart was nominated for the Emmy for outstanding supporting Sea (1964). He also made many other appearances on television, actor in a drama series for four straight years, finally winning including roles in Naked City and Route 66, as well as a short- the trophy in 1992. Dysart's range of authority -figure parts ran lived series called W.E.B. He also narrated Vietnam: A right to the top. He limned Harry Truman in the CBS telefilm Television History (1983) for the Public Broadcasting Service. Day One and in the ABC miniseries War and Remembrance, Possessing a deep, resonant baritone voice and craggy good both of which aired in 1989, and he was Henry L. Stimson, the looks, Mr. Basehart stayed busy, commanding the respect of the 33rd U.S. president’s Secretary of War, in the 1995 HBO critics and fellow actors. He once quipped, “I couldn't be a telefilm Truman, starring . Similarly, he played the straight leading man. You've got to be bigger and prettier than I Secretary of Defense in Meteor (1979). am.”

Dysart also performed extensively in the medical- (movie) field, performing enough doctor roles to, perhaps, qualify to practice. His two most memorable came in classic satires: in Paddy Chayevsky’s scathing The Hospital (1971), starring George C. Scott (a good friend), and in Being There (1979), as Melvyn Douglas’s doctor. He also was a doctor who died a gruesome death in ’s The Thing (1982) and a physician in such films as The Terminal Man (1974), The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) and Warning Sign (1985). Dysart served in the US Army and after graduating college, decided to pursue a career in radio. He became fascinated with the medium in first grade when he was bedridden for a year due to rheumatic fever. However, he was soon tempted by acting. He moved to New York on a whim and was able to land minor roles on TV and a part in an off-Broadway production of The Iceman Cometh from World Film Directors, V. II. Ed. John Wakeman. H.W. opposite . In the mid-1960s, he joined the Wilson Company, NY, 1988 American Conservatory Theater and toured the country doing plays, then landed roles on Broadway in All in Good Time, The The American director was born in Ogden, Utah, where his Little Foxes and A Place Without Doors. Dysart’s credits father ran a dairy. His date of birth is given variously as 1930, include an eclectic array of movies, including The Crazy World 1932, and 1936. Ashby’s childhood was troubled and insecure. of Julius Vrooder (1974), The Day of the Locust (1975), The Almost every one in Ogden except his own family were Hindenburg (1975), An Enemy of the People (1978), Prophecy Mormons, and his parents were not happy together. Ashby was (1979), Mask (1985), Warning Sign (1985) and Hard Rain confused and disturbed at the age of five or six by their divorce, (1998). On television, he was top-notch in the telefilms The and traumatized by his father’s suicide seven years later. He was Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974), The People vs. surly at home and difficult at school, dropping out in his senior Jean Harris (1981), as Dwight D. Eisenhower in The Last Days year. of Patton (1986) and as studio chief Louis B. Mayer in Malice According to Paul Fritzler in Close-Up: The in Wonderland (1985). Contemporary Director, Ashby “drifted from job to job and woman to woman. He was married and divorced twice by the Richard Basehart (b. August 31, 1914 in Zanesville, Ohio—d. time he was twenty-one. In 1953 he hitchhiked to Los Angeles. September 17, 1984, age 70, in Los Angeles, California) came After he tried about fifty or sixty jobs—’You name it; I did it’— to Hollywood in 1947, after beginning an acting career on he ended up as a Multilith operator at the old Republic Broadway. In 1945 he won the New York Drama Critics Circle Pictures.” Award for his portrayal of the dour and dying Scottish soldier One day, “running off ninety or so copies of some page Lachlen in John Patrick's drama ''The Hasty Heart.” He moved 14,” it occurred to him that he wanted to make films himself. on to film in 1947 and made his mark in the gritty film-noir Everyone assured him that “the best school for a director is in classic He Walked by Night (1948). the cutting room” and after much persistence, he was taken on In 1951, in Fourteen Hours, Mr. Basehart gave a tour-de-force as an apprentice cutter. He believes that his advisers were performance as a young psychotic who stayed perched on a correct—that “when film comes into a cutting room, it holds all ledge, threatening suicide, for the length of the film. ''It was an the work and efforts of everyone involved up to that point: the actor's dream, in which I hogged the camera lens, and the role staging, writing, acting photography, sets, lighting, and sound. It called on me to act mostly with my eyes, lips and face muscles,'' is all there to be studied again and again and again, until you Mr. Basehart said in an interview. ''Actually I got so accustomed really know why it’s good, or why it isn’t.” to this that I didn't feel any real need for movement.'' On asking What Ashby found hardest was the union rule that an as to why Fellini wanted him for the role of the apprenticeship lasts eight years, an ordeal by boredom and Fool in La Strada (1954), Fellini answered: "Because if you did frustration that he believes has throttled a great deal of creative what you did in Fourteen Hours (1951), you can do anything.". editorial talent. His first assignment was as fourth apprentice Ashby—BEING THERE—6 editor on ’s (1958). The chief (Melvin Stewart) struggling to instill racial pride in his students editor was Robert Swink, who became Ahsby‘s mentor. Swink and the black earth mother Marge (Pearl Bailey), who taught him to “forget about the script, throw away all the so- undertakes Enders’ education in street wisdom. Marki Bey plays called rules, and don’t try to second-guess the director. Just look Lanie, a mulatto disco dancer who bridges the film’s two worlds at the film and let it guide you….Don’t be afraid of the film. and provides Enders with the possibility of a happy ending. You can cut it twenty-six different ways and, if none of these Having rejected his own social group, Enders is rejected in turn works, you can always put it back into daily form, and start by the ghetto, and moves out to live with Lanie and his baby by over.” Fanny. Ashby worked with Swink on his next four films and was Compared to these passionate, hurt, and sometimes allowed to edit a few sequences of the last of these, The Best dangerous people, Enders’ family are caricatures out of a Man (1964). He moved up to assistant editor on The Greatest . Lee Grant is splendid as his imbecile mother, Story Ever Told (1965) and to chief editor on Tony whose struggle for racial equality is limited to viewing Guess Richardson’s The Loved One (1965); he had completed first cut Who’s Coming to Dinner? His sister, Susan Anspach, is a when Richardson unexpectedly left to complete the editing in spaced-out deb about to marry into napalm. To underline the London. A period of depression and unemployment followed, contrast between Enders’ two worlds, Ashby had his and then Ashby was introduced to cinematographer Gordon the director Norman Jewison, who Willis underexpose the needed an editor for The Brooklyn scenes and over Cincinnati Kid (1965). He and expose the Long Island ones, Jewison got along exceptionally making the ghetto seem darker well, and the director used him and more richly colored than again on The Russians Are reality, life in the mansion Coming, The Russians Are Coming brighter and frothier. (1966), In the Heat of the Night These extreme (1967), and The Thomas Crown contrasts of tone and image Affair (1968). Ashby says that threaten to pull the film apart, Jewison “let me select and cut his and its cohesion is further films as I felt it. It was an editor’s undermined, as Paul Fritzler dream and, in the end, it brought says, by “the flashy editing, me two Academy nominations and fragmented narrative, flash- one Oscar for In the Heat of the forwards, repeater shots, and Night.” straight-to-the-camera soliloquies.” Nevertheless, for Fritzler, Jewison made Ashby his associate producer—all-purpose “Ashby made it all work in a film that is both hilarious and assistant—on Gaily, Gaily (1969). The director then became haunting.” A few reviewers were irritated by this “stylistic interested in Bill Gunn’s script The Landlord. Finding that he slickness,” attributed by one to the influence of Norman could not fit it into his schedule,he offered to produce it if Jewison, but most shared Fritzer’s enthusiasm, praising the Ashby would care to direct. When Ashby had finished “doing a performances the tyro director had drawn from his players, and dance around the office,” they settled down to persuade the calling this “a comedy of more than usual bite and vigor.” Mirisch Brothers and United Artists to gamble $2 million on an Carl Dubliclay, writing in Film Reader (1, 1975), untried director. suggested that the main theme in all of Ashby’s films is “how Reasonably confident about the technical aspects of his do we live?—not only a simple question…[but] an exhortation task, Ashby became increasingly uncertain of his ability to to examine our own lives and, in a large part, to change them.” handle actors. As the first day of shooting loomed after a week As Dubliclay says, this question central to The Landlord, is of rehearsals, he worked (and scared) himself “into a state of answered “in terms of an individualistic choice rather than a walking pneumonia.” For the first three days he was “just group solution” to the problem of race. gasping all day and pointing a lot.” Finding that he could The Landlord was too offbeat a movie to make much nevertheless communicate with his cast, “he enjoyed it from that impression at the box office, but its critical reception was good point on.” enough to bring Ashby an even more less conventional script The Landlord (1970) was based on a novel by Kristin from Paramount. This was , written by Colin Hunter. It is a comedy about a rich white man, Elgar Enders Higgins as his thesis for a masters degree. Like Elgar Enders, (), who at the age of twenty-one “runs away” from Harold is a poor little rich boy with an appalling mother (Vivian his Long Island mansion and buys a Brooklyn tenement in the Pickles). In late adolescence, pallid and wide-eyed, he is played promising ghetto of Park Slope. His plan is to evict the black by Bud Cort with a mixture of bewilderment and defiance that tenants and turn the place into a fashionable pad for himself. reminded David Robinson of Harry Langdon. Since the day he The tenants, however, refuse either to move out ot pay rent, and was mistakenly reported dead and wrung a flash of concern start to lay voodoo spells on him. from his ice-cold mother, Harold has dedicated himself to Before long he finds himself drawn into their lives, so faking more or less spectacular suicides—setting fire to himself violently different from his own. There is Fanny (Diana Sands), or hanging himself from the drawing room chandelier (“I wretchedly married to the brutish Copee (Lou Gosset), who suppose you think that’s very amusing,” snaps his mother, takes refuge in an affair with Enders; a free-school teacher passing through.) Ashby—BEING THERE—7

Harold’s other pastime is attending funerals in his private many kinds of human and specifically American, hearse, and at one graveside he meets Maude (Ruth Gordon). experience….Gradually, with a many-layered irony, the film She is seventy-nine, but her spirit is as free as Harold’s is reveals the trap in which the two guards, as much as their stifled. She paint, sculpts, collects smells, saves trees from prisoner, willingly confine themselves. Scornful of the relief and pollution, and steals cars to remind people of the vanity of resignation they see in Meadows’ unprotesting attitude possessions. Harold goes to bed with her, recovers his will to (‘Secretly he’s glad...this way the worst is over already’), they live, and plans marriage. Maude has other ideas. On her themselves have happily traded insecurity for the rigid eightieth birthday, having enjoyed a sufficiency of life, she takes structures of the navy.” an overdose. Harold fakes his last suicide, running his car off a Writing in the International Film Guide (1980), Diane cliff, and walks off into the future strumming the banjo Maude Jacobs said that “is the film that made Ashby a had given him. talent to reckon with. Full of On its release in 1971, green and yellow military/motel Harold and Maude was colours, of quiet dissolves from received with indifference or one grey landscape to another, of active distaste by the major tight framing in which anything reviewers. Afterwards, however, beyond the proximate seems it slowly developed a cult blurred and unreal, it is a bleak- reputation, especially among looking film….The lives we young people. It was so observe are unremittingly constantly revived in art houses constricted; and the that in 1978 Seattle-based sanguineness of the martial tunes Specialty Films made new that accompany the three men on prints and booked the film their odyssey is a counterpoint around the country, and this that underscores this bitter time it was greeted as a “contemporary classic” and “a work of reality. Movement is a dominant motif here, but the movement art.” There are nevertheless some critics who, while relishing is away from rather than towards freedom.” The rhythmic Harold’s black comedy, find the sixties-type dialogue and music montage editing that Ashby used in his first two films is here (by Cat Stevens) dated, and Maude’s character and dispensed with, as Carl Dubiclay says: “The dissolve has philosophizing whimsical and sentimental. David Thomson replaced the cut, and the radical compression of time that took wrote: “The love story is prettified and sanitary: there is no real place in Ashby’s editing is reduced….This shift in technique is sex between Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon. It slips away into symptomatic of Ashby’s shift in emphasis...from issue to another feeble endorsement of ‘do your own thing,’ the politics character. The question is still ‘how do we live,’ but Ashby now of the weary soul-searcher, too selfish and superficial to deal investigates the characters working out this question instead of with public causes.” exploring the question itself.” In 1973 Ashby was hired by MGM to direct a film According to Paul Fritzler, The Last Detail’s realistically starring Jack Nicholson. He walked out on that project when the obscene language greatly worried the Columbia executives, who studio turned down his choice of female lead, and Nicholson feared that they would not be able to sell the film to television. walked out with him, proposing as an alternative a screen It might not have been released at all if it had not scored a major version of Darryl Ponicsan’s novel The Last Detail. Columbia success at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, where Nicholson was took the film on, Robert Towne wrote the excellent adaptation, voted the best actor. Columbia eventually distributed the and the movie was shot by Michael Chapman on location, partly picture, but with minimal promotion. It was very well received at a military base near Toronto. by American critics also, and earned Oscar nominations for its Jack Nicholson plays Bad-Ass Buddusky–a bantam, screenplay and for the performances of Nicholson and Randy foulmouthed, Navy petty officer at a Virginia transit camp. with Quaid. Many consider it Ashby’s best film. Skillfully edited by his black buddy Mule Mulhall (Otis Young), he is assigned to Jerry Ayres, it was shown in 1976 on ABC-TV, the sound track escort Medows (Randy Quaid), a kleptomaniac young sailor, to “scrubbed almost clean. Questioning the propriety of this the naval prison in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Meadows has increasingly common procedure, John J. O’ Connor wrote that been given eight years for pilfering forty dollars from charity the expurgated version “is not bad, but it is not the production collection box—the charity being one dear to his CO’s wife. seen by movie audiences.” The escorts’ plan is to deliver their prisoner as rapidly as After that, Ashby was signed by the producers Saul possible in order to live it up on expenses on the way back. Zaentsz and to direct One Flew Over the However. appalled at the savagery of Meadows’ sentence and Cuckoo’s Nest, but resigned in a disagreement over the script. by his mooncalf innocence, they decide instead to give him a Milos Forman took over the film and Ashby immediately went taste of all that he’ll be missing in the brig: his first drunk, his to work on Shampoo (1976), produced for Persky-Bright first fight, his first lay. Associates by Warren Beatty, who originated the project, starred It is, as John Coleman wrote, “hardly a sentimental in it, and scripted it in collaboration with Robert Towne. education. And yet, as….conveyed by glances, gestures, Shampoo deals with some forty-eight hours in the life of silences, the cliches of ‘being a man’—below-decks style—are George (Warren Beatty), a talented, ambitious, and handsome reanimated, sweetened, lent value.” Richard Combs pointed out hairdresser in a fashionable Los Angeles salon. Engaged to the that the central drama “opens into an elusive, symbolic play on naive Jill (Goldie Hawn), he cannot resist going to bed with his Ashby—BEING THERE—8 eager customers: it really does make George happy to make Blue soon has him playing and singing on the radio He women happy. One of these fortunate ladies is Felicia (Lee breaks off his affair with rich Gail Strickland and sends for his Grant), the rapacious wife of Lester (Jack Warden), a corrupt family, but antagonizes his sponsors by singing protest songs. tycoon from whom George is trying to borrow the money to Guthrie moves on again to sing to the workers in the San start his own saloon. In the course of the film, George resumes Joaquin Valley, returning bloody but unbowed to offers from his affair with Jackie (Julie Christie), who is Lester’s mistress CBS and the Coconut Grove. Auditioning for the latter, he and Jill’s best fried, and satisfies the sexual curiosity of Lester’s overhears talk of “a simple hillbilly presentation” and walks out. teenaged daughter (). In the end, not even George’s We last see him back on the boxcars, singing his way into quick wits and fast motorbike can avoid disaster, and the whole legend. fabric of deception and self- Pauline Kael wrote that deception comes crashing Bound for Glory is “superbly down around him. lighted and shot [by Haskell George’s escapes and Wexler] and has the visual beauty escapades are the stuff of of a great movie,” but that Restoration farce, but the unfortunately the filmmakers had narrative is put into a satirical been seduced by Guthrie’s own context by the fact that it opens tendency to mythicize himself as on the eve of the 1968 election “the voice of the downtrodden.” that brought to Most critics agreed, Clancy Sigal the Presidency. Fritzler says that Shampoo was “the first film saying that “Woody makes an awkward Jesus figure. He nostalgically to mine the late 1960s, “evoking the generation abandoned his wife, picked up loose women, drank too much gap, miniskirts, the Beatles, strobe lights, Spiro Agnew’s and could be infuriatingly irresponsible. Robert Getchell’s script hypocritical holiness, and the dizzying hysterical freedom of the defuses the real Guthrie by implying it was all in the name of beginnings of the sexual revolution.” People’s Art, of his refusal to conform to middle-class values.” The picture by no means escaped criticism. The attempt This did not prevent Bound for Glory obtaining an Oscar for to equate the moral bankruptcy of the “beautiful people’ with best photography and nominations for best picture and best Nixon’s election seemed to some critics unconvincing and screenplay, but the film was not oncernul at the box office. pretentious, and many thought the final scenes a copout, Coming Home was initiated by Jane Fonda and Bruce demanding a degree of sympathy for the bereft George that he Gilbert, whose work for the antiwar movement had awakened had not earned. All in all, however, Shampoo was their oncern for the plight of crippled Vietnam veterans. A enthusiastically received by the critics, praised for its script, a script was written by , Jerome Hellman was gallery of excellent performances, Paul Simon’s score, and “its engaged to produce, and to direct. awful seductiveness, a money-scented, high-colour gloss that worked on a revision of the Dowd script until a heart attack owed a lot to Laszlo Kovacs’ photography and Richard ended his involvement. There was no complete script when Sylbert’s sets.” For Pauline Kael, it was “the most virtuoso Ahsby took over from Schlesinger and filming began. For a example of sophisticated, kaleidoscopic farce that American time, the director was shooting by day and writing by night in moveimakers have ever come up with.” collaboration with his former editor, Robert Jones. According to Lee Grant collected an Oscar as best supporting actress, Paul Fritzler, shooting was actually halted at times for a day of and Shampoo was a smash hit at the box office—Ashby’s improvisation by the cast, the results of which were then fed first—earning him a contract from United Artists to direct into the script. Bound for Glory (1976), a $7 million biopic of Woody Guthrie, What came out of this exhausting and nerve-wracking who wrote “This Land is Your Land” and influenced successive procedure was a story set (like Shampoo) in Los Angeles in generations of singers from Ramblin’ Jack Elliot to Bob Dylan 1968. Fonda plays the wife of a hawkish Marine officer (Bruce and on. United Artists had already spent four years and a great Dern). When he goes off to Vietnam, she dutifully volunteers deal of money on the project, and had finally acquired a for work at the veteran’s hospital. The forgotten and embittered workable script by Robert Getchell, based on Guthrie’s own men she meets there change her from a conventional military autobiography. Ashby added some scenes filling in more of the wife into a committed and liberated woman, who has her first social background and reportedly improvised a good deal of orgasm with a paraplegic (Jon Voigt). By the time her husband dialogue He also won a battle with the studio to cast, as Guthrie, comes home, deranged by war, she and her lover are activists in the notoriously “difficult” David Carradine—a choice that in the the antiwar campaign. Learning from FBI snoopers of his wife’s end was generally applauded. infidelity, the husband marches into the sea. The film opens in 1936 in Pampa, Texas, where Guthrie Fonda, Voigt, and the screenplay all got Oscars, and is trying to support his wife (Melinda Dillon) and two children there were nominations for best picture, best director, and best as a sign-painter and part-time musician. The Dust Bowl town supporting actor and actress. Some thought Coming Home empties as people strike out for California, and Guthrie joins the Ashby’s best picture, and it was financially successful. But for exodus, hopping freight trains and hitching rides through a the first time, an Ashby movie seriously divided the critics. Depression America of grim poverty and brutal exploitation. In David Thomson called it “a movie that looks like a TV a California shanty town of migrant crop pickers, Guthrie’s commercial…as adolescent and decadent a film as Hollywood talent is discovered by a local singer and union organizer, Ozark has released in many years.” Blue (Ronnie Cox). What incensed critics like Thomson and Andrew Tudor Ashby—BEING THERE—9 is, as the latter wrote, that the film “operates in a political unmitigated platitude.” Once again, however, there were some vacuum: a simple cry of anguish at the personal price that war who actively disliked the film. Nigel Andrews, for example, has demanded….Coming Home is the sort of soft-centered called it “modern cinema at its most machine-made, its stiff- movie which one might have expected ten years ago….In the limbed automatism doled up with an all-purpose, spray-on end, and for all its evident qualities, Coming Home succumbs to prettiness of photography….It’s a dead, dire desolate movie.” its own style, to its insistence on presenting a coherent, ordered Ashby’s next two films, both from Lorimar, were both and ‘realistic’ story….Ashby’s film, though it does personalize failures. Second-Hand Hearts (1980), from an old script by the impact of Vietnam with more than a little skill, is finally no Charles Eastman, was originally called The Hamster of real advance on the definitive movie in that idiom: Wyler’s The Happiness and was actually completed before Being There, its Best Years of Our Lives.” release being held up by a dispute between Lorimar and United Ashby went on to direct Being There (1979), scripted by Artists. It has Barbara Harris a a would-be saloon singer in El Jerzy Paso and Robert Kosinski and Blake as the Robert Jones loser she from marries in a Kosinski’s drunken novel, and moment, before produced by setting out with Andrew him and her Braunsberg three kids for for Lorimar. California. A Peter Sellers, road movie of in his last “garrulous great role, eccentricity,” plays Chance, this seemed to a middle- Richard Combs aged “very much a simpleton writer’s film.” raised by a David Denby mysterious thought that guardian, Ashby had whom he serves as gardener. Chance has never left the Old directed it “with astonishingly little feeling for what holds an Man’s estate, his only contact with the outside world being the audience.” television that occupies all his leisure hours. Than the Old Man The reviewers were no kinder to Lookin’ to Get Out dies and Chance is cast out of his garden into the wilderness of (1982), written by Al Schwartz in collaboration with Jon Voigt. Washington, DC. Threatened by hooligans, he reflexively The latter appears as Alex Kovac, a small-time New York moves the switch of the TV remote control he has salvaged to gambler with more than a touch of the Damon Runyons. He and “Off.” his buddy Jerry (Burt Young) take off for Las Vegas to escape More fortunately, he is knocked down by a limousine and taken their creditors and recoup their fortunes. “Any viewer could bet home by its owner, Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine): Eve! She the farm that Lookin’ to Get Out will hold no surprises,” wrote lives in a grand mansion with her dying billionaire husband Ben Richard Corliss. “Alex and Jerry will run a blackjack scam: they (Melvyn Douglas), a political éminence grise. Chance the will win more than they hoped, lose more than they know, Ann- gardener, misheard, becomes Chauncey Gardiner, impeccably Margaret...will keep moving provocatively, to sidestep the Wasp. What is more, his simple horticultural utterances are carnage. The film was shot two-and-a-half years ago and perceived as profound comments on the state of the nation—not Director Ashby has spent much of the time since then fine- only by his hosts but by their friends, who include the President tuning the editing. The effort shows, but not the effect: the of the United States (Jack Warden). Soon he is a household picture is a sloppy mess that stumbles toward oblivion like a name, a television pundit, and a candidate himself for the drunk on a losing streak.” Also released in 1982 was Let’s Presidency. We last see him walking on water, or apparently so, Spend the Night Together, Ashby’s excellent filmed record of as if this lobotomized Adam were, after all, the Messiah. the Rolling Stones’ 1981 American tour. Being There provoked excited debate among The Slugger’s Wife (1984), constructed perhaps on the theory psychologists, church leaders, and television pundits. It was so that more is more, attempted to combine rock ‘n’ roll, baseball, successful that it achieved second release within a year, an many and Neil Simon. The latter’s script, which reviewers found film critics shared the general excitement. David Robinson amazingly unfunny, concerns the problems of a two-career praised it as a richly entertaining satirical fable, skillfully marriage. Both careers are glamorous and both careerists very sustained throughout its 130 minutes, though “the strain begins young. He (Michael O’Keefe) is a major-league bonus baby to tell before the end.” Robinson thought it “a nice conceit to who can’t hit unless his wife is cheering from the stands, and suppose a being formed out of the bland inoffensive nullity of she (Rebecca de Mornay) is an aspiring singer who would rather diet of television,” and enjoyed the “goodhumoured jibes at the be cutting a hit record of her own. David Sterritt thought the real expense of the political mind—helplessly vulnerable to the mismatch was between the film’s writer and its director. “The Ashby—BEING THERE—10 characters speak their Simonized lines earnestly and correctly,” to slip, even for a moment, into farce. “This is the most delicate he observed, “while Ashby’s camerawork and editing tricks do film I’ve ever worked with as an editor,” he told Aljean spacey pirouettes all around them, throbbing to the beat of a Harmetz. “The balance is just incredible. It could be ruined in a rock score….It’s not a winning combination.” Most critics second if you allow it to become too broad. Peter’s character is a restricted their praise to the supporting performances of Randy sponge. He imitates everything he sees on television and Quaid and Cleavant Derricks, as teammates, and of Martin Ritt, everyone he meets. In one scene, he imitated the voice of a as their dyspeptic manager. But neither these assets nor the homosexual. It was very funny, but we couldn’t allow it.It movie’s other attractions—which included eighteen pop would have destroyed the balance.” Ashby’s film, like Sellers songs,brief appearances by professional ballplayers and himself, plays the comedy straight-faced, refusing to rob the musicians, and some excruciating double entendres—could save character of his allegoric simplicity by making of it little more the day at the box office. than a cheap joke. Chance is, instead, the ultimate straight man, 8 Million Ways to Die (1986), about the drug-dealing a tabula rasa against which his associates’ ridiculous behaviour night world of Los Angeles, is based on the mystery novels of might be exposed. In the film’s funniest scene, Eve (Shirley Lawrence Block, with a screenplay by ,who wrote MacLaine)—the wealthy, sex-starved woman who first tempts such other drug-traffic movies as Midnight Express, Scarface, Chance into the world of earthly delights—tries to seduce her and Year of the Dragon. stars as Matthew Scudder, guest while he watches a passionate romance on television. a seedy, alcoholic detective with a sense of honor who becomes When the program ends, however, Chance is no longer able to involved in a trail of crime and ugliness. Asked to come to an imitate the “appropriate” behaviour and so he flips the channel, unfamiliar mansion in Malibu, a gambling club or brothel or leaving Eve confused and frustrated. “I like to watch,” he tells both, he meets a frightened prostitute who asks his help and her. which sends Eve to the floor unaware that Chance is whose he becomes bent upon avenging. David Denby standing on his head, just like the woman on television. Self- commented that Ashby “brings a shaggy narrative looseness” to indulgence and superficiality have never seemed more absurd. this crime-thriller material, creating “some of the most raffish and entertaining scenes in recent American movies.” But other Being There is a strangely fitting conclusion to Ashby’s critics found the film a dismaying failure. Pauline Kael wrote enviable run during the 1970s. Commenting on Kosinski’s that 8 Million Ways to Die is “pulpier and trashier than you prescient novel, Barbara Tepa Lupack writes, “while Kosinski might expect from Ashby,,,,Plot points don’t connect, as though did not live to witness the Chance-like candidacy of H. Ross they didn’t matter”; and Gene Siskel described the movie as “a Perot, conducted largely via television time purchased with his boring, pointless thriller.” The saddest aspect of the film, he own millions, he must surely have appreciated the irony of actor concluded, “is that it represents the continuing decline of Hal Ronald Reagan’s two telegenic terms in office as well as Ashby, once one of America’s best [directors]. understudy George Bush’s subsequent lacklustre performance in Ashby has evidently hit a losing streak. The darling of the White House. Ashby’s career, like so many of of his the liberal critics in the early 1970s, he presumably earned their contemporaries, was derailed by sweeping changes in later hostility by making a series of worthy, expert, and highly Washington, D.C., in Hollywood and in America at large. The successful films showing that he was, after all, neither a political studios, now on the lookout for blockbuster box office returns radical nor an auteur. In spite of his uneven record in recent and wary of signing over creative control to “cost no object” years, he remains a fine craftsman—a masterly director of directors, turned their attention away from smaller, more actors, with a rare sense of montage and a genuine narrative gift. personal films like Ashby’s. Reagan’s America likewise awoke to a “new morning”, conventionally ignoring the traumatic events that had defined the previous decades. For Ashby, who had embodied the country’s counter cultural spirit in thought and deed, the “Me Decade” must have been catastrophically disheartening. In an era of conservative piety and institutionalised greed. Ashby’s politically motivated irreverence and his simple faith in humanity’s potential for radical change were suddenly an anachronism.

“Peter Sellers Masterpiece Being There The Greatest Movie You’ve Never Seen” http:www.geocities.com/~cheshyre/being.html In 1971, Jerzy Kosinski pubished the novel Being There. Soon afterwards he received a telegram from its lead character, Chance the Gardener: “Available in my garden or outside of it.” A telephone number followed and when Kosinski dialed it Peter Sellers answered. from Senses of Cinema “Hal Ashby” by Darren Hughes For years afterwards, Sellers would try to get this film http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/04/ashby. made. “That’s me!” he would tell people of the Chance html character. He hawked the idea of a film to whomever he could For Ashby, the great challenge of Being There was find. Finally, in 1979, with the clout he had gained from the sustaining its absurd premise for two hours without allowing it Pink Panther series, he was able to fulfill his dream. Ashby—BEING THERE—11

What followed was the culmination of Peter Sellers’ may have been, as Sloan puts it, that "a writer's books. . . are career: a masterpiece of double-edged satire on politics and only part of the product. The real -- the ultimate -- product was television. But Kosinski’s screenplay goes deeper than that. himself, and the books were, among other things, a vehicle for What he and director Hal Ashby expose is a self-serving and selling that product." Certainly others -- Hemingway and Mailer self-deceived society. Through the innocence of the Chance come to mind -- have seemed to lead their lives by this rule; it character, all the schemes and manipulations of the world are was Kosinski's misfortune that he tried to take self- laid bare for what they are: pure folly. For those who hunger for aggrandizement one step too far. He lost control of his best the truths in life, this is a film that will satisfy your appetite. story. ...I’m the guy who played the White House cop in Being There. It was fun to find my name in a Web cite. Some trivia notes: No one on the set was allowed to wear green or purple...Sellers considered them unlucky colors and he was living on borrowed time because of his deteriorating heart condition.

Edward Neuert, review of JERZY KOSINSKI: A BIOGRAPHY By James Park Sloan, Dutton. http://www.salon.com/10/sneakpeeks/sneakpeeks7.html Say what you will about Jerzy Kosinski's fiction, his life was undeniably fascinating -- most often made so by his own diligent and inventive hustling. If you accepted Kosinski's own account, you believed he survived a childhood in war-torn Poland, where he was separated from his parents, on the run Michael Dare: How the last shot in Being There actually got from Nazi occupiers and so horribly abused by local peasants made http://www.dareland.com/lastshot.htm that he was, for a time, struck dumb. After emigrating to the The script for Being There ends as both Peter Sellers and U.S. in the late fifties, he swiftly published two works of socio- Shirley MacLaine take walks in the wood. They run into each political nonfiction, then broke through with "The Painted other. She says "I was looking for you, Chance." He says "I was Bird," a novel he strongly suggested was based on his wartime looking for you too." They take hands and walk off together. autobiography. Eight other novels followed, including the 1969 But near the end of production, somebody went up to Hal National Book Award-winning "Steps" and later "Being There." and said "How's it going?" "Great," Hal said. "Sellers has Kosinski's fame arrived at a time when the Jet Set was just created this character that's so amazing, I could have him walk reaching cruising altitude; he became an enthusiastic frequent on water and people would believe it." Hal stopped and thought. flyer. He displayed his considerable gifts as a raconteur on "The "As a matter of fact, I will have him walk on water." Hal was Tonight Show," and partied endlessly with the biggest names in out on location, miles from Hollywood. The last thing on earth the Lit crowd. He dabbled in movies (playing Lenin's pal he needed was to contact the home office to discuss the idea of Zinoviev in "Reds") and politics. And he took pleasure in Chance walking on water. It's an idea that wouldn't pitch or read spreading tales of his dark side: Kosinski the Master of Disguise well. If it had been in the script, there would have been endless prowling Manhattan's underworld at night, reveling in the sex arguments over what this Jesus allegory was doing in the clubs that flourished in the days when sex didn't have to be safe, picture. Only if you've actually seen the film do you realize that just fun. it's not a Jesus allegory at all. Chance can walk on water because nobody ever told him he couldn't, not because he's the But as James Park Sloan recounts in his new biography, resurrection of Christ. Hal knew he could make it work, just Kosinski's frantic life hid a secret: he did not, strictly speaking, as he knew that there was no way in hell the studio would write his books by himself. When The Village Voice published, approve of more money for such a controversial shot that wasn't in 1982, the revelation that Kosinski had for years been even in the script. He decided to do it anyway. First, he discretely employing "editors" to polish his poorly written first called Robert Downey, who had a scene in Greaser's Palace drafts, his reputation was forever tarnished. Further where the main character walked on water. Hal knew that investigation revealed that Kosinski had the bad manners to pay Downey didn't have a lot of money, so he asked for advice on his collaborators poorly; that his waif-on-the-run story had been how to do it. Downey told him it was simple. Just go to an taken from, among other sources, the real life of his fellow Pole airport, get a certain kind of platform, and place it in the water. Roman Polanski; and that he had largely cribbed the plot of Hal followed Downey's advise and got the shot for less than "Being There" from a Polish novel of the 1930s. Kosinski $10,000. Second, he had to deal with keeping the shot a limped along, a vastly diminished figure on the edge of his secret. There was this one, very well dressed kid around the set former world, until his suicide in 1991. who was officially called a PA, but whom Hal suspected of being the studio spy. Hal called him into his office and read him It is clear now that Kosinski's most energetic construction was the riot act. "I'm going to ask you to make a decision right his life, and Sloan's daunting task has been to untangle fiction now that's going to affect the rest of your life," he told the kid. from facts purposefully obscured for decades. He does this "I'm going to ask you to decided whose side you're on. I know patiently and thoroughly, albeit with a more workmanlike prose you've been watching me because you want to learn how to style than you'd wish. Kosinski's most useful personal discovery make movies. I also know you're watching me to make reports Ashby—BEING THERE—12 to the studio behind my back. I'm about to change the end of this winning Best Actress at the latter two ceremonies. movie because I've come up with a better one. The studio can't In early April, Ashby was finishing Being There in know about it or they'll shut me down. This is it, kid. Decide. Pasadena, where the Pasadena Historical Society was doubling Are you on the side of art or commerce?" The kid kept his as Chance’s original home. While all Hollywood anxiously mouth shut. The shot got made. The studio was pissed but they awaited Oscar night, Ashby calmly focused on the job at hand. used the shot anyway. Hal didn't give them a choice. He didn't During his visit to the set at Asheville, Daily News film critic even shoot the ending in the script. Rex Reed had asked him about his feelings on being up for Best Director. “What a strain it is to Why the film was released with be in competition!” Ashby had two different endings replied with a smile. “This is Hal always wanted to use a series not why I make films, but, of of outtakes for the final credits. course, once you’re there, you Obviously that's one of the things want to win.” He was keen to you have to do at the last minute, see Coming Home do well at because until the final edit is the Oscars, but it wasn’t locked down you don't know what personal glory he wanted, as the outtakes are. So Hal handed in he told Haskell Wexler (who the film with the TV commercial had not been nominated this ending just to get the film in on time) that if he won for Best deadline, then got to work on the Director, he would have the outtakes ending. When he tried to hand it in, the studio statuette engraved this time—but with Wexler’s name instead of refused to accept it or send it out. The film opened small, to just his own…. a half dozen theaters. Hal personally went to each theater, went Haskell Wexler wrote to Ashby, “I watched the Awards to the projection booth, knocked on the door and said to the on TV and thought seriously on where the movie making ability projectionist "Hi, I'm Hal Ashby, the director of the film. The is. You are in a separate league! You have more all round film studio put in the wrong ending, but I've got the right one with making talent and human sensitivity than Cimino would ever me. How about if we edit it in?" The projectionists were all think of. Not to take it from them, but Jon and Jane and the thrilled to meet him and gladly helped him out. When the ‘Writers’ were up there mostly due to your skill. I hope you studio found out, they got the last laugh. Hal's contract don’t forget that!” specifically stated that he was to be paid his director's fee "upon A week later, Ashby had the last shot of Being There in proper delivery of a completed film." They didn't consider the can. After Sellers’ final scene, the crew clapped, whistled, receiving a film with two endings "proper delivery," and they and cheered for fifteen minutes while Sellers and Ashby stood used that as an excuse not to pay him. Ten years later, when I by teary-eyed. Ashby’s admiration for Sellers had grown during first met Hal, he still hadn't gotten paid for directing Being filming, and he maintained that what Being There “proves to a There. whole generation is that man’s fucking genius! Peter Sellers has every right to sit up there on his mountain in Switzerland and From Being Hal Ashby Life of a Hollywood Rebel. Nick scream, ‘I’m all right, Jack! Screw you all!” Dawson. The University Press of Kentucky, 2011. …With only three months to finish work on the editing, Then to be thrown into the total disorganization of Ashby knew he faced “a tough crunch” to finish Being There on release, and all those hard hours spent trying to get a campaign time. “This is the most delicate film I’ve ever worked with as an together, and once done, not having anybody stand behind so it editor,” said Ashby. “The balance is just incredible. It could be would be implemented as designed. What a waste—what a ruined in a second if you let it become too broad.” He was disappointment, what heartache. Hal Ashby forced to cut a scene where Chance, who assumes the characteristics of people he meets or sees on television, imitates While Ashby was away in Asheville, United Artists had been a homosexual man he has been talking to. The scene got big enthusiastically publicizing Coming Home in the buildup to laughs, but it broke the delicate balance it was so essential to awards season. There had been a huge Oscar push for Jane maintain. Fonda and Jon Voigt as Best Actress and Best Actor candidates, Don Zimmerman had previously been editing the film to and Ashby himself was being touted for Best Director. When Ashby’s specifications, but in the last six or seven weeks before nominations were announced in February, Coming Home was the December 19 release date, Ashby took over the cutting represented in the five main categories (Best Picture, Actor, himself, with Zimmerman by his side. He was the quicker of the Actress, Director, and Screenplay), with Bruce Dern and two, and time was of the essence. By December, Ashby was Penelope Milford also up for Best Supporting Actor and Actress working seven days a week and barely leaving the editing room, and Don Zimmerman in line for Best Editing on his very first let alone seeing daylight. He would start work at 3A.M., work film as chief editor. As the approached, until sunset, go home for a few hours’ sleep, and be editing Coming Home was racking up the honors at other ceremonies. again by 3 A.M. the next morning. Jon Voigt had won Best Actor at Cannes the previous year, and Even during the last few days, Ashby was searching out he got the same accolade at the New York Film Critics’ Awards. new bits of film, takes that were better than, or just different The National Board of Review awards, the Los Angeles Film from, the ones Zimmerman had selected, as he tried to tighten Critics Awards, and the Golden Globes, with Jane Fonda also the picture. Being There was to have a limited release in New Ashby—BEING THERE—13

York and Los Angeles cinemas, and Ashby delivered a final convey some of that so people will go to see the film.” print to Lorimar for the East Coast opening but kept working on a few final touches. He had come up with the innovative idea of Being There is seen as Ashby’s masterpiece, but it is also using the outtakes of Peter Sellers corpsing during his “Now get the quintessential Hal Ashby film. Its gentleness, compassion, this, honky” speech over the closing credits of the film, a ploy to and optimism, as well as its intelligence and understated humor, keep the audience in their seats until the lights came up. At 4 A. are all manifestations of Ashby’s own personality. Chance has M. on the morning of the opening, Ashby made a last-minute interesting parallels with Ashby, who was almost his inverse adjustment before delivering the print in person—complete with alter ego. Though Chance is as straightforward as Ashby was new closing credit sequence—to one of the two cinemas in Los complex, they had in common a softness of voice, and a Angeles that was showing Being There. graceful, gentle approach to life that made both much loved and After visiting that cinema for a week and watching the revered, as well as a desire to step back and watch silently rather audience’s reaction, Ashby decided to use that ending for every than comment or get involved. For Chance, his work (in the print of the film. Being There had an American Film Institute garden) dominates his thoughts and is the only thing with which screening in Washington, and in the audience were Lorimar he is truly profoundly comfortable; Ashby’s relationship with staff and Jerzy Kosinski, none of film was identical. whom knew about the different In addition to a end credits. They were extremely trademark directorial cameo (in surprised to see them, but if the the background of the change upset either, it is unlikely Washington Post offices), Being that Ashby would have felt There also bears Ashby’s anything but quiet satisfaction as distinctive stamp through his he had recently experienced continuing preoccupation with problems with both. water and its links with death. Kosinski had contested In the iconic ending, Chance Bob Jones’s tentative cowriter wanders into the woods during credit and demanded to have the Ben Rand’s funeral, tends to an sole credit. (Interestingly, it was ailing sapling, and then walks Jones who was solely credited as away over the water. The “Writer” on the crew list issued during shooting.) Before the sequence has strong echoes of Bruce Dern’s watery exit in film was completed, Kosinski had distanced himself from it Coming Home and is a typically ambiguous Ashby ending, one (telling journalists such things as, “It will be Ashby’s film. I am that leaves us doubtful that Chance will ever return. not a filmmaker,” and “Film is not my medium. It’s like tennis Despite the fact that Being There came out at Christmas to me. I don’t like to do it.”), but with so much praise being time, when numerous other films were opening, its critical lavished on Being There, he changed his tune.” Kosinski took reception was nothing short of rapturous. Vincent Canby, his case to the Writers Guild of America, which would have Andrew Sarris, and Rex Reed immediately put it on their lists of dismissed his case immediately except for the fact that Kosinski the year’s top films, and it got raves from seemingly every critic apparently submitted one of Jones’ drafts as his own. who saw it. Sellers drew the greatest praise, with most reviews Accordingly, the Guild found in his favor, denying Jones any calling his performance either his greatest ever or his best work credit on the film. When Ashby publicly stated that Jones’ in ten years, but the supporting cast of Shirley MacLaine, Jack version featured “massive changes” and that what went on in Warden, and particularly Melvyn Douglas was also highly each scene was greatly different,” Kosinski countered by lauded. Unfortunately the focus was so much on Sellers that the claiming that Ashby had confided in him that he wanted to give efforts of those behind the camera were almost totally ignored, Jones a credit to pay him back for previously unacknowledged with little recognition of the work of Mike Haller and Caleb writing work.” (The fact that Jones had, just months earlier, Deschanel. Even Ashbby, whose directorial powers were received an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for his work on arguably at their zenith, was left in the shade by Sellers, though Coming Home makes this claim highly implausible.) reviews usually gave him a brief laudatory mention. Ashby’s beef with Lorimar atose over its handling of Considering its critical reception, Being There did not Being There’s publicity. After working flat out to ready the film make as big an impression on awards voters as might have been for release, he emerged from his Calabasas offices to find that expected. Peter Sellers won Best Actor (Musical/Comedy) at the the marketing campaign he favored had been dropped and the Golden Globes but lost out to Dustin Hoffman for Robert film was being promoted on the strength of the romance Benton’s Kramer vs. Kramer at the Oscars, and Melvyn between Sellers and MacLaine. “They created a lie,” Ashby Douglas picked up Best Supporting Actor prizes at the Oscars complained. “They were trying to make it seem as if there was and the Golden Globes as well as from both the New York and this tremendous love story because people like to go to see the Los Angeles Film Critics awards. Ashby received just one movies about men and women. But that’s not what this picture Best Director nomination, at the Golden Globes, but did not was about.” His deal with Lorimar had promised significant win. input into marketing, and for Ashby that was “one of the key In the midst of awards season, The Last Detail producer appeals” to him as a filmmaker: “It always hurts me to do battle Gerry Ayres wrote to Ashby praising Being There and saying, “I over the marketing of my films. I have a pretty good idea of continue to marvel that you achieve what no one else is in this what I’m trying to say, and one of the goals of marketing is to town. You are getting the companies to make films that their Ashby—BEING THERE—14 every instinct tells them not to, and you’re making them with a want to help young filmmakers. It's stupid not to do it. And high level of art and they are working at the box office.”… morally, you’ve got to do it. The studios don't have a clue, when Being There had been released as “A Northstar it comes to new filmmakers….Also on Ashby’s wish list of International Picture,” Northstar being the name chosen by films to make at Northstar were, inevitably, The Hawkline Ashby and Andy Braunsberg for their newly formed production Monster and Henderson the Rain King as well as Grossing Out. company. Northstar, Grossing housed in the famous Out’s future, Selznick building, however, had been had a three-year put in doubt after nonexclusive contract Sellers saw with Lorimar that Ashby’s outtake allowed Ashby to ending, which he make films elsewhere felt undermined the should he wish to do impact of Being so. The formation of There. In a rushed the company was and emotional telex announced in late sent to Ashby in January; Lorimar March 1980, he promised $50 million said, “I must in backing for the reiterate once company and a salary again, that the out- of $750,000 per year takes you have for Ashby. Five films placed over the were planned for 1980, and the first of these was already in credits do a grave injustice to the picture for the sake of a few production: Bob Rafelson’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, cheap laughs. It breaks the spell, do you understand, it breaks starring Jack Nicholson, who was finally getting to make the the spell! I’m telling you how it breaks the spell and as I said in film he and Ashby had planned as Three Cornered Circle eight my previous telegram there’s not much point in the film going years earlier. to Europe as I saw it last night.” Sellers believed that the Ashby wanted to make Northstar a haven where outtakes had hurt his chance of winning the Best Actor Oscar, filmmakers could create daring, original, and successful so, in an attempt to repair their friendship, Ashby changed the films….Their formidable list of films mooted for production European prints to have the regular credits that Sellers favored. included Lie Down in Darkness, from the novel by William Ashby was apparently forgiven as by midsummer there were Styron, to be directed by Jack Nicholson; Barfly, Barbet reports that Sellers would make Grossing Out for an enormous Schroeder’s 1987 film of Charles Bukowski’s screenplay; The $3 million plus a percentage of the profits. However, on July 24, Dreamers, ’ ultimately unfinished cinematic 1980, Sellers died in London after suffering a massive heart interpretation of short stories by Isak Dinesen; another Welles attack. Southern, who was always keen to work with Ashby, film, based on Jim Harrison’s novel Revenge, that was to star tried to keep the project alive after Sellers’s death. “There is Nicholson; Vicksburg, an American Civil War film from Robert going to be a gigantic audience for the kind of film we’re Altman; and Black Sands, to be directed by Brazilian director talking about,” he told Ashby. “And there is bound to be a Bruno Baretto from Oscar-winning writer Bo Goldman’s script. veritable deluge of such films within the next couple of years. Ashby also saw an opportunity to give talented, up-and- Why not have the first and the best???” To Ashby, however, coming directors a first shot, just as Jewison had done with him. doing the film without Sellers was inconceivable. “I’ve always wanted to have accompany,” he said, “because I

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2016 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXXIII: Nov 8 The Untouchables 1987 Nov 15 Norman Jewison 1987 Nov 22 Andrei Tarkovsky The Sacrifice 1986 Nov 29 Alfonso Arau Like Water for Chocolate 1992 Dec 6 Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck The Tourist 2010

CONTACTS:...email Diane Christian: [email protected]…email Bruce Jackson [email protected] the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected] cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/ The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Dipson Amherst Theatre, with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News.