Reception
Film critic Roger Ebert mentions the final scene in his 2005 book The Great Movies II (p. 52), stating that his film students once suggested that Chance may be walking on a submerged pier. Ebert writes, "The movie presents us with an image, and while you may discuss the meaning of the image, it is not permitted to devise explanations for it. Since Ashby does not show a pier, there is no pier — a movie is exactly what it shows us, and nothing more."
Sellers won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his performance in Being There. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor as well at the 52nd Academy Awards, but he lost to Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer.
Melvyn Douglas won his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance.
The film is ranked number 26 on the AFI's 100 Years…100 Laughs list, a list released by American Film Institute in 2000 of the top 100 funniest films in American cinema.
A parody of the film, "Being Not All There", was published in Mad magazine. It was illustrated by Mort Drucker and written by Larry Siegel in regular issue #218, October 1980.
Read more about this topic: Being There
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)