“All you gotta be is white in America to get whatever you want.” 

The cult classic Being There has a special meaning for me.  First, because it was a kind of forerunner to Forrest Gump, which didn’t come along until fifteen years later.  Together, these two films form a genre all their own.

Second, in the early seventies, when I had formed a wannabe film company called — you guessed it — Ringer Films (consisting mainly of business cards, letterheads, and a fancy brochure), an acquaintance of mine who was an assistant producer/director, brought me a little book that he thought would make a great movie.

The name of the book was Being There, by Jerzy Kosinski, the original edition of which was published in 1970.  I read it in one night and thought it was both outrageously clever and funny.  However, knowing as much about the film business as Steven Spielberg probably knows about playing third base for the Los Angeles Dodgers, I couldn’t even come close to obtaining financing for the project, and soon moved on to a short and expensive stint in the music business.

You can imagine my surprise when the movie took the country by storm nearly a decade later.  But there was no feeling of coulda-woulda-shoulda for me.  I knew full well that I didn’t have the experience or resources to have been able to pull it off.  Besides, by that time I was a bestselling author and quite contented.

As you are undoubtedly aware, the plot of Being There is that Peter Sellers was born retarded and had been raised by an old man and his maid.  Never once in his life had he been outside the walls surrounding the old man’s townhouse until, one day, his benefactor up and died.

Suddenly, Sellers was on his own.  He outfitted himself in his master’s finest duds and ventured out into the world.

Through a series of movielike happenstances, Sellers ends up pontificating in the higher circles of Washington, talking about the only thing he knows — the only thing he has ever done — gardening.  The problem is that all of the politicians and media people he talks to about his craft believe he is really talking about the economy in metaphors.

As is usually the case with politicians and the media, they were wrong.  He really was talking about gardening, which had been his whole life since he was a small child.  Even his name — Chauncey Gardiner — was a result of a misunderstanding when he was talking about gardening.

Though Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine were the costars of this cult classic, and even though the movie consisted of one hilarious line after another, the one that has stuck with me most over all these many years was spoken by Ruth Attaway, who played a black maid (Ruth) who essentially raised the retarded Peter Sellers from the time he was born.

Attaway, who passed away in 1987, was actually a very accomplished actress, appearing in many Broadway and off Broadway productions, as well as such well-known films as Porgy and Bess and Raintree County.  Throughout the movie, she sees “Chauncey Gardiner,” the simpleton she helped raise from babyhood, spouting off about gardening on television, where supposedly brilliant leaders are mesmerized by his metaphors.

For me, the funniest line in the movie is when Louise, sitting in her easy chair and watching Chauncey in another fraudulent performance on TV, says, “All you gotta be is white in America to get whatever you want.”

Judging from some of the comments from millions of blacks who see whites as having all the advantages in America, it’s an easy line for them to relate to, but with laughter.  But it’s also a line that whites see humor in, which suggests that perhaps what America needs is a lot more good, clean humor as a way of breaking down racial barriers that have become ridiculously outmoded.

Judging from the people who reach the highest levels of power in D.C., I would argue that all you’ve got to be in America is dumb — either black or white.  That’s the main criterion — dumb.  If you’re dumb in today’s America, anything is possible.

When you observe the antics and perversions of both Democrats and Republicans today, it occurs to you that Being There is probably more relevant now than it was in 1979, when many Americans naively believed that Jimmy Carter was our only problem and that we were getting close to getting rid of that problem.

You have to see the whole movie to fully appreciate Ruth Attaway’s great line, but you’ll enjoy it anyway in this short trailer (at around 2:15).