The 3-Act Paradigm at Work: Being There

written by Jerzy Kosinski


Being There is an unusual comedy in that the protagonist, usually as active as anyone in the story, is a passive adult (Chance the gardener) with the mind of a child. The story centers around how he is misunderstood once circumstances thrust him into the world.

Structural Analysis

  1. Hook (4 min.)
    • "The old man is dead," the maid tells Chance, the gardener. We learn that Chance, who will "always be a little boy," has never been out of the house since the old man took him in as a child.
  2. Complication (11-6 min.)
    • Lawyers handling the estate arrive and are surprised to find Chance, about whom they have no records, on the estate. Who is he and what is he doing there?
  3. Call to Action (20 min.)
    • The lawyers eject Chance, and he enters the world for the first time. He knows no one and knows nothing about how the world works.
  4. Act One Plot Point (26 min.)
    • Fascinated with his image on a closed circuit TV (TV has been his only link to the world), Chance backs into the street and gets struck by a limousine. Eve, the wealthy occupant, takes him home to see a private doctor.
  5. Midpoint Plot Point (59 min.)
    • Eve's dying husband, Ben, is wealthy and influential. He takes to Ben and introduces him to the President of the United States, who also is taken by Chance's (whose name is misunderstood to be Chauncy Gardener) simple and direct manner of speaking. Chance, of course, is always misunderstood.
  6. Act Two Plot Point (98 min.)
    • No one can find background info on Chance: not the government, not an investigative reporter. Finally the attorney who discovered Chance at the estate meets with Ben's family doctor and tells him the truth, although now they both suspect there is a deeper meaning to Chance's being at the estate in the first place.
  7. Climax and Resolution (118-25 min.)
    • Ben dies, and at his funeral power brokers discuss the possibility of running Chance for President. Chance wanders away from the funeral and walks on water, which is the closing image of the film.

    Notes

    Being There, from a structural viewpoint, begins to unravel in the last half of the second act. Although there is a sense of a "ticking clock" as two different factions try to learn about his non-existent background, Chance never is put into the increased jeopardy that usually occurs at this point of the story. Consequently, the supernatural ending is tacked on as an attempt to resolve the story symbolically, which is not totally satisfactory.

    This weakness aside, this is a funny satire about miscommunication, power and television. The concept of the story is brilliant. The use of TV images humorously contrasts the techno-hype of the culture with the gardening simplicity of the man-child, whose every remark gets misinterpreted into profound wisdom by the shallow citizens of the power structure.

    But the last half of the second act is a definite weak link in the structure of this story. The comedy turns to sexual expression, funny in their own right as when Eve tries to seduce Chance (at 92 min.), which is another candidate for the closing plot point. But nothing really comes of this, nor of Chance's blank past - the movie just ends with Chance walking on water, the first supernatural moment in the story.


    MODULE 4: SCREENWRIGHT: the craft of screenwriting

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