(dir. Hal Ashby, 1979)

A pure-hearted gardener is forced into the wilds of Washington, D.C. when his wealthy guardian dies. Shocked to discover that the real world doesn’t respond to the click of a remote, he stumbles into celebrity after being taken under the wing of a tycoon who mistakes his protégé’s horticultural mumblings for sagacious pronouncements on life and politics, and whose wife targets him as the object of her desire. 

Adapted from a novel by Jerzy Kosinski, this satire, both deeply melancholy and hilarious, is the culmination of Hal Ashby’s remarkable string of films in the 1970s, and a carefully modulated examination of the ideals, anxieties, and media-fueled delusions that shaped American culture during that decade.