" BackgroundBeing There(1979), subtitled "a story of chance," is a provocative and elegiac black comedy -- a wonderful dramatic yet placid tale or fable that satirized politics, celebrity, media-obsession and television...My advice is for you not to make any more reckless charges.Because you""re bein"" a foreigner, you already got strike one and strike two against you.Vacarro: I want no advice, no law, no court in this county.I come from a very old country where it""s tradition for each man o make his own justice, like bootleg liquor.[This is director Hitchcock in his customary cameo.Grant turns and is startled to see him.Hitchcock stares ahead and ignores his star.] In Cannes, he strides down stone steps into a coastal restaurant on the French Riviera owned by restauranteur Bertani (Charles Vanel), one of his old colleagues from the war.Swann had served as Honorary Treasurer of the school""s ball, and under suspicious circumstances, almost £100 pounds of ticket money was stolen from a cashbox (and college porter Alfred had been blamed - or framed - for the theft).