Don't feel too bad for forgetting -- "Being There" (1979) has a rather unmemorable name for such a well-regarded film.

You describe it fairly well -- Sellers plays a gardener named Chance, who has lived his whole life in the walls of the house whose garden he tends, with no exposure to the outside world except from what he sees on TV, which is what he spends all his spare time on. When his employer dies, he's forced to leave the house and make his own way, but he's simply not mentally prepared for the real world.

This all sounds pretty glum, but rest assured, Sellers-esque hijinks ensue when a series of people mistake his simplicity for depth, and he gets a series of successively more important jobs, eventually becoming an adviser of the president of the United States.

Though the Oscars famously dislike comedies, Sellers was nominated for the Best Actor award for his turn (though he lost to Dustin Hoffman in "Kramer vs. Kramer"), and supporting star Melvyn Douglas won in his category.

Legendary film critic Roger Ebert called "Being There" "one of the most confoundingly provocative movies of the year."

As for the unmemorable title, it's actually taken straight from the novel it was based on, written by the Polish-American novelist Jerzy Kosinski. 

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