Salesman

Salesman (1969)

The best seller and the world.

This documentary from Albert and David Maysles follows the bitter rivalry of four door-to-door salesmen working for the Mid-American Bible Company: Paul "The Badger" Brennan, Charles "The Gipper" McDevitt, James "The Rabbit" Baker and Raymond "The Bull" Martos. Times are tough for this hard-living quartet, who spend their days traveling through small-town America, trying their best to peddle gold-leaf Bibles to an apathetic crowd of lower-middle-class housewives and elderly couples.

Date of release
1969-04-17
TMDB
7.2 / 10 (105)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Documentary
Director
David Maysles, Albert Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $105K
  • Filmed in: Florida and Chicago

Salesman is a 1969 direct cinema documentary film, directed by brothers Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, about door-to-door Bible salesmen.

Production

The Maysles brothers wanted to be the first to make a nonfiction feature film (which turned out to be Salesman) after learning that Truman Capote had made the claim that his newly released book In Cold Blood was a nonfiction novel. The film was made on a low budget; just under seven minutes into the film, one of the two cameras used can be seen in the shot, which was not unusual for a documentary film.

The Maysles brothers self-funded Salesman, costing approximately $100,000. The brothers paid each salesman $100, along with their expenses. During production, the crew consisted of Albert Maysles shooting and lighting and David Maysles doing sound. Albert Maysles never prompted anyone for the film, except when he asked Brennan to describe his fellow salesmen.

The Maysles brothers had themselves been door-to-door salesmen in the past, selling everything from cosmetics to encyclopedias. While filming, they became part of the pitch, telling those who let the salesmen and the camera crew into their homes that they were now part of "a human interest story."

Elements of popular culture that appear as backdrops to the main story include the song "If I Were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof; a recorded orchestral performance of the Beatles' song "Yesterday"; The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson; the theme music of the television series Ben Casey; and televised boxing matches.

The filming team of Albert and David Maysles went home to Boston to take another look at the kind of people they grew up with. The idea for the film was researched and developed by David Maysles[,] who found the salesmen. The photography was by Albert Maysles. The film was edited by David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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