Salesman
1969
Action / Documentary / Drama

Salesman
1969
Action / Documentary / Drama
Plot summary
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.
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.BLU 1080p.BLUMovie Reviews
Quiet desperation more relative to many occupations than we'd care to admit.
A time capsule
A 1969 documentary about a group of salesman selling bibles to the masses. It's probably most interesting because you see how people lived and worked 40 years ago. The salesmen themselves are interesting but so are the people they meet. Of course they use every trick in their book to sell their bibles ("Did I tell you I'm an Irish catholic?"). Very interesting to see how these men worked in a job which is now very much gone. Alone on the road they share their misery and failings with their fellow salesmen who yawn and offer some half-hearted advice.
Salesman is a real version Glengary Glen Ross 25 years before that movie was made. What we have here is a time capsule of 1969. The decorations in the homes, the clothing, the cars, the way they talk, it's all pretty dated by today's standards. But it's interesting to see how people lived in 1969.