Mr. Sleeman Is Coming

     Make the Boss Proud

     For a short time in the Spring of 2002 I worked as a solicitor of donations for police charities based in Kentucky and Montana.  I lived in neither state, but my company did contract work for those charities.  The job involved wearing a headset, sitting before a computer screen with a keyboard.  N meant "no sale," Y meant "success," and Enter automatically dialed the next number.  The screen displayed the "script," what the worker reads when talking to the mark on the other end.  Donations of twenty-five, fifty, or a hundred dollars were offered, each given a metallic name, respectively, Silver, Gold, Platinum.  Clever.

     The job made me sick sometimes, not physically, but it discomforted my heart to convince people in Kentucky and Montana to give up their money to cops.  Most of my calls resulted in no sale, but over the course of an eight hour shift I would talk a good number of well-meaning people into wasting their money so that I could earn my paycheck, and not get glared at for poor performance by my stern boss, Charlie, who, I admit, gave me some good pointers on how to bullshit people over the phone.

     From that job I learned a few interesting psychological aspects of salesmanship.  Potential customers, for example, pick up on nervous tension and lack of caring in a salesperson's voice.  A neutral but friendly tone eases listeners.  Keep it mid-range, in other words.  A potential customer, even without being aware of it themselves, can pick up on a salesperson's attitude.  If the salesperson is agitated about something, impatient, or frustrated, the potential customer is less inclined to buy or donate.

     These lessons from my former boss fifteen years ago are on display in a 1969 documentary, Salesman, directed by the Maysles Brothers, who made Grey Gardens.  The film deals with four Massachusetts-based salesmen in wintry New England and later in Florida selling or trying to sell Bibles door to door.  This profession no longer exists in America, but my parents in 1968, around the same time the film was made, bought the latest edition of the twenty-three volume Encyclopedia Britannica from a door to door salesman.  Whoever that salesman was, he had a life perhaps similar to those depicted in the Maysles' film.

     The black and white movie follows the four around as they sit with people in their houses being shown the smaller Bibles but also the deluxe fifty dollar illustrated version, given the Holy stamp of approval, and therefore the most effective, far superior of course to an ordinary Bible.  Also, quite large, but it comes in white or red.

     They get together at the ends of their shifts in the motel rooms they stay in and talk about their days; they play poker; watch TV.  The film gradually focuses mainly on Paul Brennan, a man who could've been a regular film actor since his on-screen charisma and personality work beautifully in an effortless manner.  A natural performer, he sings, mutters beneath his breath, does little dances to amuse his coworkers, has an easy quick wit possessing a sardonic flavor at times.  He resembles the popular 1930s character actor Roscoe Karns, but also looks a bit like William S. Burroughs.   

     His sales diminish as the film goes on.  One of the other salesmen says, "It's your attitude, Paul."

     Potential customers, as Charlie told me fifteen years ago, pick up on Paul Brennan's negativity--he doesn't inspire them to enter into the salesman's fantasy-web vibrating with the idea that they need to spend money on something they don't need.  Nobody needs a fancy illustrated Bible.  Nobody needs to give money to police charities.

     The film's setting is grayish white 1967 New England Winter; bright southeast Florida; motel rooms with the sink areas glaringly lit in the background and the implied Gideon Bibles (which cost nothing since they're so easy to steal); the front doors and screen doors of houses; living rooms where the transactions take place successfully or more often unsuccessfully; a station wagon with teardrop taillights pulling out too fast in front of Paul on a snow-covered street and weaving back and forth before straightening out.

     The world of this film is alive with the present moving its details: a freeway in the background, a baby in a highchair, lamps, a mother and potential customer yelling at her offscreen daughter that she's been on the phone long enough.  The salesmen live and operate in this reality, trying to earn a very difficult living, pressured from supervisors above to always be better.

     "It's your own fault if you can't make sales!"

     Paul Brennan becomes convinced that the market for fifty dollar Bibles just isn't there.  He blames that rather than his "attitude."  What I saw when I watched the film was a way of making a living that was then on its last few laps.  Even the more successful salesmen among Paul's colleagues are doomed, as far as this profession is concerned.  

     In Paul Brennan, though, is a formerly successful traveling salesman who believed in the work, made a good living at it before a changing society squeezed out any real benefits, other than knowing how to do a job soon to become obsolete.  In this way, Salesman shows what would later happen to so many American jobs.  The film is about money, its scarcity.  The domestic situation of a couple unable to buy a gorgeous new family Bible (even though devout Catholics) because doing so would make their lives, economically, worse.  The fifty-dollar Bible, representing spirituality, ideally substitutes for the bread needed to live, but only if one has the luxury of a preceding degree of comfort.  This expensive Bible puts looks of doubt and pain on potential customers' faces.  It reminds them that they don't have the funds to live a decent life, but their religiousness makes them think they should buy it. 

     The film shows a profession we no longer think about.  It depicts an era when women would let strangers into their homes without feeling undertones of possible mayhem erupting from the act.  It shows two locations of 1967-1968 America as they were; not glamorized dressed up depictions, but actual in the present moment lives and sounds.  An image of the driveway that Paul walks on at one point is a depiction of snow scraped by a shovel one only rarely sees in a typical Hollywood film.  Real people poke their heads out to see who's knocking on their doors, say they're not interested, and go back in their houses, never to be seen in cinema again, not knowing they'll eventually be seen by millions of people watching Salesman on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection.

                                                                            Vic Neptune