Inferior Quotations

IQ: Depressing, empty feeling at the end.

Salesman Criterion Collection DVD Interview menu: Newsweek critic Jack Kroll interviewed Albert and David Maysles upon the theatrical release of Salesman. This interview aired in 1969 as part of a WCBS-TV series called “Camera Three.”

IQ: The following quotations are from the Camera Three episode.

Jack Kroll: Well you-you consider your selves working in the area of fact.

Albert Maysles: Yes.

Jack Kroll: Is it Fact Film that you might call it?

David Maysles: Well that’s one way of putting it, it’s they’re all real situations, I mean we don’t uhm doctor any situations we don’t ask any body as I said before to do any thing for us as much as move from one chair to an otha because the light is better. Like for example the people in th-the film uh called The Salesman that we’re gonna be seeing. Uh i’ fact we walk cold turkey in to a house with a salesman, and uh we meet the house wife for the first time, an’ we film them immediately, directly, that’s why the word Cinema Direct. We don’t ask them to move over to the window because there’s more light over there.

Albert Maysles: So it’s so th-there are eh uh especially in this kind of filming what I would say is two subjective doors, there’s a subjective door of on the on the part of the people who are making the film, we look at things subjectively, the what we are observing is factual, and then the other uh subjective factor is the audience. An’ they-they uh they watch uh the screen an’ the what they perceive uh is very much a-a part of how they look at things.

Albert Maysles: Well it um I think that any-any work of art whether it’s a painting or a or a movie is autobiographical, so if you’re gonna do a-a-a film uh y-you’re inclined more or less to go back home for it, uh an’ you go back to uh to people that uh that you may’ve known.

Himself – ‘The Badger’: Okay I just came over to pick up the down paymen’ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

IQ: Hah!! Wowwwww hearts.

Herself: Uhhm *pta* I don’wan’it.

Himself – ‘The Badger’: O’ course he’s already mailed the order in.

Herself: Oh’e did.

Himself – ‘The Badger’: Yeah gee that gee I’d appreciate it I mean I don’wanna seem but he already mailed the or’ see I’m the district manager and uh so I’ve already put his order in hones’ly and uh I’d appreciate y’know it’s somethin’ that you’ll really love.

Herself: Yeah I know we would.

Himself – ‘The Badger’: And uh six months from now lemme face it Misses Goodall you won’t be a cent richer or poorer an’ you’re gonna love thee set ’cause it comes with the full endorsement o’the church. Y’ow it’s—

Herself: Well I promised my husband I wouldn’; I told’im.

Himself – ‘The Badger’: I charged Mister McDevitt with the order because I have to do it other words the cost of the mailing an’ the handling an’ every thing plus the bookkeepin’ I have to give’im a peen’ a penalty, I don’t like to do it but that’s the way the competiti-

Herself: How much is the penalty?

Himself – ‘The Badger’: Eh?

Herself: How much is th—

Himself – ‘The Badger’: Well I charge him seven twenty-five ca’ I have no control of that that’s the company’s p-

Herself: Alright you call me tonight an’ I’ll—

Himself – ‘The Badger’: Well I won’t be here dear see I’ve got to move out in to an other th-they’re see I made a special call over here today—

Herself: Well’s there any place I can call you aroun’ five after he comes home.

Himself – ‘The Badger’: No ma’am I’m gonna be in Jacksonville. You’ll love the books when they’re delivered, heh heh heh, alright thank ya dea’.

IQ: Oh my god his tongue. Phew what a scene.

Jack Kroll: The first thing ’at occurs to me to ask you wh-what about wh-what about that last thing, Paul Brennan who as you said b-becomes the chief character of the group of um animalized uh salesmen as we saw earlier. We see him using a kind of selling technique there. He comes back to a prospective customer that’s been set up by an other salesman, and identifies him self as some thing called the district manager an’ we-we see him exerting pressure on this young and not exactly affluent woman; it is a very dramatic situation we wanna know how is it gonna come out is ’e gonna make the sale, an’-an’ we’re interested in both uh what he does and wh-what the girl does, now but what-what I’d like to hear from you is there you are recording this, uh wh-what are your feelings about it an’-and uh what do you think the audience should feel about it?

David Maysles: Well we felt a little uncomfortable, I think when Paul was there ’cause we didn’t expect that of Paul, we love Paul a great deal, y’know an’ always have, an’ I guess y’know even subsequent to the filming, and I thought that was uh way out of character for him an’ bad taste that he did it, but it was still a part of his character obviously, and we felt we should in-include that.

Jack Kroll: But now is it out of character uh for-for the salesmen as a category who-whom you have been filming all along; were you really taken that much by surprise.

Albert Maysles: I wouldn’t say I wouldn’t say that uh I think that is why that experience that we had is so general experience an’ a valuable one for any body watching the film. It’s-it’s not that untypical of Paul or of any of the—

Jack Kroll: Yeah.!

***IQ: Wowww. I just read on Wikipedia As the Maysles brothers tried to get distribution, they were told that the content was too depressing and realistic for the public.[6]

Albert Maysles: —salesmen or for any of us because we all live in borderland areas in our morals—

David Maysles: Well that’s a pretty tough close don’t ya think?

Albert Maysles: where ou’ where our ideals where ideals converge with the question well we have to make money for ou-our family, uh an’ every one of us making-making a dollar uh is willing at some point to make a compromise—

David Maysles: Well I think it’s very hard to rationalize that behavior.

Albert Maysles: —the thing is when you see that when you see that footage you-you—

Jack Kroll: You identify don’t you.

Albert Maysles: —you identify with it an’ you wonda I should think just where—

Jack Kroll: You start asking ya self In what way do I do the same thing an’-an’ it what way do all o’the people or my friends—

David Maysles: I do that in general but not wi’that scene I think that scene is an exceptional scene. I think that scene is—

Jack Kroll: Well it’s an ex- perfect example—

David Maysles: —no way to condone that-that scene I mean Paul was really he uh way off-base there, and uh now that’s a hard high-pressure cl—

Jack Kroll: Then I’m forced to ask you isn’t really isn’t this almost in a sense part of the handbook. Isn’t this some thing that you just do uh with this group of salesmen an’ with salesmen in general, this is part of the routine of selling. Uh it strikes me that Paul an’ all o’the other salesmen in your movie are called upon to do precisely this many many times in the course of their careers, wou-wouldn’t that be a fair thing—

David Maysles: I think I think you see them you don’t see that in the film this is—

Albert Maysles: David and I had many an argument about it but right from the beginning I felt that just about every thing that they did was just a little bit on the wrong side, just on the other s-

David Maysles: Well I would agree with that.

Albert Maysles: —just on the other side of the border.

Jack Kroll: Mmhmm.

David Maysles: I would agree that selling in general is that.

Albert Maysles: At times uh at times it was very much far away some times it was just on the edge, an’ other times of course in the motel room uhh because of the uh of the selling situation in their own in their own lives they were on-on the wrong side of the border with one an other,—

David Maysles: W’.

Albert Maysles: —it made it impossible for one salesman to meet the other one in the evening, a salesman who-who hadn’t sold to really converse with the other one, because the other one couldn’t listen to any thing that was not positive.

Jack Kroll: It is real competition among salesmen, is that so.

David Maysles: I’d-I’d agree with that but I’ll make I’ll make the same I’d agree that they um *tcha* that they’re all on the a little on the wrong side, but I think y’know that you can say that about almost ninety-nine ninety-five percent of the people that’re in uh this country I mean that’re selling that’re uh—

IQ: Rent-A-Critter.

IQ: I tried selling overpriced books door to door in Iowa for a week or two one summer I think I sold one book I shoulda sold zero.

Albert Maysles: An’ there’s also a point reached some where where the sales man knows for example that he’s not gonna make a sale, so that the from then on the-the situation the social situation is uh is one of waste for him.

Albert Maysles: The part of the tragedy of the film an’s a good deal of comedy in it in it too, is ’at um uh these men are Irish poets in a way, there’s more Joycean poetry—

IQ: A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man. (I’m supposed to remember to come back later an’ link this to a page I’m not ready to share with you yet; you can prob’ly guess what’s on it.)

Albert Maysles: —uh in their hearts, but it only comes out from the heart from Paul, just one of ’em, an’-an’ the rest are completely subdued by the selling and buying experience which is.. subdues most of us most of the time.

Jack Kroll: Well Paul-Paul is the articulate one what you’re really saying then is that every con man is a poet, because in order in order to pull his con, he ’as got to weave a net of language in which in which to trap his victims, but how do y’ how do you expect or how do you want or how do you think the audience is going to react to all of this because on one level they’re looking at the most ordinary kind of people, they’re going to identify with these people, an’ yet perhaps for one of the few times in their lives they’re brought face to face uhh with these reali’ies that they might not think about them just living their own lives that that’s what those people have to do. Uh what do you think their reaction is going to be is it a sense of tragedy or a sense of irony are they gonna laugh cry get angry or what.

Albert Maysles: One critic has seen the film on two occasions an’ uh thought it was a tragedy on one c-occasion an’ a-a comedy uh on the other. Uh I think the film will well we don’know exactly what the reaction’s gonna be, but I think uhh I-I-I would guess that uh the film is gonna create a new audience.

Jack Kroll: So it seems as if you-you’ve even though you are fact people as you as you keep saying, you’ve stumbled upon a subject matter in much the same manner a’ uh that an artist um deliberately creates a subject matter, an’ that is to say selling, a world of selling.

David Maysles: Jack I-I disagree very very strongly on two points *tcha* that uh you just made, uh one that we’re not trying to create some kind of uh tryna make the audience feel a certain emotion, certain feelings an’ not trying to direct them uhhhm we’re we’re not doing that we’re not conscious of doing that I don’t think in the shooting, we’re just trying to tell the s- uh story the way it happens in front of our eyes, an’ we never provoke an’ we never tell people what to do. How eva, uhm in the editing process, uh we very much try to create a uh.. um influence people an’ their feelings, I think we want them to be uhh depressed as hell when the film is over, which they are, in the audiences that we’ve had. Uh admittedly there’s a great deal o’comedy there’s a lot to laugh about in the film for the first two thirds. But uh without giving away the story there’s uh it’s goes down after that, and it’s an American it is an American tragedy very c-clearly. Now the other thing th’I disagree with: the film’s a fact. I think that could be misleading the word uh fact because uh when you say fact getting in to the whole area of cinema verite an other term we don’t like its a pretentious uh pompous kind o’term, I don’t think we’re talking about uh truth an’ fact an’ this is the way it was exactly, uh it’s our truth, it’s the way Al an’ I uh felt when we shot it the way Al shot it the way what we chose to shoot, the way we chose when uh I’s working with Charlotte Zwerin in the editing, the way we chose to uh to edit, uhh it’s our own artistic truth it’s the way we sawr it, now we could also argue I guess if we wanted to that it was uh, uh that it was r-representative of what happened, but it’s not, I think fact might be mis- misleading.

Jack Kroll: Are you both uh of one mind about this?

Albert Maysles: Well I’m my mind is turned now to the what you said about how our films are almost always about selling.

Jack Kroll: Mm.

Albert Maysles: Uh I think that’s true I think that uh some times people have said that uh with the new kind of flexible kind of filming that we and others are shooting, Why are you always in an automobile. Because much of life today is in automobiles, an’ most of life today is selling, and uh whether we like it or not, sim-simply because we find our selves with a new subject uh i-it’s almost always involved in selling, an’ we too before we’re finished with the film are more salesman than we are filmmakers; we’re distributing our own film.

David Maysles: That’s the irony Al an’ I will agree. It’s the we’ve been spending all our time trying to make this picture work, and advertising and promoting it, we’re told that we have one of the best advertising an’ promotion campaigns in New York, an’ we have a regular uh campaign y’know going.

Jack Kroll: Well well what do you—

David Maysles: We haven’-haven’ even been able to-to f’ to get further in to our next project.

Jack Kroll: Well I’d like to combine th’-the thing that you said with the thing that you said. You said you want the audience to be depressed, an’ you sort of confirmed the fact that you have indeed come upon this-this theme of selling, so putting the two together it comes out you want the audience to be depressed.. because in some sense of the selling. Is that a fair conclusion to draw?

David Maysles: Yeah yeah right right right.

Albert Maysles: I would well maybe our view points are different but uh I would I would—

Jack Kroll: Do you think of your selves in connection with Arthur Miller, I s’ a lot of people are inevitably going-going to think of Death Of A Salesman.

David Maysles: No no not at all.

Albert Maysles: I-I would be concerned that uh in the shooting, uh and in the editing as well too, that first that we find material of a moral nature, th’stuff of which morality is made, whether-whether that depresses or whether it heightens one experience one’s experience uh out of joviality, doesn’ that doesn’t make too much difference, but that we find that kind of material an’ that it’s b-be organized in such a way that the viewer has the opportunity now to define the moral stuff for him self out of it. It’s very open from that point too.

David Maysles: Y’know when we say when we say it’s a tragedy, an’ a great tragedy this film is a tragedy. I don’t mean to say for one moment that i-it’s not uh that there isn’t a great deal of beauty in tragedy. Look at all of O’Neill’s plays for example, his later plays they’re tragic but how beautiful, Long Day’s Journey Into Night how-how absolutely uh beautiful, beauty of life.

Albert Maysles: Uh Paul’s uh-uh triumph is uh I think with uh over the audience. I think that the audience uh tends to identify with uh with a tra- with a tragic individual whose uh whose very real human problems they uh they feel uh v-very close to,—

David Maysles: I think Paul’s much more aware of him self.

Albert Maysles: —much clo’ much closer to him than the other men I would say.

David Maysles: I think Paul is more of a-an example of uh the famous quote in the bible which is some thing I think uhm that if one can live their life by that one will be living a good life an’ that is the quote uhm y’know what shall it profit man if he gain the whole world an’ lose his soul; Paul has soul, Paul has self-awareness. He knows what he’s done-doing I think.

Jack Kroll: But what about the fact uh we seen in an other part of your film uh is that to me is one of the more fascinating things in Salesman, at sales meetings we see the salesmen being spoken to being given pep talks by all sorts of people including a theological expert who works for the company, an’ who takes great pains to tell the salesmen that they’re really doing a very important thing they’re doing God’s work, and so forth and so.. would you say that you expect or want the audience viewing this speech to be depressed.

David Maysles: Not.. specifically in that particular speech. I think that there’s a lot of humor in there.

Jack Kroll: Do the salesmen do the salesmen believe what-what he’s saying. He believes it him self doesn’ he, he’s making the speech in great earnestness.

David Maysles: They’ve rationalized some of it I don’t think uh when they wh-when the beginning of Melbourne I Feltman’s speech is uh Money is being made in the bible because this is a good business. Uh no I’m sorry th-that’s Kennie’s speech the sales manager that’s quite the opposite he’s saying Many people know the bible you know the business. You know an’ some of the references to uh business an’ uh be proud of your work. They’ve rationalized all that. They are s-somewhat—

Jack Kroll: Are they are they proud of their work?

David Maysles: Yes they are they proud of their work.

Jack Kroll: Are they really yeah?

David Maysles: Ohh yeah.

Jack Kroll: You’d uh b—

David Maysles: They’ve uh they’ve super-rationalized it but—

Jack Kroll: Okay l-lemme just say this. One of the interesting things about the film: you’re seeing these faces, you’re seeing these great American bodies these white shirts with the short sleeves an’ the caved-in chests an’ the skinny arms—

IQ: Haha!

Jack Kroll: —sticking out of the shirts an’ this in its self I think has a very powerful ’f you wanna say tragic effect you recognize as your uncle an’ your father—

IQ: Your self..

Jack Kroll: —an’ so forth and so on. Th-there’s some thing about the very uh physical nature of these guys that fills one uh speaking for my self that does make one dep- I was very depressed in a kind of exalted way—

IQ: Woww.

Jack Kroll: uh maybe wh-when I saw when I saw this-this—

Albert Maysles: I think it’s depressing too any time that you uh view people in a uh social situation in a convention where uh they’re really not that much together. Any kind of uh selling activity doesn’t really bring people togetha; I think that the in that way the film is about uh alienation, the-the uh salesman goes on his own lonely way from one little igloo-igloo to an other.

Jack Kroll: Driving ’is car.

Albert Maysles: Driving ’is car from one household to an otha. It’s as lonely uh an’ as difficult an existence as it is for uh an Eskimo in the in the in the uh cold north, an’ it is the cold north because unless he sells he’s got noo bread an’ butter.

David Maysles: Y’know it’s always depressing Jack I think if y’know if-if you’re motivation is life is money, is making money.

Jack Kroll: Eh.

David Maysles: I mean that in its self is.. is terribly depressing.

Albert Maysles: You don’t have any real friends you don’t make any real friends, you don’t have any real life, you’re not making a real life for your self.

Jack Kroll: What happens then when-when you when you people come in to this very lonely situation, you come in with your cameras. Now all-all-all a writer or novelist has to do is to sit there at his desk an’ imagine a situation an’ he’s there. But you have to go where the action is.

Albert Maysles: But is he really there.

Jack Kroll: Well that’s a question which we’ll put by.

Albert Maysles: Mm.

Jack Kroll: But you have to go there physically. Now what happens when you move in with your cameras, when you attach your selves to these very real lives in order to record them. Do you affect the situation in some way?

Albert Maysles: Well there’s no question that uh our presence does uh affect what’s going on. W-we hope an’ we try what ever uh is in our means to uh either let it be as much as it can be on its own, or maybe even uhh since our spirit is to let it happen maybe hopefully that’ll be even more intense-ly what it is.

IQ: .

Jack Kroll: Well l-l-lemme ask you very specifically when-when you went in to a-a house—

David Maysles: Right.

Jack Kroll: —with the salesman in a typical instance of this—

David Maysles: Mmhmm, yes

Jack Kroll: —what-what actually happened?

David Maysles: Well.

Jack Kroll: He rings the door bell he an’ announces him self.

David Maysles: Salesman is quite successfully getting he couldn’t be a salesman for very long if he wasn’t successfully getting in to most of the doors.

Jack Kroll: Yeah.

David Maysles: So he gets in to the door, and all of a sudden they see Al and I with our equipment.

Jack Kroll: Right.

David Maysles: Admittedly it’s-it’s uh very light-weight and uh rather unobtrusive but it’s still a camera on a shoulder and a tape recorder on a shoulder—

Jack Kroll: Right

David Maysles: an’ they say Well who are these people, we might be expecting y’know a salesman, but why the cameras an every thing,—

Jack Kroll: Mhm.

David Maysles: —and uh we would explain that uh we are uh doing a film about uh this gentleman with and his colleagues, and we’ve been traveling all over the country with him and it’s a-a human-interest uh story, and we’d just like the privilege of uh filming his presentation to you,—

Albert Maysles: This is of course is—

David Maysles: —and most of the time they’d say Yes.

Albert Maysles: —this is of course is our purpose, and uh they recognize it as such, it’s our little speech is only an interruption.

Jack Kroll: Lemme-lemme ask you this did you do a kind of check-out, that is did you accompany the salesman on some trips without the equipment

Albert Maysles, David Maysles: No.

Jack Kroll: as a kind of control so you could see later with the equipment that things were really happening.

David Maysles: [Mumbly somethin’.]

Albert Maysles: Y’know I’ll tell you why we didn’t do that because we actually believe that we can come to situations without materially affecting them. If we didn’ have that belief an’ that would th’-th’ be the surest way to indicate that we didn’t have that belief to our selves would be to go without our equipment an’ try an’ try the other. W-we know we know very well that that equipment is not gonna change things materially, an’ maybe that’s why it doesn’t.

IQ: Funny flimsy belief.

Jack Kroll: Lemme ask you one final question. Uh in some sense you-you are artists all this nomenclature in—

David Maysles: In some sense!.

Jack Kroll: —the end is well I mean wh-what ever the adjective in front of the artist is uh y-you guys are-are-are artists or you certainly think of your selves in that way—

David Maysles: Mm.

Jack Kroll: —an’ I think it’s true of any work of art, it may depress you you may laugh at it or cry, but it has it has to lift you up in some way—

Albert Maysles: Yes.

IQ: Mm.?

Jack Kroll: —uh now how-how is this how does that happen with-with Salesman?

Albert Maysles: Yeah I think that what it does is it doe’ uh it doesn’t claim that every one is that much a salesman that every body is selling-selling a bible or will s-sell a bible the way these men do, but I think what happens is.. uhh well I lost my train of thought ha ha..

Jack Kroll: Is there a is there a lesson to be learned uh an’-an’ not-not—

Albert Maysles: It shows you it shows all of us the way life is for a good many of us. An’ so the moral is by showing really what it is for these people, an’ their life is not so much different from ours, it shows us it leads us to believe to make us want to know what life should be.