Bibles for Sale! New and Improved!

The Maysles Brothers are justifiably famous for their documentaries Grey Gardens and Gimme Shelter but somehow Salesman doesn't seem to have garnered the same reputation as their other works. True, there are few less sexy subjects than door to door bible salesman but the film is incredibly engrossing and just as affecting as their better known movies. The subjects, four men in varying degrees of desperation, live out of shared hotel rooms in New England and Florida, swapping stories and commiserating while trying to push the good book on people who clearly can't afford it.

An amazing examination of the sales mindset, I give it an 8. I loved watching them constantly refusing to take no for an answer and pushing product at all costs. So many of the people who let them into their house are clearly kind souls who try gently to get rid of the salesmen and when that doesn't work, and it never does, the dance begins. There's a point in many of the sales calls when you can tell the family is thinking, "Maybe we should just buy this Bible and get this guy out of our home." It's that preying on the innocent that makes this profession and movie so fascinating.

Well, if you enjoy shifty tactics and lying for profit, then you must have loved Slasher, John Landis' documentary about Michael Bennett, the ultimate soulless used car salesman.

Quite the contrary. I give Slasher a 1.

Why? This movie, even moreso than Salesman, embodies the game that is selling product. Mr. Bennett is a "slasher" someone hired by a car dealership to come in for a weekend to blow out their old product by generating incredible excitement in the community and doing whatever it takes to get cars to roll off the lot, even if they only roll a block or two before breaking down. Slasher shows salesmanship as the performance that it really is. A place where truth has no meaning and the trick is to capture people's imagination and take their money. A place where selling them a dream is more important than selling a tangible item.

But Michael Bennett is repulsive beyond words and I wanted the vomit every time I saw him. His drinking and lying and boneheaded philosophizing made me ill. I also hated how he couldn't sit still. With all the bobbing and weaving and pacing, it seemed like he had Red Bull in his veins instead of blood.

The guy was certainly a hideous creature and what surprised me most was that, even though he was very much a product of the modern era, he was, at his core, the same slimy salesman that you find in the Maysles film. Where the Bible guys wore suits and generally looked more respectable, they still had the same single minded focus on lightening the wallets of their marks.

Just as the good lord intended.