Salesman by Albert and David Maysles

Factual America

10 Jan

Written By

Award-winning journalist, Kevin Turley, joins Factual America to discuss Albert and David Maysles’ seminal documentary. Kevin places Salesman in the context of 1960s America and traces the film’s influence on documentary filmmaking to this day.

Along the way Kevin and host Matthew Sherwood discover that the film about hard-luck Bible salesmen is actually about so much more — namely the pursuit of the American Dream.

They talk about the day to day difficulties that many people had to face back then, and how although the landscape of America has changed, the film still keeps its relevance even today.

The greatest gift of any documentarian is patience. - Kevin Turley

Time Stamps:

00:59 - An introduction of our guest today Kevin Turley.
01:02 - ‘Salesman’ the show we are looking at today.
02:48 - A brief summary of the film.
04:58 - How this kind of American world no longer exists.
09:21 - The ‘Go and get the money’ clip.
11:02 - Discussing the clip.
13:39 - What the film is really about.
17:22 - How the film is still relevant today.
18:52 - How much harder life was back then.
20:33 - The technique of ‘siding’ your house.
21:27 - The argument that the whole thing was made up.
22:59 - The Maysels’ legacy to documentary filmmaking.
25:40 - What the Maysels brothers were trying to achieve with ‘Salesman’.
27:38 - The Irish element of the film.
30:43 - The ‘Irish’ clip.
32:09 - Why the Maysels brothers focused on Paul Brennan.

Resources:

Salesman (1969)
Alamo Pictures

Transcript for Factual America Episode 1 - Salesman by Albert and David Maysles

You're listening to Factual America. This podcast is produced by Alamo Pictures, a production company specializing in documentaries, television and shorts about the USA for international audiences. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Alamo Pictures to be the first to hear about new productions, festivals were attending and how to connect with our team. Our homepage is alamopictures.co.uk. And now, enjoy Factual America with our host Matthew Sherwood.

Matthew: Welcome to Factual America, the podcast that explores America through the lens of documentary filmmaking. I'm your host, Matthew Sherwood and I will be interviewing documentary filmmakers, their subjects and subject matter expert in the fields of politics, history, culture. And today, we have Kevin Turley, who certainly fits the bill. Kevin is an award winning journalist and broadcaster, he has worked previously in film. And in a previous life, he tells me he was a film critic. So we've brought Kevin in for our inaugural at Alamo Pictures podcast to talk to us about Salesman, the seminal documentary by Albert and David Maysles, from, I think was released 1969 I believe. You may know the Maysles brothers, they did great gardens. All the boomers out there well known for Gimme Shelter, the film about Altamont, and the Rolling Stones. And I think I'm going to quickly welcome Kevin to the show and ask him why he's chosen the film, but I think the thing is really going to be looking at as we kick off, the Factual America podcast is how this all fits into the arc of documentary filmmaking especially In the US, so welcome, Kevin.

Kevin: It's very good to be here.

Matthew: It's excellent to have you. So why did you choose this film?

Kevin: Well, you know what, when I was traveling here today, I asked myself, why did I choose this? I mean, I love documentary films. And I've got so many favourites. But I don't know when I was asked to come on the show, for some reason, this film just jumped out at me. And I don't know why. I mean, I dread to think that maybe identify with Paul Brennan.

Matthew: We're going to get a little bit more on that in a few minutes. For those who haven't seen the film, maybe you can give us a little bit of an idea of what this is about?

Kevin: Well, this is one of those films where it was made to be a documentary, that it couldn't be a feature film, because there's not much of a plot, really, it's an observational piece. And it's a sort of film that the more you watch it, the more you see in it, and more you see people's lives starting to unfold on camera. So basically, it's about four Bible salesmen. Traveling. Originally it started in the very cold snowing northeast of the United States, I think in the New England or Boston or somewhere outside of Boston, right. And then they all go to Florida. Yeah, the team, and you have this conference where they're sort of getting them all ready, the national Chicago sellers conference in Chicago, and then they all go to Florida. And it's really just a beautiful observational piece. And, you know, if you are making it as a feature film, you couldn't have chosen the supporting cast of prospective purchasers of this and under full $350, well, today's money $250 Bible.

Matthew: That's based on research here at Factual America.

Kevin: Yes, I watch the film forces. No but, it's not really about the plot. It's a character study, but it's more than that. It's also a kind of a meditation on the American dream.

Matthew: It is. I mean, we're going to be talking later about the Inventor, the story about the Theranos. And I think this is a theme.

Kevin: Yeah.

Matthew: It's something that keeps coming up, you know, in the interviews we have. So we've got these four Bible salesman. We've got Paul Brennan, the Badger, we've got Charles McDevitt, The Gipper, James Baker, The Rabbit, and we've got Raymond Martos, The Bull

Kevin: I mean, I mean these names so ridiculous.

Matthew: Yeah, exactly. And this is a question we'll get to eventually very quickly. I think about does this America even exist anymore? But maybe we can talk about it now?

Kevin: I mean, you know this better than I do, Matthew, I don't think it does. I think this is a world which is not even pre internet. You know, this is a world that is pre colour TV. It's a it's an it's an era of, I mean, I can remember it you know, women with curves in their hair, and every man seemed to wear a white shirt and a black tie. And they all had a curl cut. I mean, this was filmed in 1967, this is at the height of the so called flower power, Summer of Love all of that, and this is a million miles away, this is lower middle class America, you know, exposed. And it's... every single person they seem to meet finds it really difficult to make $1 week payment.

Matthew: And that's what's shocking about the whole thing.

Kevin: But it's about poverty, it's about the sort of foxy way in which they inveigled themselves into homes. And it's this kind of full religiosity. Is not really about religion at all, but churches authorized this. The other thing which I I just don't think what happened today is that people are really kind of suffering and saying no to these salesmen. And today people just say get lost. I'm not interested. Bible, you must be kidding. Whereas in this film, women, and it's always the housewife, agonizing about having to say no, and there's that pathetic shot when Paul Brennan pretends to be the supervisor. And he says, Well, I'll have to give Mr. McDevitt appellant, he tries every emotional blackmail possible to get a $1 a week from this woman

Matthew: She even asked, Well, how much is the penalty. He said 7 pounds 20 cents and she's like, Oh...

Kevin: It's also a world of black and white TV. And it's a world of music, when they're playing the music in the car, and it's really sort of the fading 1960s. People think the 1960s resolves sort of Woodstock and that. This is really what the 1960s was, and it was a kind of ending of an era. And it's a world that on every single level... The people participating, the people who were there, it's all gone.

Matthew: So the sort of the poor man's version of Mad Men?

Kevin: Yes, sort of.

Matthew: It's the silent majority. That's how Nixon gets elected in 68. They're all dressed like they're straight off the cast of Blues Brothers. If you haven't seen the film, that's the world.

Kevin: Yeah, but I suspect, Matthew, that was 98% of America. Oh, I think there was the 1% running around here Avenue in San Francisco and upstate New York and suburbs. The rest were just doing ordinary jobs living ordinary lives trying to pay the bills.

Matthew: And to put my hand up, I maybe just would have been born about the time they're filming this, but I remember the salesman coming to the front door and my mother agonizing with the encyclopedia salesman and the fuller brush man. These people are an endangered species. Who goes and sells things door to door.

Kevin: Wow. If you're trying to sell encyclopedia these days door to door, good luck.

Matthew: As you say, it's not about the Bible. Yes, it they even give it a lot of credit to the MidAmerican Bible company who let him do all the filming

Kevin: And easily got away with that.

Matthew: Exactly. And then even very early on, I think that comes across, I think it's like about five minutes into the film.... Actually, we will watch that clip right now. Where the basically sales director is trying to give them a pep talk about selling the Bible by telling them that half of you see some empty seats here because some of them just didn't make the grade and they've been even used the word eliminated and then people later on in the film having to get up and say okay, no I will make $35,000 and I will make $50,000 which these days you know, multiply that by seven, that's what you're basically talking about.

Kevin: That's a lot of Bibles.

Matthew: A lot of Bibles. So let's watch the clip.

Clip 1 (from the movie Salesman)

Matthew: So as you can see from that clip that this is isn't about religion. It's not about Bibles. It's about an America that It's in transition, if you will, eating America and this happens every, you know, whatever the cycles are 20, 30, 50 years, but that happens. There's even the VBone scene where they're talking about, I think and we're going to get to Mr. Brennan here, he described to one of the guys when he was like a cub salesman basically that this is a fringe market that they're in and that was nine years prior now. They talk about the fringe with the series on topics, sort of an Oklahoma reference. And how they're not even not even fringe anymore, and they're still trying to sell and that the only market left out there are these people who are just struggling to get by every week to scrape a $1.

Kevin: It's interesting you said that because they do describe themselves as on the fringe and they . It seems as strangely coherent group. It's touching, the way they kind of understand each other, through these kind of rather limited mail exchanges. There's a wonderful scene I don't know if you remember where I think it's Paul Brennan who's describing the team, remember?

Matthew: Mhm

Kevin: Describing the different characteristics of the different members of the team. And there's a lot of insight into that, you know, they've worked beside each other, they know who's strong at different things. Who's strong at getting in the door who's strong at making the final seal who's strong at chatting up the housewife who's strong at talking to the husband?

Matthew: Yeah

Kevin: They sort of worked it out, but they really are a kind of a little bit of a no hopers, the whole lot of them. I mean, they're straight out of Flannery O'Connor.

Matthew: They are. Death of a salesman.

Kevin: Yeah.

Matthew: They're almost the flip side to the coin that is about the great American dream. And it references quite a bit... Paul references his brother who seemingly went to MIT, whether he existed or not, I don't know. But, there’s sort of theme that runs through about... I should have been a pet policeman

Kevin: Well, this is what it's really about. You see, I think this film is about Paul Brennan and it's interesting the Maysles Brothers, they were going to film the whole team and give equal time to the team and focus on the team. But as it turned out, Paul Brennan became the one the camera went for, the camera was attracted to him and he was good value on camera, but he really is a character study in... I don't know, I was going to say a wasted life. I don't mean it as brutal and there's a great sense of disappointment. And it wouldn't surprise me actually if the backstory is that his brother was very successful, and he ended up door to door because there's this kind of almost... it's a very Irish thing. This kind of melancholic dip into sort of self pity, self parody. So there's, there's an awful lot to Brennan. And I think the Maysles brothers were very wise to really just let the camera roll with him.

Matthew: And am I right that this was really meant to be an homage to their hometown, they had started becoming sort of a bit famous. They had followed the Beatles around on the first tour of the United States, and they wanted to go back to where they're from. And, that's how the film is happening?

Kevin: Absolutely. I mean, the Maysles brothers are really interesting. They grew up in a part of Boston, which was mostly Irish Catholic, and they said that their father was the only Jewish employee at the local whatever it was. But the Maysles brothers were quite well educated. But they ended up both of them door to door salesmen.

Matthew: Is that right?

Kevin: Yeah. So they were selling cosmetics and various other things. I mean, they were just bumming around I guess, because they didn't know what they wanted to. And then I think I'm right in saying Albert started getting into cinematography, more. I mean, they both sort of were interchangeable. But the first film which came to notice, which it was certainly, I think, references the 1960s is a film called Primary, where Albert covers the van on known John F. Kennedy, right, in a Primary and I think Wisconsin?

Matthew: I think I've seen this

Kevin: What was the name of Hubert?

Matthew: Hubert Humphrey.

Kevin: That's right, he was the opponent. And it's when you watch it, you'll see traces of the kind of technique that they later developed. But then after that, you're right. We had the film about the first and probably the best film ever made about the Beatles, which they did, which the Beatles coming to United States and it caught the Beatles just at that moment of euphoric. And it's also something the American dream, you know, you can achieve anything you come to America and be anything. And then we have Salesman, which is the darker side of the American financial dream. And then we have Gimme Shelter, which I think is probably the best testament of the ending of the 1960s. Really the end of the glitter and it ends in a very nasty...

Matthew: Well, there's killing, the homicide.

Kevin: Caught on camera.

Matthew: Yeah.

Kevin: And then a couple of years later we have Great Gardens. I think the name is so symptomatic of what that films is about. Because it's really, it's not for nothing that we have a distant and it is a distant relative of Jackie Kennedy who's going a bit crazy in her own house with her...

Matthew: If you haven't seen it, you've got to watch it. I saw it a few years ago. It's amazing.

Kevin: Yeah, but those films, if we just stop there, those films have charted as documented history of the United States, you just need to watch those films you'll see everything, the Ascent, Descent, what was really going on. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and nostalgia and the way people talk about the 60s now but for anybody who was living in the 60s, it was like the Salesman, I think

Matthew: Not that I was that old. And then you can bring it, then there's the relevance to modern day. We're still in the middle of a probably the longest economic booms in American history. The 60s was a time of economic booms. And yet they're going into these people's houses... By world's standards, these people seem to be living pretty well. But it's sort of the stretch to achieve the American dream. They're basically indebted to the hilt.

Kevin: Totally.

Matthew: Just to keep things up to a certain level.

Kevin: I totally agree and that's one of the most shocking things. The thing about Salesman is that it's a documentary and black and white and most people in Europe grew up watching American films in Technicolor at dark days, and rock Hudson's and all. But everybody lived in a big house. Everybody had a nice big car. Everybody had a picket fence and everybody had these luxurious kitchens and everybody lived like... Well, watch Salesman. I mean, as you say, people are just scratching it. Like that poor guy who's buying the Bible, and then he has to go off and do his shift somewhere. Sanitation, was it? He works in the sanitation.

Matthew: There was one of the sanitations but then the other guy was going off here to shift it and midnight.

Kevin: Yeah, probably doing something pretty hard, whatever it was. The other thing, which I find really amazing, which is a thing of the 1960s to now, but these men are probably in their 40s to 50s.

Matthew: Yeah.

Kevin: And to our eyes, they look at it about you they look ancient. Everybody in the film looks ancient even people who are probably women are in their 20s look really old. Everybody looks...

Matthew: There's that one family right at the end that is in the living room and it's the sales... I forgot which salesman's taken Paul Brennan with him to give him a little spark...

Kevin: It is McDevitt

Matthew: I think it's McDevitt. Yeah. I looked at him and I thought that guy looks like he's... The father looks middle age, the mother looks middle age yet they (and this is pre-waiting too late in life to have children America) are probably people in their early 30s, they look like they could be close to 50

Kevin: Isn't that frightening?

Matthew: Yeah.

Kevin: But I think it was so funny seeing with Mick Mick ticking Brennan on the road to get get his pet back. Well, you know, Brennan was like a sort of wet weekend in the corner. You know, I mean, it's just hopeless

Matthew: You wouldn't buy water from Brennan and you're in the desert?

Kevin: I wouldn't let him in the house.

Matthew: Yeah. He's just as this black cloud.

Kevin: But he was kind of emoting. Those pathetic scenes playing with the children and then he starts singing or do some impressions of the washerwoman, or whatever. I have to say it's probably quite sad that shortly after that I believe he his marriage collapsed. And he gave up Bible sales. He ended up selling roofing or something.

Matthew: Siding

Kevin: Siding. I don't even know what that is, what is siding?

Matthew: Siding is something very, very American especially in the northeast. You have these lovely houses with a sort of a cedar wood, tile almost like... Best way I can describe it for our listeners here in Europe, certainly. But instead of being happy and painting that, why would you have to paint your house every five years when you can put aluminium siding or now even like you PVC plastic that looks like wood?

Kevin: Oh, wow.

Matthew: But never has to be painted.

Kevin: You know where I can get some?

Matthew: Well, I think probably Paul Brennan still has some old mates that are around.

Kevin: It must be very old man. Paul, he really died an alcoholic 1990. I'm not surprised.

Matthew: It's a bit of a side story, I think. Who's the great film critic at the New York Times

Kevin: Pauline Kael

Matthew: Yeah. Who basically said, this is all a ruse. And it was a ruse. And basically said, Well, you've set this all up. This isn't real.

Kevin: Which is rubbish. I mean, the Maysles brothers were. And I tell you what they were and what she didn't get was they were so far ahead of their time. Yeah, they set the template for the rest. You know, they really did, and the way that you can see the influence even today and filmmakers here.

You're listening to Factual America. Subscribe to our mailing list, or follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Alamo Pictures to keep up to date with new releases and upcoming shows. Check out the show notes to learn more about the program, our guests and the team behind the production. And now back to Factual America.

Matthew: Welcome back to Factual America. Kevin, just before the break, you're talking about what the Maysles brothers were all about with their filmmaking. Many people would say we're currently in a golden age of documentary film. And certainly, from a financial standpoint, we know about sort of eight of the top 20 or 50 grossing films of all time documentary films all even came out just into 2018. They obviously owe a lot to people like the Maysles brothers and how do they fit into all this? What do the current crop of documentarians owe to the Maysles brothers, would you say?

Kevin: Yes. Well, obviously, the Maysles brothers had a great influence in terms of style and documentary style. But I think what they also did was that they moved documentaries, out of a sort of ghetto. Documentaries before the 1960s were generally public information films or sort of strange films. They were not really valued in the same way feature films were. And I think the Maysles brothers showed that you can have just as much storytelling, just as much insight into and maybe more into current cultures through the documentary form. I think then the documentaries probably started to find their feet again around to start a century, I think they moved into a different stream where people like Michael Moore, and I think what that was also a time when in literature we had creative nonfiction, an explosion of that. And also, you've always had something in American journalism, which finally started getting transposed onto the screen, which was the idea of long form, non action, right? Magazines in the States like a New Yorker or Atlantic or Square or GQ, these pioneered this. So for example, I don't know if you're familiar with the writings of somebody like Gay Talese.

Matthew: Yes.

Kevin: Yeah. Right. So, the world that he inherits is the Salesman. It's that similar type of 1960s kind of... Frank Sinatra has a cold type world.

Matthew: Well, I mean, it gets back to that old adage, truth is stranger than fiction.

Kevin: Always

Matthew: And in that sense, more entertaining.

Kevin: You couldn't, if an actor had done Paul Brennan on the Salesman

Matthew: Get Liam Neeson to try to do that.

Kevin: Yeah, but it wouldn't have been as good. And the other thing is, I know people say that, the sin of documentarians is when they set things up, I don't think any of this was set up. But it is it is a weakness that people can fall into but sometimes what they're just doing, and I think the Maysles brothers did this very well is they just turn the camera on. And whether it's Paul Brennan, or the ladies and Grey Gardens, or the Rolling Stones in Gimme Shelter, or the Beatles in the films or Kennedy in Primary, they just speak. The camera doesn't lie. And people expose themselves on screen and documentaries in a way that actors never do.

Matthew: And what do you think the Maysles brothers are trying to achieve with Salesman? I mean, we talked about it on March to Boston or whatever, but what it was? Or did they just want to document? Are they pure documentarians, do you think, and that they just wanted to have a piece that lasted? That would be a bit of, you know, almost a historical document?

Kevin: I don't know if they thought that far ahead. I think that there's an element of the Maysles brothers that was as much a huckster as the characters in Salesman.

Matthew: Interesting.

Kevin: I mean, the other person that needs to be mentioned is Charlotte Zwerin. I think that's how you pronounce it.

Matthew: I think it is.

Kevin: And she was their kind of editor. And, it was a 3 person team, she would do the editing, Maysles brothers would be on the road doing. I mean, there's no way in those days that you're going to have somebody like Charlotte Zwerin and hanging out with these four salesmen in Florida. The Maysles brothers could just mould in with these people. They were all from Boston, they all knew each other. They knew this world. But I think what the Maysles brothers had is that journalistic technique, which is when you when you can sniff a good story. And they were able to do that on screen and they were able to capture that. They always let the camera roll just a little bit longer. So you know, the same we're talking about when McDevitt where he brings Brennan and have him up. Well, the beauty was that final bit when they pack up. And Brennan stands up and he says he needs, and McDevitt says he needs to give them a charge. And he says

Matthew: Sometimes you need an explosion.

Kevin: That's right. It's just that moment and it gives you the depth of despair and that this man is feeling so it's that ability just too weird. I think the greatest gift for any documentarian is patience. To hang around long enough. People will say everything. The same is true in interviewing. I'm sure you find this when you interview people.

Matthew: Yeah.

Kevin: It's often what they're saying as you're leaving the room.

Matthew: Oh, indeed. Interviewing even had some time in the business world in business meetings... How often were the last couple minutes sometimes were the most productive? You know, that's when someone... Actually, you hear something, you get a lead that you didn't even... That someone mentions the name that... Wait a minute, Who's that? That makes that meeting worth it.

Kevin: Yeah, absolutely.

Matthew: So, Kevin, you originally from Ireland, right?

Kevin: Yeah.

Matthew: Where?

Kevin: Northern Ireland.

Matthew: Where?

Kevin: Near Belfast.

Matthew: There is an Irish element to this.

Kevin: Oh, undoubtedly.

Matthew: And then there's a there's obviously the Irish American, Ireland and the United States links. And maybe you can say a little bit more about that. I mean, how does it now in 2019 watching this from 1969, so 50 years on. I mean, another part of America doesn't exist. All these references to ethnicity don't exist

Kevin: I mean, that was a deliberate sort of plie in the late 60s, early 70s. were formally neighbourhoods known as Irish, Polish, Italian, and whatever. We're just white and black. And it was partly a way of. So, Americans today probably... I mean, Brennan talks himself as being Irish and his mother was English. I don't know how many generations back they were going, but in Brennan you have, what the quintessential Irishness is the melancholy. And that comes across very, very strongly. And he's a very recognizable Irish type, with a bit of American gloss. Even though his mother's English. But what you also have, I guess, is a universal type, which is a man in midlife who hasn't achieved what he wanted to achieve. And that's true of most people lives. I don't know anybody who thinks Well I achieved everything I need, but in Brennan’s case it's particularly well observed. And I think as well being away from home in a cheap motel room in Florida, the whole thing is kind of slightly more exaggerated. With these dodgy Bible

Matthew: Salesman. Well he even says he's homesick and he they say we've only been away four days or something like that. But I think he is

Kevin: Truth was his wife left. So you get to be not homesick. I think he's homesick for something.

Matthew: I agree.

Kevin: I think he's lamenting something. And even the singing of the Irish songs when he's driving around. They're all kind of modelling miserable, which Ireland does the best. I mean, what you're seeing is this man trying to be upbeat for the camera, and really in some kind of breakdown, actually having some burn down on screen but it's a slow burn.

Matthew: You can see that because it's in the faces of the other salesman. He's Yes, like there's this sitting in a room with them and they just don't know what to do. They don't know what to say, this guy's obviously losing it and again then following him driving around and he's got Fiddler on the Roof on the radio and you know, and he's saying if I were rich man, I wouldn't be in this shit land, I think what he says, he's, it's just constant, it's just a constant stream of melancholy and dissatisfaction. And, depression.

Clip 2 (from the movie Salesman )

Yeah, that's it. That's a great clip, isn't it? I think. As we've said, this is not about Bible sailing. And this is really a story about one man. And why do you think the Maysles brothers settled on Paul Brennan?

Kevin: Well, I think if you look at the others, something you were alluding to earlier, Matthew, which is that Brennan is the most intelligent of them all. And he understands the despair of the situation. Because remember the younger one with the bow tie, The Rabbit Baker. The Rabbit has no kind of insight, when he's dealing with people. It's like as thick as two short planks, he doesn't get it, and all he's doing is getting the sale. McDevitt is The Bulll and he's the slower, he just blunders and then blunders out and it's like So what? Whereas I think somebody like Brennan and the guy in charge is straight out of a kind of Central Casting. He's like a sub John Wayne and he's ordering, more going to make a sale and I think it's hilarious. The training scene they do in Florida, where the supervisor takes them. Crazy. So I think Brennan was the smartest. I think he was the most intelligent, but that was his downfall. He could actually see that this was just such a...

Matthew: and how did it get into this.

Kevin: Well, yeah. And it's interesting I read a quote The New York Times film reviewer at the time went three times to see this film and he said it got better every time and every time I've watched it, it does get better. You see things you start to piece together the backstory and that's the true documentarian, What's on the display is only the part of the what's really there.

Matthew: Yeah, and I think it's a lovely piece of filmmaking it's aged very well. I actually came across a Maysles brothers were on David Letterman in the early 80s and mainly because he wanted to talk to him about Gimme Shelter and they funded all this by making commercials.

Kevin: Did they?

Matthew: Yes, so Alka Seltzer, they're going on about Alka Seltzer and cat Chow and all these sort of advertisements that they made, but it definitely stands the test of time that in there are other films that we've made mentioned to today and I think anyone who's interested in documentary filmmaking, the United States and even just Bibles or sales. If they want sales techniques and how not to do it, and not how to sign here, not how to make friends and not how to influence people. And it's worth it just for this one sec scene where he's driving through Opa Locka, Florida, which was very... I mean, I didn't even know this place existed.

Kevin: It looked like some kind of a film set that have been left behind.

Matthew: Well, it partly was. It was a not quite a film set, but a rich man obviously decided he wanted to go with Morris architecture. But what was amazing with this, he's driving around he's saying the names of places and they're the names that you heard about from Iraq and Afghanistan, sesame, Baghdad, Kandahar.

Kevin: I don't know if he was joking. When he sat later, they said, How did you do that? And he said, well I was in a Muslim area. Yes, but it was his way of life. But I don't know why he was joking at that point.

Matthew: Yeah. Well, Kevin, it's been a joy having you on the show. Thank you. Thanks for kicking things off, thanks for being a guinea pig. You look like you survived that. But let us know how you doing a couple days? How the test run and we'd love to have you on certainly for our hundredth podcast.

Kevin: No chance.

Matthew: We'll keep that in mind. So all of you listening at home, thanks for joining us. Please let your friends and family know about us, like us or share us via Apple podcast. And thank you again for joining us and this is Factual America signing off.

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Salesman by Albert and David Maysles

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