A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Release Date:
April 30, 1985
Original Title:
Pitchmen
Genres:
Documentary
Production Companies:
ONF | NFB
Production Countries:
Canada
Ratings / Certifications:
N/A
Runtime: 53
If you've ever bought a wonder wallet, a food slicer, a canapé maker, a patty stacker, a miracle brush or a super knife, you may know that the CNE, the Calgary Stampede, and virtually every home show, car show, craft show, fall fair and ploughing match in Canada has at least one thing in common. At hallway intersections and bleacher exits work the second cousins of the carnival barker, the crowd pleasers and teasers, jugglers of people, product and pitch: the point-of-sales professionals known as pitchmen. This documentary looks at the psychology of the impulse sale and provides a view of the world of commerce, salesmanship and advertising at the grass-roots level. The men and women featured in the film have mastered the fine art of selling everything you never needed. Shot at fairs and on the set of a late-night TV commercial, the film shows the hard work behind the hustle.
Director:
Barry Greenwald
Director of Photography:
Mark Irwin
Editor:
Niv Fichman
Barry Greenwald
Executive Producer:
John Spotton
Producer:
John Kramer
Sound Editor:
Robin Leigh
Sound Recordist:
Ian Hendry
Andy McBrearty
Tom Mather
Writer:
Steve Lucas
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Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
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Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.