Salesmen in Retrospective

I first saw Salesmen a few months after I spent the summer selling books door to door in the Philadelphia suburbs as a college summer job, with my sales partner when it was first shown in theatres. We were plunked down in the territory and had to come up with lodging on our own. We rented a room , and pretty much lived on twenty bucks a week - which was pretty low even 1968 money and I ended losing about thirty pounds in eight weeks. Never thought at the time I would ever be in sales as a real job , but I have been in financial services sales for over twenty five years. What stuck me about this film now is how much verite the Maysles were able to get on the screen, when compared to today's ubiquitous "reality TV" which inevitability feels phony and over produced.