• REVIEW LINK -- Pitch People is a captivating, well-edited and illuminating documentary about the pitchmen and pitch women who sell products on TV infomercials or at trade fairs. Director Stanley Jacobs charts the history of their craft and how it has evolved throughout the years, i.e. by President Ronal Reagan's deregulation of FCC laws. He interviews many pitch people including Lester Morris, Wally Nash, Ed McMahon, Sandy Mason and Ron Popeil, among others, each of whom provides plenty of insights. You'll learn, for instance, about their tactic they refer to as A.I.D.A: Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. That's how they hook their audience. One of the pitchmen candidly admits that he feels good when consumers give him money when he successfully persuades them to buy the product. Pitch People also includes footage of the pitch people at work. Like all humans, they sometimes make mistakes and their demonstrations don't work smoothly if a machine is missing a key part, but they learn from their mistakes. It's also a very nerve-wracking profession and, as one pitchman amusingly says, it's the second oldest profession in the world. Kudos to director Stanley Jacobs for capturing his subjects' lively personalities and their charisma while shedding light on a profession that's often taken for granted. At a running time of only 1 hour and 28 minutes, Pitch People opens at Village East by Angelika.

  • Stanley Jacobs’s taut, affectionate little documentary hangs on a smat- tering of aged hucksters who at fairs and on late-night TV peddle the flimsy gizmos that slice and dice, magically remove impossible-to-get- out stains, and wipe clean with a single swipe. Who can forget the Crazy Straw, the Pocket Fisherman, and the Ginsu Knife? Armed with auctioneer’s lips and pre-stidigitator’s hands, the film’s subjects think of themselves not as salesmen but as entertainers. One pitcher proudly hails his job as “the second oldest profession.” Even Ed McMahon got his start hawking cutlery on the boardwalk of Atlantic City. Jacobs allows the interviewees to speak freely and without contextual manipulation.

    The archival footage, including movie clips of snake-oil pushers and ’70s TV ads and infomercials, is well laid between anecdotes, and the deconstruction of the techniques behind the “live demonstration” shows an unexpected appreciation for the art of the gadget pitch. But this movie is not without moral undercurrents. In one telltale sequence, the filming of an infomercial, the hot item, a dicer, breaks apart six times before performing the desired operation. Pitch People may not be deep, but as cinematic journalism it cuts to the bone.

  • Pitch People gives a behind-the-scenes look at those fast-talking, genial people who peddle Veg-o-matics, Salsa Masters and Wonder Scoopers at home shows, state fairs and on TV infomercials.

    Jacobs looks at a band of hucksters, who go back to traveling medi- cine man shows in the Old West, and discovers that they’re not like

    you or me at all. They’re showmen who travel a circuit whose “bigtime” was the Boardwalk at Atlantic City and is now hour-long shows on vacant cable TV channels, where they pitch viewers everything from knives strong enough to saw through a steel-headed hammer to static dusters, mops, non-stick cookware, slicers, dicers and weight-loss pro- grams.

    As much entertainers as they are salesmen, they also still travel from town to town, setting up tables at home shows and fairgrounds, trying to entice passersby to stop, look, listen and hand over their dollars.

    Jacobs interviews a dozen or so of the legendary kings and queens of pitch in the United States and United Kingdom. For some it’s a calling that’s been handed down through generations; some are related to each other. Some, like Ed McMahon, still pitch products. It must be in the genes.

    Most of these characters are fascinating and lively, especially when they describe how they get excited when they know they’ve got the public in their pockets. And certainly their vast array of slicing, dicing, handy-dandy gadgets are fun, especially when we see them or their predecessors advertised in old TV commercials.

    By Michael Janusonis

  • The community explored in Pitch People is… fascinating for being obscure out in the open. Director Stanley Jacobs takes us behind the scenes of infomercials, TV mail-order ads and product fairs to intro- duce us to the men and women charged with separating fools from their money. A veritable who’s who of hucksterism, the film traces a history of selling — from oldtime medicine men to Ginsu knives — by talking to the community that keeps it alive. These people make a liv- ing by putting a human face on capitalism in the raw, and Jacobs does a fine job of doing the same as he blends archival footage with talking- head interviews.

    By Paul Malcolm

  • REVIEW LINK — Greetings again from the darkness. It’s been 25 years since this documentary from Stanley Jacobs made the festival rounds, and now his 1999 film has gained an “anniversary” release in theaters and on 4K digital. Those of us of a certain age recall our favorite TV shows being interrupted with commercials for the latest “As Seen on TV” products. Ginsu knives and Pocket Fisherman were two of the most prominent, yet there were dozens more that gained airtime. What stood out was the excitement of those presenting the products, making that day’s miracle seem like a must-have for everyone … well except the Ronco Salad Shooter held little appeal for my younger self. But a Ginsu knife that cut through tin cans? I could find a use for that!

    Jacobs’ tracks the origins of pitch people back to the days of traveling ‘Medicine Men’ and their cure-all potions, to the untrusted ‘Snake Oil’ salesmen (who were often the same folks). What’s clear is that we humans have always (and continue to) been enticed by anything promised to make our daily lives easier and better … or as PT Barnum (supposedly) said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Of course, one need not have traveled in a covered wagon or even grown up with limited network TV in the 1970’s to have been mesmerized by the best (or even mediocre) pitch people. Every county and state fair, and most every trade show, car show, and conference, features the entertaining sideshow of a pitch person and their slight-of-hand, fast-talking presentation of some gadget. What Jacobs shows us is that these masters of oratory skills typically take great pride in their talent and results.


    Pitchers, hawkers, grafters, barkers, salespeople … it matters little what label is applied. Their job is to draw folks in, set the hook, and make the sale. The more fun you have with the pitch, the more likely you are to part with greenbacks (or tap your card these days). Ron Popeil (and his RonCo) may be the most famous and successful, and here, Jacobs details Popeil’s dad as well as the birth of the infomercial. Ed McMahon of Johnny Carson fame gets his own segment, and we experience how the pitch, once mastered, stays within the pitch person. We also hear from many others who work in this profession, some you’ll recognize, others you’ll feel like you should.

    Slicers and dicers, miracle mops, and cookware, as well as anything “-O-Matic”, are big players in this market, and we find it entertaining to watch the pitch, but also see the reactions of those gathered around the booth at the fair. It’s quite a phenomenon, and one that Stanley Jacobs expertly captured in this documentary from many years ago … one certainly due a resurgence.

    • David Ferguson

  • If you grew up watching TV in the Seventies, as I did, then you doubtless have a small portion of your heart reserved for those magical, shoddy “As Seen On TV” products such as Ron Popeil’s miraculous Pocket Fisherman, the unstoppable Ginsu carving knife (“It actually cuts clean through this tin can!!”), and RonCo’s Amazing Salad Shooter. How could you live without these miraculous aids to mod- ern household convenience? You couldn’t, of course, and so the products’ creators and their late-night television “pitch people” became, oddly enough, a cultural sub- genre in their own right.

    Jacobs’ zippy, engaging documentary examines the history of pitchmaking, from its turn-of-the-century origins among snake-oil salesman and carnival barkers in England to those heady days during the introduction of television to the American heartland, where this unique form of advertising was refined and redesigned for a whole new generation. Goggle-eyed viewers and struggling housewives, desperate for the labor-saving devices and doo-dads so colorfully promoted into their living rooms via the tube, flocked to dial the flashing 1-800 number on their screens — as a result, Ron Popeil, Brit expatriate John Parkin (no-stick cookware was his spe- cialty, along with the breathless delivery, live audience, and an incredulous female “partner” amazed at the way that poached egg slid unhindered around the pan), and many others became both fabulously wealthy and extremely well-known, virtu- ally overnight. Jacobs’ film examines not only the various players in the product- pitching universe, but also the cultural background that has allowed much of cur- rent late-night television programming to be overrun by endless infomercials featur-

    ing the likes of get-rich shill-meisters and miracle auto waxes resistant to everything from lighter fluid to, presumably, alien attack.

    The Reagan administration is responsible for deregulating the longstanding FCC laws that previously mandated that television commercials could be no more than 60 seconds in length. While this was clearly a tremendous boon to the pitch people and product-hawkers, fans of more esoteric TV fare have ever since been con- signed to endless channel surfing; television’s “vast wasteland” of the Sixties is nothing compared to the floodtide of dreck faced by modern viewers. Despite the inherently cloying nature of the pitching business, Jacobs’ breezy documentary somehow manages to make it all seem downright homey. Interviews with Johnny Carson sidekick and former Atlantic City boardwalk huckster Ed McMahon and crony Arnold “Mr. Knife” Morris are downright nostalgic. You get the inescapable feeling that this sort of capitalistic byproduct is as American as Mom, baseball, and apple pie, despite the fact that the film traces the pitchmen’s origins to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. As quickly paced and breathlessly intoned as the com- mercials it profiles, Jacobs’ amusingly wacky film highlights what is by all accounts a rapidly vanishing art form — that of separating the consumer from his money while entertaining him at the same time.

    By Marc Savlov

  • Hur-ray, hur-ray, step right up and behold this Space Age marvel. It slices, it dices, it thoroughly entertains. It’s Pitch People, a documen- tary on those mesmerizing spielmeisters who hawk everything from carving knives to feather dusters to coleslaw/salsa makers, yammering at us from carnival booths and television screens.

    Filmmaker Stanley Jacobs follows the community of fast-talking prod- uct demonstrators who travel from fair to fair, living off their ability to bequile and separate us from our money by pitching gizmos that cut vegetables into slinkies. Gizmos that we buy and throw in drawers when we realize we cannot make them work like the pitch people did.

    In glib, mellifluous interviews, they give away a few trade secrets — “It’s not what you sell, it’s how you tell them the price,” explains one practi- tioner — but don’t expect to learn enough to prevent you from falling for these genial sales artists the next time.

    In fact, you will probably gain a new affection for their skills. They are, of course, selling to Jacobs and seducing the camera as they talk. Pitch People is more tribute than expose and by the end you wouldn’t want it any other way.

    Jacobs begins with the traveling snake oil salesmen (represented cheekily by a clip from Danny Kaye’s The Court Jester) and eventually takes us inside the television studios of today’s sophisticated infomer- cials. He overreaches, attempting to widen his topic to the sociology of American consumerism, but like the plastic knives that we see fre- quently cutting into the head of a steel hammer, Pitch People never gets dull.

  • Documentaries hold a special place in the movie business, more hon- ored than attended. For me, they attain a higher average of interest and quality than fiction films as they take you to places and allow you to meet people you’d never expect to encounter. As one for whom TV infomercials are a guilty pleasure, I was taken with Pitch People, Stanley Jacobs’ wildly entertaining film about the “second oldest pro- fession” that got started by itinerant snake-oil salesmen, went on to fairs and boardwalks and now appears on television, often selling kitchen slicing apparatus.

    By Charles Britton

  • An engaging look at the snake-charming ways of professional product hawkers, “Pitch People” tells you more than you probably thought you wanted to know about those folks who’ve made the purchase of Whip-O-Matics, Miracle Knives and other slicing, dicing, scrubbing, broiling gadgets seem like a life-or- death necessity. A broader scope and more retro-kitsch stylish approach might have made this the “Atomic Cafe” of TV hard-salesmanship. By focusing on personalities, Stanley Jacobs’ docu provides an amiable diversion, albeit one that’s a bit content-lite for feature length; broadcast berths seem preor- dained, with trimdown for 60-minute slots unlikely to do much harm.

    Brief early seg charts the trade back to transient “medicine men” hawking “herbal remedies” — as one latter-day “demonstrator” notes, such vending is probably the “world’s second oldest profession.” Once fellow travelers on the carnival circuit, now more likely to appear at trade shows and consumer “fairs,” the old-school pitch men used to consider Atlantic City boardwalks as their career Mecca. (A genial Ed McMahon, who’s spent his post-Carson years hosting infomercials, got his start there; he says Charles Bronson and Jack Klugman did, too.)

    Leading lights were a tight-knit, largely all-in-the-family concern. Late patriarch of the still-active Morris clan was an inventor and manufacturer as well as a pioneer in TV marketing. The Popeils of Popeil Potato Peeler fame were the Morrises’ chief competitors. (Final credits duly note that “Ronco” Ron Popeil, probably the most famous pitcher, refused to be interviewed for pic.) It’s mentioned that the two camps were not above swiping ideas from each other, but this intriguing rivalry isn’t explored further.

    Amusing ads from TV’s infancy onward hawk novelty items guaranteed to make your hair grow back, weight go down, household dust vanish and vegetables slice into virtual objets d’art. Of course, as one veteran notes, most people suckered in by the “pitch” probably used the product once or twice, then fuh- goddaboudit. But millions had already been pocketed. Feature’s most entertaining bits are those in which pro demonstrators work their garrulous, nimble-fingered magic at trade fairs. The spellbound, must-have expressions that develop on initially wary passers-by proves there’s still one born every minute.

    Taking a break from his covert Latin American operations, President Reagan found time to deregulate TV advertising, meaning that commercials need no longer be 60 seconds or less. Hence the mid-’80s birth of the infomercial, a pitch disguised (often at an hour’s length) as chat, cooking or home-improve- ment show. Some of these programs run for years — longer than all but a precious few broadcast series. Sequence of McMahon taping one such show with breathlessly excitable (on cue) co-host Maddy Press makes it clear that this is, well, as much a part of showbiz as anything else.

    More dubious is the suggestion that old-school pitching is “a dying art,” as wrap-up suggests; clearly, the form lives on, ever-changing to suit new media and new auds. Though some material here grows repeti- tious, pic is pacey enough, with a humorous but non-condescending P.O.V. Tech aspects are pro. Camera (color), John Armstrong; music, Brian Scott Bennett; sound (Dolby Digital), Ted Hall.

    By Dennis Harvey

  • We see them on infomercials or at the mall, delivering spiels. In the documentary Pitch People, they speak for themselves.

    Stanley Jacobs’ Pitch People, which screens tonight at 7:30 at the Egyptian, is one of the most entertaining films the American Cinematheque’s Alternative Screen showcase has presented.

    Finding an apt subject is ever the documentary filmmaker’s key task, and in this Jacobs has been truly inspired. He introduces a group of pitch people–individuals who try to sell all manner of gadgets and products by demonstrating how they work–at fairs, flea markets and, of course, on TV, especially in the age of the infomercial.

    These are colorful, engaging folks who work hard trying to induce us to buy those kitchen gadgets that slice, dice, grate and shred with lightning speed and efficiency. The golden rule, we learn, is that the product must actually work and that the pitch person must believe in it. Whether you will actually get around to using such thingamajigs once you get them home is a whole other matter–the last thing that the pitch person wants you to think about.

    Receiving special attention are two brothers, Arnold and Lester Morris, of Asbury Park, N.J. Their father, Nat, was a pioneering legend in the field, as was Nat’s cousin and rival, Seymour Popeil, whose descendant Ron has been hailed as the salesman of the century–and, unfortunate- ly, is not among Jacobs’ interviewees. Lester pioneered pitches on TV and, in fact, back in the ’50s built an infomercial-style cooking show around a rotisserie he was selling. The Morrises gave the world the glass knife and the fruit juice extractor; today, Arnold is famed for selling knives.

    Pitch people understand that they’re in a form of show business, so it figures that no less than Ed McMahon got his start from Lester selling the Morris Metric Slicer on the Atlantic City Boardwalk.

    Jacobs’ film is framed with a treasure trove of vintage clips, and it leaves us realizing that the traditional pitch, delivered to a live audience, may be a dying art.

  • Our second piece of booty is a 90 minute Documentary entitled PITCH PEOPLE, produced, directed, and edited by Stanley Jacobs. It is really unfortunate that a lot of people cringe when they even hear the word documentary. I person- ally think that is because many docs just simply aren’t done properly.

    First: I don’t believe as a documentarian, a director or interviewer should not become a character in the film. I under- stand, sometimes it is necessary to have a question and answer session taped in it’s entirety, but if done properly, the subject matter should appear to an audience as if it was telling itself. Have a voice over if there are any gaps. When was the last time you watched the Discovery or History channel and saw a production about a journalist trying to make a movie about a period of history…you don’t…and if you did…then it wouldn’t be a good documentary, then would it?

    Rant over…Mr. Jacobs’ PITCH PEOPLE is a wonderful example of how to properly and interestingly create a docu- mentary.

    Pitch People is the history of the salesmen and women that started hawking their wares from the back of carts…the old “snake-oil” salesmen, through the days of boardwalks and fairs, and have ended up on the modern infomercial. One of the things I enjoyed about Pitch People is that it opened me up to a society and distinction of people that I really never thought about much before.

    I know I’ve sat in front of the television, trying to change that channel, but couldn’t help but stare at that chopper/slicer/car wax/whatever-it-is-o-matic, but never really thought of the origins of these types of salesmen.

    The pitch person really is a very specific sort of actor… I’ve acted and sold things in my time, and yes I do have a Mouth on me the size of Montana…and selling things is very difficult for me. So it amazes me to see these men and women go. As an actor, what’s the feedback you get from your audience?

    Pitch People is a extremely well-shot and cut film. In many independent films, there might be something about it, no matter how small, that yells independent. Perhaps it’s a particular actor or set. Maybe it’s the way the light doesn’t quite work in a particular scene. Albeit something small, usually there’s a tip-off of some sort. In Pitch People, I almost forgot I was watching an independent documentary. The quality of the editing, letting the Pitch People tell the story themselves, it really drew me in. Perhaps that’s the allure…these actors have had the hardest acting job of all time, Pitch Sales, for as long as some of them can remember, no wonder sitting in front of a camera and just talking is so easy for them.

    I know how difficult it might be for a documentary these days to make a successful theatrical run. I think the last one I saw really hang on locally was “Hands on a Hard Body,” which I will refrain from commenting on, but people here in Austin at least liked it enough to keep it in the theatre a very long time. I think an incredibly high-quality production such as this would do just as well, if not better…heck, it’s got Ed McMahon in it, for goodness sakes!! That having been said, not being familiar with this sort of transaction, perhaps a more profitable or viable option would be to pursue video or cable distribution through channels that play documentary-style productions, such as the Discovery or History channels. I could really see this film played regularly, with the video sold afterward on either one of the afore-mentioned channels.

    Some film makers or readers may be offended by this, because it removes a film from the format of the theatre. Then again, when starting out, sometimes concessions have to be made if societally, a movie you have painstakingly created may not be accepted by the public because of simply what type of movie it is.

    Sad state we live in… but readers, let’s try to change that. Widen your perceptions, go see something you maybe wouldn’t normally see. You may be very surprised.