Behind the Window Display: Cinema’s Desperate Salesmen

The first time we see Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire in Backrooms, the furniture store owner squints his eyes at the front window as a bright red, spray-painted ​“RIP OFF” glares back at him. As he enters, generic signs reading ​“ENTIRE STORE ON SALE!” and ​“EVERYTHING MUST GO!” decorate the ceiling. It’s abundantly clear that this is not a thriving business. Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) spends his days at the store – and his nights, since his wife ​“kicked” him out – drowning his sorrows in the showroom. When his therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve), and author of ​‘The Window Within,’ suggests Clark is lonely, he rejects it on the basis that he has employees and customers, and during a roleplay session in which Mary acts as his wife, Clark erupts in anger: ​“I am a fucking architect, I’m just stuck selling shit furniture…”

The store was never meant to be more than a temporary way to pay the bills, but there is no gateway within its boring, cream walls. Until there is. Shrouded in cheap wood and fluorescent light, liminality grows out of the store’s uncanny performance of intimacy and warmth. And Clark, disappointed and unfulfilled, is an extension of this coldness, slowly becoming as hardened as the peg leg he dons for an embarrassing and sad commercial that leaves him flat on his ass. Clark isn’t an artist; he isn’t even a salesman; he is a mascot for failure. And he is not the only one. In cinema, this specific brand of businessman is often just as artificial as their storefront displays, and in many cases, they are haunted by images of glass through cubes, windows, and mirrors that refract the duality of their lives and the traps they so often build for themselves.

When we consider films about salesmen, we often think of epic tales about misguided but badass men who make risk look cool: Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street or Alec Baldwin’s Blake in Glengarry Glen Ross spring to mind as fast-talking, profane businessmen who teach you the depravity good sales demand. Peel the archetype back further, and we arrive at the car salesman, more likely to be a sleazy dirtbag than a smooth-talker. Matilda​’s patriarch Harry (Danny DeVito) sells illegal parts while demanding respect from his daughter, and Fargo​’s Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) sacrifices his own wife’s safety as collateral damage.

But what about the men who can’t depend on automobiles to feign charm, who can’t achieve this level of deluded conviction? Their mediocrity is encapsulated by brick-and-mortar stores selling home goods including furniture, tubs, or beds. This sub-archetype of the salesman is more lost than sleazy, operating without the confidence and intellect to be con-men. 

In Desperately Seeking Susan, housewife Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) exists in the shadow of her tub salesman husband, Gary (Mark Blum). In an early version of the screenplay by Leora Barish, Gary originally directs commercials. Upon his entrance, the action reads ​“He’s big, driven, boyish and insensitive.” The specific reason his job was reworked is unclear, but the tub industry lends itself better to the pre-Yuppie lens through which we view him, and subsequently, Roberta. The couple’s New Jersey lifestyle is entirely pastel, a sickly saccharine view of luxury devoid of depth or passion, and Roberta wants more. Still, commercials appear in the story – a cheeky technique employed by several films to further poke fun at the salesmen. While hosting a party, Gary’s alarm goes off, reminding him and his guests to catch his new promo on the television. A goofy Gary, one leg propped up on the tub as bikini-ed women giggle behind him, encourages viewers to come to ​“Gary’s Oasis.” Roberta cannot be bothered to indulge in her corny husband for another second, and turns away from the TV to stare out the glass door, confronting her forlorn reflection. Gary’s commercial voiceover echoes ​“All your fantasies can come true” as Roberta opens the door and stares outward to New York City, contemplating her own fantasies. The couple has fashioned their ivory tower for the ​’80s, replete with glass blocks (featured in the opening shot of the film) and soft hues. In her journey of self-discovery, Roberta becomes pulled toward the vivid spaces and textures that tincture Susan’s lifestyle. 

While Gary is a rare example of this subtrope in that he is wealthy and successful, his life is not picture-perfect. As a submissive wife, Roberta carries enough dissatisfaction for both of them, shouldering the burden of a bland existence. It only takes a little bit of pot for The Spa King of New Jersey to think about the meaning of life beyond capitalism, yet he never actually arrives at any epiphany. Susan (Madonna) doesn’t indulge him, and even if she did, he would have nothing of substance to speak on beyond the resale value of your home after installing a tub.

For the pathetic salesman, the women in their lives are an afterthought, like ornamental furniture with no real power in a relationship that is more transactional than romantic. In Backrooms, Clark can only speak ill of his wife, and demands Mary tell him what he wants to hear: that he does not have to change. But not before Mary angrily proclaims that it is his whining and tendency to cast blame on everything except himself that has led his life to crumble the way it has. 

Paul Thomas Anderson has similarly explored the brick-and-mortar salesman in this vein. In Punch-Drunk Love, Dean Trumbell (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is the D&D Mattress Man, but his furniture store conceals his clandestine phone-sex business. Trumbell relies on others to do his bidding, including a female phone operator and several male goons who travel to extort more money out of protagonist Barry (Adam Sandler) on Trumbell’s behalf. In reality, Trumbell’s hostile and repetitive ​“shut up” toward those around him is also a front – the guy can’t even handle a haircut without complaining – as he ultimately surrenders after Barry threatens him with violence. It’s worth mentioning that Barry similarly is an entrepreneur exhibiting the qualities of a crisis of masculinity: loneliness and rage. But he is made sympathetic through his affection for his love interest Lena (Emily Watson). Working in a warehouse rather than a showroom, Barry is not manufacturing a persona, and instead acts as his most vulnerable, nonplussed self, even if it makes him stand out amongst the crowd. It’s the very reason why he is the one who becomes more actualized in a mattress shop, rather than the very owner of it.

PTA’s 2021 film Licorice Pizza sees a gender reversal in the archetype. Alana (Alana Haim) is 25 and not quite sure what to do with her life, while Cooper Hoffman’s Gary (a character inspired by Anderson’s friend Gary Goetzman, who began as a child actor and went on to open a waterbed business and pinball arcade), 10 years her junior, shows an interest in her and gives her something new to pass the time. The first time we see Alana, she dawdles past teenagers on picture day, reluctant to play her role as the photographer’s assistant. Carrying a comb and a mirror, Alana apathetically offers introspection to others – including Gary in their meet-cute – but pointedly ignores her own, lest she catch her driftless self in the reflection. 

Alana eventually becomes a partner in the waterbed business, updating the branding to be more appealing. A particularly awkward scene comes at the grand opening of the Fat Bernie’s waterbed store, as Gary dresses in a suit and tie and Alana dons a lilac two-piece bathing suit. When Gary’s crush enters the store, he ogles her more than Alana, while a stoned Alana tries to hang onto him and keep his attention. Even with a woman embodying the trope, there is still an air of pitiful instability. Alana’s realization that she is perhaps sacrificing too much of her time and integrity by owning a failing business with a 15-year-old arrives after the final waterbed sale, a tremendous scene and one of the first Haim shot for the film: driving a truck in reverse – and doing so for real – Haim actualizes her namesake character’s fearless grit, but even more skillfully showcases the comedown after the high. What’s left when the pageantry of a good time fades?

The brick-and-mortar has flatlined in contemporary culture. With the rise of online purchasing, many of these locales have ceased to exist. Taking another look at the ones left standing in my city, I can’t help but notice the lack of cars in their parking lots. Indeed, the businesses featured in these films are never manifestations of their characters’ dreams or passions, but rather an idle, trivial engagement that keeps them a safe distance from genuine connection. In doing so, they dilute themselves in favor of premonitory visions of capitalist emptiness. These characters depend on their rudeness and judgement to maintain their mirage from within their glass house, but the fact of the matter remains that if they refuse to change, they will remain as unwanted and unpopular as their inventory.