Duncan Geere

Film explores moral and political repercussions of proving P equals NP

Image may contain Human Person Furniture Chair Room Indoors Tabletop Interior Design and Meeting Room

What would happen if one government learnt how to bypass the world's encryption systems? That's the all-too-timely question asked by Travelling Salesman , a movie that hands the starring role to a mathematical puzzle.

Its title refers to the "travelling salesman problem" -- given a list of cities and the distances between them all, what's the most efficient way that a salesman can visit them all and return home?

It's easy to check whether a given answer satisfies the criteria, but finding the best solution without trying every single possibility may be impossible. This puzzle, and others like it, are referred to as P vs NP.

In Travelling Salesman , a quartet of mathematicians solve this problem -- they find a way to shortcut the brute-force process of trying every approach, instantaneously negating the way the world's encryption systems operates. They've been hired to do their work by the United States, but they're confronted with the moral quandary of whether to hand over their research to the government or publish it publicly for the whole world's benefit. "We wanted to make a film that felt authentic to a niche group, but also ultimately would be accessible to a wide audience," said Tim Lanzone, one of the movie's creators. "The film is science fiction, but we wanted the science part to be as accurate as possible," his brother and co-writer, Andy Lanzone, added.

It's set almost entirely around a conference table in a sleek, modern, government facility. Initially the four argue over the implications of their research, before a representative of the government arrives and their argument escalates significantly. "I wanted to see if I could contain drama in one room," says Tim Lanzone. "Film school professors always warn that the hardest and most difficult scenes to shoot occur around kitchen tables."

Of course, that makes shooting it cheap, too. The film has a definite DIY aesthetic, but it's impressive what Lanzone has managed to achieve within those constraints. He opted deliberately for a cool colour temperature to make the atmosphere intense and unsettling. "Most of the drama takes place in one room, so we looked to use any sort of additional drama we could harness to our advantage."

That atmosphere is paired with fast-paced and complex dialogue -- it's not a movie that you can put on in the background. Attempts are made to explain the mathematical ideas behind the plot, but you will get more out of it if you've done a little research beforehand. The Lanzones admit this. "Understanding P vs NP directly isn't essential to enjoying the film -- especially if you have some grasp of the implications," says Tim. "We try to simplify it as well as we can during certain scenes but the pace of the dialogue is so fast that a lot of people are just along for the ride."

The movie isn't about the maths, though. Travelling Salesman is a film about power, and how it should be distributed. The government representative's job is to convince the four to sign off their parts of the solution, but it's an uphill struggle as they grapple with the repercussions of what the knowledge would mean for the world.

The bogeyman of China is brought up repeatedly, but it's fascinating to watch the film in light of recent revelations about the extent to which the US and UK's security agencies are already violating global encryption systems through back doors created in many of the world's communication networks.

The script was written long before Edward Snowden's revelations came to light, but Tim Lanzone says the topic had been on his mind for some time. "I wrote the first draft of the script back in early 2009, which in cyber-time is like an eternity. Back then, articles were really starting to come out more and more highlighting issues related to cyber-security and cyber-espionage -- particularly on important defence targets. It just seemed to be the next cold war-style battleground."

Andy Lanzone adds: "I don't know anyone that foresaw the scope of what the NSA is doing, so that was entirely coincidental. But the more general topic of cyber warfare was an interesting topic that we felt would only become more relevant over time."

The film firmly fails the Bechdel Test in that every one of the characters is white and male, limiting their perspectives considerably. The Lanzones blame this lack of diversity on budget: "We shot the film for under $25,000 and had a whirlwind casting session over two days in LA -- which was all the time we could afford," says Tim. "Knowing we only had about ten days to shoot Travelling Salesman , we were just trying to narrow it down to the five people who could most ably handle the complex language."

Ultimately, you'll get the same amount out of Travelling Salesman that you put into it. It's not a casual watch, but rewards concentration and occasionally pausing the movie and opening Wikipedia to check whether you've understood something right. If you were being cruel, you'd call it an argument for an hour and a half. But the themes and issues it addresses have never been more relevant -- the power of access to private communications, and whether it's right for that power to be concentrated under the auspices of one or a few governments. If you have strong feelings on the matter, on either side, Travelling Salesman is an essential watch.

travelling salesman film summary

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"The themes and issues it addresses have never been more relevant ... Travelling Salesman is an essential watch."

travelling salesman film summary

" Travelling Salesman ’s mathematicians are all too aware of what their work will do to the world, and watching them argue how to handle the consequences offers a thriller far more cerebral than most."

travelling salesman film summary

"Simply unbelievably excellent filmmaking. This is a film to seek out."

travelling salesman film summary

"A trip to see this movie might become an obligatory part of all math degrees."

travelling salesman film summary

Worldwide Screening Events

New York. Philadelphia. London. Cambridge. Phoenix. Washington D.C. Glasgow. Tel Aviv. Seoul. Hamburg. Hertfordshire. San Francisco. Athens. College Station. Milwaukee. Nanyang. Edinburgh. Ann Arbor.

travelling salesman film summary

Winner Best Feature Film

Silicon valley film festival 2012, picture summary.

Travelling Salesman is an intellectual thriller about four mathematicians hired by the U.S. government to solve the most elusive problem in computer science history — P vs. NP. The four have jointly created a "system" which could be the next major advancement for our civilization or destroy the fabric of humanity.

The solution's immediate application would be for theoretical computer science. However, its application would soon extend to countless other disciplines. For example, by utilizing the solution to P vs. NP, a hacker could crack advanced encryption codes within seconds—a task that now takes weeks, months, or even years. He could break into La Guardia's air traffic control or China's communication grid. But the mathematical algorithm would also serve as the basis for accelerated biological research, curing diseases such as AIDS and cancer.

We begin the film with the four at a secret location waiting to meet with a high-ranking official of the United States Department of Defense. The group discusses the global implications of their solution, and they agree that they must be extremely careful with who they allow to control their discovery.

The silver-tongued DoD agent soon arrives and presents them each with an offer of 10 million dollars in exchange for their portion of the algorithmic solution. He attempts to deftly address their concerns and sway the opinions of the four.

In the end, only one mathematician speaks out against selling the solution. In pleading his case, he is forced to reveal the dark truth about his portion of the algorithm. As the mathematicians are about to sign documents that will give the U.S. government sole and private ownership of their solution, they wrestle with the moral dilemma of how this volatile discovery will be used. The math is real. The implications are real.

The Math Behind The Film

The P vs. NP problem is the most notorious unsolved problem in computer science. First introduced in 1971, it asks whether one class of problems (NP) is more difficult than another class (P).

Mathematicians group problems into classes based on how long they take to be solved and verified. " NP " is the class of problems whose answer can be verified in a reasonable amount of time. Some NP problems can also be solved quickly. Those problems are said to be in " P ", which stands for polynomial time. However, there are other problems in NP which have never been solved in polynomial time.

The question is, is it possible to solve all NP problems as quickly as P problems? To date, no one knows for sure. Some NP questions seem harder than P questions, but they may not be.

Currently, many NP problems take a long time to solve. As such, certain problems like logistics scheduling and protein structure prediction are very difficult. Likewise, many cryptosystems, which are used to secure the world's data, rely on the assumption that they cannot be solved in polynomial time.

If someone were to show that NP problems were not difficult—that P and NP problems were the same—it would would have significant practical consequences. Advances in bioinformatics and theoretical chemistry could be made. Much of modern cryptography would be rendered inert. Financial systems would be exposed, leaving the entire Western economy vulnerable.

Proving that P = NP would have enormous ramifications that would be equally enlightening, devastating, and valuable...

"Mathematical puzzles don't often get to star in feature films, but P vs NP is the subject of an upcoming thriller"

"A movie that features science and technology is always welcome, but is it not often we have one that focuses on computer science. Travelling Salesman is just such a rare movie."

"We all know that the P=NP question is truly fascinating, but now it is about to be released as a movie."

"I speak with Timothy about where he got the idea for the movie, how he made sure that the mathematics was correct, and why science movies just may be the new comic book movies."

"At last someone is taking the position that P = NP is a possibility seriously. If nothing else, the film's brain trust realize that being equal is the cool direction, the direction with the most excitement, the most worthy of a major motion picture."

"Travelling Salesman is an unusual movie: despite almost every character being a mathematician there's not a mad person in sight."

Production Stills

travelling salesman film summary

Plus.Maths.org

'travelling salesman'.

cover

'Travelling Salesman'

Written and directed by timothy lanzone.

It's not often the very first person you meet in a movie is a mathematician. The second, third and fourth people on screen also being mathematicians is even rarer. But the movie Travelling Salesman is a rare movie: not only are almost all of the characters mathematicians, the central plot also hinges on the solution of one of the most important problems in mathematics.

This tense thriller is an independent movie written and directed by Timothy Lanzone. We were lucky enough to host the UK premiere here at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge. It has all the vital ingredients for an edge-of-your-seat film: hidden identities (indeed we learn the name of only one of the characters), surly government agents, threats of violence, moral dilemmas and a potential global catastophe.

Most of the movie is set in a single room, a secret government location, where four men are waiting to be debriefed by a government agent as their highly classified project has been completed. It turns out they are all brilliant mathematicians and one of the outcomes of their project, an outcome which seemed to have been somewhat unexpected, was that they solved one of the greatest problems in mathematics and theoretical computer science: that P=NP .

The NP in this statement refers to the class of mathematical problems whose answers are easy to check, that is a computer can verify the answer is correct in a reasonable amount of time. Some of these problems, those in the class P, can also be solved in a reasonable amount of time. However there are some NP problems, such as the eponymous Travelling Salesman problem, that we do not know how to solve quickly and, in fact, we don't know if that is even possible. Since this problem was posed in 1971 no one has managed to prove definitively if P equals NP. (You can read more about the maths in our article The travelling salesman .)

In the movie the unexpected proof of P=NP has massive consequences, such as being able to break any current cryptographic system rendering all digital security worthless. "We always assumed that brute force search was hard and that it takes a long time... and we just showed it was easy," says one of the mathematicians in the film. Their breakthrough was illustrated by a card trick: Pick a card from a pack, look at it and return it to the pack. The magician could do a brute force search and check every card, asking if it was your chosen card, but this could take ages, particularly if you had a million cards. Instead, the mathematicians have developed a "nondeterministic oracle", a kind of a mathematical black box, that you can just ask 'what is the chosen card?' and it will tell you.

The film is essentially a debate between the four mathematicians and their government handler about the ethical consequences of their work. Will it be used for evil, by governments (or worse) to spy on all communication and data? It could be used for good but will keeping it secret mean that medical advances and scientific discoveries will be hampered? Throughout the film the mathematical result is compared to Oppenheimer's nuclear research that was used for nuclear bombs but also gave us nuclear medicine.

Although the use of their work for good versus evil was the concern for three of the main protagonists, for one character – Dr Tim Horton – the bigger question was one of academic and intellectual morality. Was it right to keep one of the most fundamental mathematical results secret from the world? Was mathematical knowledge bigger than national security or personal gain?

It was wonderful to hear so many mathematicians name-checked – Hardy, Gödel, von Neumann – and very refreshing to see mathematicians portrayed as normal three-dimensional people. The four main characters were just as human, and as flawed, as any of us, although it was a bit of a shame that every character in the film was white and male (bar an underperforming student who appeared for less than a minute). Mathematicians are usually portrayed as crazy (as in the film Pi ) and even if they are heroic they also have to be eccentric characters (as in Independence Day ). This time they were just normal people. And excitingly in this movie they were both the heroes and the villians of the piece, often both at the same time.

It was also very impressive to see such a sophisticated mathematical concept used with such imagination and integrity on the screen. A real effort had been made to portray the mathematics, and how mathematics is done, accurately. I did wonder if the slew of mathematical jargon would put a nonmathematical person off, but perhaps that is no different from me watching a medical drama and letting the stream of medical terms wash over my brain while I focussed on the drama at the heart of the story. And at the heart of this story was that mathematics now underpins so much of our lives, meaning that mathematical discoveries could have a dramatic impact on the world, leading to new advances or to potential catastrophe and all the moral dilemmas that entails. Perhaps an ethics class, or at least a trip to see this movie, might become an obligatory part of all maths degrees.

To find out where this movie is screening next visit the Travelling Salesman website .

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My Thoughts

Gotta say I agree highly on a lot of these points. Although I've never particularly been a fan of math nor an expert on it, I could understand and follow along with the dramatic implications - many of which are summarized neatly here - put forth by the characters driving the plot of the film. While I wouldn't say it blew my mind, this film did intrigue me.

Excellent mixing of math theory and suspenseful film making

i definitely agree with your assessment that they were very imaginative and creative with such a concrete mathematical concept. It is one of the things I definitely found enjoyable about the film, it made it a lot easier to pay attention.

Math Thriller

I agree it was refreshing seeing mathematics used so directly in a psychological thriller. It's along the same vein as Ex Machina or Annihilation by Alex Garland. In all three there is a heavy emphasis on ethical consequences.

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Travelling Salesman

2012, Mystery & thriller/Sci-fi, 1h 20m

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Travelling salesman   photos.

The United States government hires four mathematicians to solve the hardest problem in computer science history.

Genre: Mystery & thriller, Sci-fi

Original Language: English

Director: Timothy Lanzone

Producer: Benji Bakshi , Clay Reed

Writer: Timothy Lanzone , Andy Lanzone

Release Date (Streaming): Mar 11, 2017

Runtime: 1h 20m

Production Co: Fretboard Pictures

Cast & Crew

Number Four

Marc Raymond

Tyler Seiple

Danny Barclay

No. 1 - Tim Horton

David John Cole

Professor Acuri

Malek Houlihan

Mysterious Man

Timothy Lanzone

Screenwriter

Andy Lanzone

Benji Bakshi

Benjamin Krause

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Christopher McGlynn

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What did I expect and what did I watch? Travelling Salesman (Movie)

by Pelin Cay · October 26, 2012

travelling salesman film summary

On Monday, 13 th of August, I was at the world premiere of Travelling Salesman at New York City International Film Festival ( http://www.nyciff.com/ ). The story is based on what if P=NP is proved and how to deal the consequences of this finding. For more details you can check the official web site http://www.travellingsalesmanmovie.com/ . As far as I know, this should be one of the earliest movies relevant to OR/MS field. Therefore, I was very excited before the movie and I have tremendously high expectations from the movie since this movie considers our (OR/MS people’s) topics. When the movie ended, my first feeling was, the movie was very disappointing.

Initially, the writer is mainly trying to focus on the consequences of the findings that will change the world however, there is not any scene how the impacts are so powerful. Instead, possible and limited consequences are stated in words ! I felt that as if I am reading the scenario instead of watching the movie itself. Moreover, these outcomes are discussed on the same scene throughout the movie; 5 nervous men around a table. Actually almost the whole movie is captured in the same room. I will not even talk about unrelated scenes about the topic. Consequences of this massive finding should not be captured like an art movie.

Second, the same things are repeated so many times. Since writer’s background is computer science, he focuses on how cryptology will be affected after the finding. Therefore, the complexity of the NP problems is presented so weakly, as if they are only related to computer science. Also, I guess the writer forgot or filmmakers cut the scene where travelling salesman name come from. In the whole film, any player did not say any sentence including travelling salesman or I missed that part.

Before watching the movie, as a teaching assistant, I was thinking to organize an event to watch this movie with freshman and sophomore as a part of lecture to show them how their professors or their future colleagues will deal with what type of problems in their research/business lives. Moreover, it would also help them to visualize problems.  But after the movie, my thoughts just became a dream for at least a couple of years more. If we suggest the students to watch this film, their encouragement to learn NP problems could never start. Indeed they may find it as a boring stuff.

I hope with powerful casts, one of the simple-to-understand but hard-to-solve problem, travelling salesman problem, can be represented to the audience more reasonable scenes, not just by words.

Last words, I don’t want you discourage about watching the film. I just want to warn you to lower your expectations about the movie.

Tags: computer MS New York NP Travelling Salesman

travelling salesman film summary

PhD student at Lehigh University, ISE department. Interested in optimization and healthcare system integration.

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Four mathematicians are gathered and meet with a top official of the United States Department of Defense. After some discussion, the group agrees that they must be wary with whom to trust and control their solution. The official offers them a reward of $10 million in exchange for their portion of the algorithm, swaying them by attempting to address their concerns. Only one of the four speaks out against the sale, and in doing so is forced to reveal a dark truth about his portion of the solution. Before they sign a license to the government, however, they wrestle with the ethical consequences of their discovery. -- Wikipedia

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Travelling Salesman

Review by McCheaterson Pro

Travelling salesman 2012 ★★★½.

Watched Jul 18 , 2023

McCheaterson’s review published on Letterboxd:

I solved it!! N = 1 (Get it haha? .......please laugh).

Always wanted to give this a watch because I'm someone who loves maths..................and the poster intrigued me.

Seriously though my Dad and I love low budget sci-fi (my Dad especially), so that was a leading contributor.

In saying that......this film isn't sci-fi? I know Letterboxd doesn't have sci-fi as one of the genres, but on my streaming service it categorised Travelling Salesman under that branch.

It really is basically a drama, but the dialogue and subject matter is over complicated. It basically tries to be a 'smart person film' in the same vein as Primer. The difference is Primer does it through depictions and concept, whereas this is PURELY through dialogue.

So if you're someone who hates big words or people trying to sound smart, avoid this movie at all costs lol.

As for myself.....I loved it. My negatives (which I'll get to) bring it down for me, but there's a period of about 40 minutes in this movie which is pure gold, and while we were in this segment I was licking my lips as the movie reached its full potential and provided me exactly what I wanted.

Negatives first though. The opening 15 minutes or however long it was........the directing was horrible, and I was nervous for the rest of the film. Like this is what people mean when they say 'amateur directing'. WAY too shaky, plus the whole thing just felt cheap.

Thank goodness this gets fixed as the movie goes on, would've been dreadful viewing otherwise. Reminds me a lot of the first Hunger Games movie, where only the first 15 mins are unwatchable, which is weird.

I thought one of the actors was very bad. If you count our 4 leads left to right (so the guy who disagrees is #4) then I'm talking about #2. #1 was solid (reminded me of Shame Carruth due to how he looks and his persona), #3 was fine (but a bit inconsistent, some great lines and then ones that didn't land so well).

#4 however, was terrific. A clear tier above everyone else, loved his character and performance. His story line is great. I love the ambiguity over where he's simply imagining what would happen if he refuses, or whether it's that he's used the algorithm already and we're simply seeing the different possibilities.

Which I think is meant to be the reading of the film, and what most people will miss. The algorithm goes through every option remember, which is how it applies to the title (Travelling Salesman is such a genius title, not only linking in with the Travelling Salesman Problem, but to the plot in the form of the government guy too is just perfect).

But as I was saying, this reading of the film seems to fit best in my eyes for a few reasons. First, we go around the table as one of our leads asks 'has anyone used it' and we see the first 3 say no........whilst #4 disappears discreetly from the conversation. And secondly, we see fragments of the same sorts of convos throughout the movie, which is definitely purposeful in my eyes to accentuate that we're seeing the multiple realities.

The other reason I don't think it's just him imagining, is because saying what he says in front of the government guy would just be such a stupid thing to do if it was a live situation.

Speaking of the government guy, he is marvellous too, and the other clear standout actor here. He owns his role, I feel the power present, and I love the way he speaks. The aggressive interactions he has with everyone are terrific to watch.

In fact this movie becomes top tier from his introduction onwards, before it sizzles out once he brings the documents to sign out. No idea what length of time this is, but as I estimated above it'd be about 40 mins?

Cause yeah, anything outside of these 40 minutes has issues for me. The opening convo goes on for a bit too long, where it feels like they are repeating some of the same points (which as I said is genius for the different realities thing, but just doesn't make for interesting viewing). I could tell on a rewatch just how much of drag it'd be waiting for the government guy to show up. Heck even on this viewing I felt it, which says it all.

The ending is still great, particularly the computer bit, however as a whole it still feels inferior to these 40 minutes of gold.

My timings aren't adding up, because there's still 25+ missing minutes. So I think although the opening 15 minutes have crap direction, this opening convo only begins to sizzle out in the 10 mins before the government guy is introduced. In other words most of the first half is good (minus the obvious negatives), but it's when the government guy in introduced that things get excellent.

I love the genius concept things (like how to find an object buried/hidden in a desert), or the nature of how something like this algorithm would be applied (the fundamental P = NP thing is just excellent to think about, and makes sense).

Don't really have anything else to add. I love the subversion of the 'guard' guy in the room, and I thought the score was decent when it played (I can't remember it, but I remember thinking it sounded like it belonged in a higher budget film).

Apparently this was made on a budget of 25K, which is of course impressive, but only makes Primer's budget of 7K all the more impressive with what that masterpiece is able to conjure up.

Would I recommend it? Only if what I've said has interested you at all, otherwise don't bother, and there's plenty of low budget sci-fi films I'd recommend instead (Primer, Coherence, Upstream Color).

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FILM REVIEW

FILM REVIEW; A Traveling Salesman, An Adorable Foundling

By Stephen Holden

  • Dec. 1, 2000

Is there a more elemental expression of feeling than the look on a baby's face? The emotion (or is it instinct?) conveyed by the luminous foundling in Katherine Dieckmann's debut film, ''A Good Baby,'' is the driving force in a movie that has the structure and fatalistic mood of an Appalachian folk ballad. Because the baby girl is remarkably happy and outgoing for an infant who was left abandoned in the woods, she melts the hearts of everyone who comes in contact with her.

The foundling is the offspring of a traveling salesman and a naive local teenager he murders after she gives birth in the North Carolina backwoods. Accentuated by the twang of old-style country music, this story of seduction, murder and retribution is a potent blend of naturalism and myth. Although the film, based on a novel by Leon Rooke, is set in present-day Appalachia, its variation on the archetype of the traveling salesman and the farm girl seems almost to take place outside of time.

As photographed by Jim Denault, the bright green mountains of North Carolina are a rustic paradise scarred by poverty. Front yards are littered with the eroded hulks of abandoned cars, stacks of old tires and piles of accumulated junk. The only intrusions from the outside world are a car radio tuned to a local station and a tiny flickering television in the general store.

This is an area where the contemporary equivalents of snake-oil salesmen ply their trade door to door, sweet-talking their way into living rooms. One of these is Truman (David Strathairn), a wary, gimlet-eyed huckster peddling an all-purpose miracle shine. In the movie's creepy opening scene, Truman, who has seduced and impregnated the pretty Lena (Emilie Jacobs), learns of her pregnancy and is seized with alarm. Even while assuring her of his love, his face constricts with fury and his eyes glitter with murderous intention.

Enter Toker (Henry Thomas), a shy, isolated woodsman who lives alone in a crude underground shelter. While hunting in the woods one morning, he hears strange sounds that turn out to be the gurgles of the abandoned baby. Picking up the infant, he returns to the village, carrying the child from house to house and asking someone to take her in, but no one wants her. Along the way, he meets a girl (Allison Glenn) searching for her older sister, who has disappeared.

The movie cross-cuts between Truman, who learns of the discovery of the baby while making his rounds, and Toker, who slowly falls in love with the infant, whom he finally takes home to his shelter. Truman and Toker also cross paths with Josephine (Cara Seymour), a hard-bitten local beauty who, while fancying Toker, is instantly suspicious of the salesman.

''A Good Baby,'' which opens a one-week engagement today at the Walter Reade Theater, is a movie of few words and sharp, resonant images. The characters' faces reveal more about them than any words that come out of their mouths. An actor who has always radiated a furtive, clenched volatility, Mr. Strathairn gives his most sinister performance since ''Dolores Claiborne''; he is almost extravagantly villainous. If his performance is the movie's flashiest, the film is anchored in Mr. Thomas's strong, low-key portrayal of a simple man following his own deeply humane instincts.

A GOOD BABY

Written and directed by Katherine Dieckmann; based on the novel by Leon Rooke; director of photography, Jim Denault; edited by Kristina Boden and Malcolm Jamieson; music by David Mansfield; production designer, Debbie De Villa; produced by Lianne Halfon and Tom Carouso. At the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, 165 West 65th Street. Running time: 90 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Henry Thomas (Toker), David Strathairn (Truman), Cara Seymour (Josephine), Danny Nelson (Hindmarch), Jayne Morgan (Sarah), Allison Glenn (Sister), Jerry Foster (Trout), Jerry Rushing (Wallace), Emilie Jacobs (Lena), Hannah Grady (Baby) and Danny Vinson (Cal).

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Travelling Salesman (2012): a film review by Mark R. Leeper.

travelling salesman film summary

  ‘Travelling Salesman’ features four mathematicians and a government representative sitting in a room, discussing what should be done with their proof that P = NP, along with the underlying algorithm. They debate whether it should be publicly released, handed over to the government or licensed to corporations.

While the mathematical concepts presented aren’t always accurate as the filmmakers did not consult with mathematical experts, the core ideas can be related to many discoveries. There are explicit references to Los Alamos. Much of the dialogue aims to help the government representative and, by extension, the audience,  grasp the implications of their discovery rather than delving into the morality of various potential decisions.

This isn’t a movie that necessitates a large viewing format and we watched it via streaming on Vimeo. The conclusion, however, is a bit disappointing. It seems the filmmakers did not fully explore the ramifications of their central premise. A similar issue is present in the conclusion of ‘ Emergence’ .

(Note: The title uses a double ‘l’ and omits the definite article.)

Released theatrically on 16 June 2012. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10.

(c) Mark R. Leeper 2023

Travelling Salesman (2012): a film review by Mark R. Leeper.

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Big Fish (Film)

By tim burton, big fish (film) summary and analysis of part 4: edward, the traveling salesman.

That night in bed, Josephine tells Will that she talked to his father the previous night. When she confronts him for never telling her how his parents met, he insists that the whimsical details his father included aren't real, to which Josephine says, "but it's romantic." Josephine asks him if he loves his father, and he tells her that he was never around when he was a kid, saying, "He likes his second life better, and the reason he tells these stories is because he can't stand this boring place." Josephine disagrees, and tells Will that he should talk to his father.

The next morning, the family sits around Edward's bed as he eats his breakfast. When Edward goes to tell a story about "the maple tree and the Buick," Will stops him and tells him they've all heard the story before. Even Josephine knows it and tells it to Edward herself. When Sandra and Josephine go to do the dishes, Will and Edward talk.

Will uses the metaphor of an iceberg—the fact that one can only see 10% of it, while the other 90% is below the surface of the water—to describe their relationship and the fact that he doesn't really feel like they know each other. "You tell lies, Dad," says Will, confronting his father about his tall tales, and asking his father to show himself to him. "I've been nothing but myself since the day I was born, and if you can't see that, it's your failing, not mine!" says Edward.

Will leaves and goes outside to clean the pool. While cleaning, he suddenly sees a large fish swimming in the pool and jumps back, startled. Later, Sandra shows Will and Josephine the garage where Edward's office was. They decide to go through all the things to decide what's important and what ought to be thrown away. As they go through it, Sandra finds the old letter from the army saying Edward was dead, and gasps. "That really happened?" Will asks, taking the letter.

When Sandra goes to check on Edward, and Josephine goes to lie down, Will looks at a metallic hand that holds letters and smiles, and we are once again transported back into Edward's biography.

"With my prospects few, I took a job as a traveling salesman. It suited me. If there was one thing you could say about Edward Bloom , it's that I am a social person," Edward narrates. Edward goes on the road selling the metallic hands, while Sandra waits behind in the trailer they share.

A few years later, we see Edward driving a car as "Ramblin' Man" plays, and he narrates that his territory for sales stretched from the eastern coast to western Texas. We see Edward in line at a bank in Texas, where he runs into Norther Winslow, from Spectre, who immediately recognizes him. Norther tells Edward that Edward's departure from Spectre inspired him to leave Spectre and travel, and that he's come to the bank to rob it. In the blink of an eye, Norther shoots the ceiling and holds up the bank, enlisting Edward to help him do so.

When the teller brings Edward to the vault, she cries and tells him that they have no money, they've gone bankrupt. In the car, Norther asks to see what Edward got from the vault and is disappointed to find so little cash. Edward tells Norther "about the vagaries of Texas oil money and its effect on real estate prices, and how tax enforcement of fiduciary process had made Savings and Loans particularly vulnerable." After hearing this, Norther decides to go to New York and become a Wall Street trader, sending Edward a check for $10,000 after making his first million. With the money, Edward buys his first house.

The scene shifts and we see old Edward in the bath with his clothes on, holding his breath underwater. "I was drying out," he says, explaining to his wife, who stands nearby. When Sandra gets in, the couple embraces and Sandra begins to cry.

The next day, Will drives to Spectre, where he finds an old dilapidated house near the river. An older woman answers the door; it is Jenny Hill, the young girl from Edward's past. She knows he's Will Bloom, and tells her piano student to skip his lesson this week. Inside, Will asks Jenny how she knows Edward, and when she says he came through on his sales journeys, he asks if they were having an affair. "Why didn't you just ask Eddie?" she asks, and Will tells her that his father is dying.

Jenny begins her own story, telling Will that neither of the times Edward arrived in Spectre were intentional. We see young Edward driving his car through an overwhelming thunderstorm that completely submerges the car underwater. A beautiful naked woman swims by the car, and presses her hand against his window.

The next day, Edward's car gets stuck in a tree and Edward finds a key to the city. He wanders back into downtown Spectre, which is now no longer a beautiful oasis, but a depressed and abandoned ghost town. Jenny narrates, "A new road had brought the outside world to Spectre, and with it banks, liens, and debt. Almost everywhere you looked, people were bankrupt."

Edward buys the town of Spectre, for $50,000, taking loans from Norther, Amos, the conjoined twins, and others to do so. We saw Edward wandering up to Jenny's house and knocking on the door. He finds Jenny playing piano, and asks to buy her land in order to complete his purchase of the town. When she doesn't agree to his proposition, he's confused, but soon realizes that she is Jenny, the little girl he met on his first visit to Spectre. She's disappointed he didn't come back sooner, and tells him she doesn't plan to sell him her house. He tries to open the door and accidentally pulls it off its hinges.

Determined to buy the land, Edward begins refurbishing Jenny's home, enlisting Karl to help him straighten the frame of the house on the foundation, and fixing it up like it's new.

In Will's pre-bed conversation with Josephine, we learn the true core of his resentment towards his father. As he tells her, Edward was never around when he was a kid, and the performances and whimsical stories that Edward weaves are—to Will's mind—all evidence of the fact that Edward isn't satisfied with his regular life. While other people take Edward's stories to represent his magical spirit, Will can only see it as representing his father's neglect and shortage of loving feelings towards his family.

However, Edward is not the only one to blame for the distance between him and his son, and as we learn in their conversation the next day, Edward genuinely does not believe that he has held any of himself back from his children. When Will asks Edward to show him who he is, Edward insists that he's been honest about who he is, and that the stories and fantasies that he spins are an inextricable part of his identity. Will's feelings of betrayal prevent him from seeing his father's admirable qualities, and from finding the magic in the everyday.

The film maintains a wry sense of humor woven into the narrative. When Edward goes on the road to sell obscure inventions, he runs into Norther Winslow, who has become a bank robber, but is unpleasantly surprised to find that Texas oil has ruined the Savings and Loans business. After Edward explains the local economy, Norther resolves to move to New York, where he will become a bank robber in a more official way, as a trader on Wall Street. The film comments on corporate greed and unethical profit-making, but in a cheeky, indirect way.

In this section of the film, Will seeks to see just how much of his father's stories are made up. He goes through papers in the garage, then goes to visit Spectre to investigate the town that his father always had such a fantastical memory of. There he meets a grown-up Jenny Hill, who is far from fantastical, living in a house that is in disrepair and teaching piano to local kids. Soon enough, however, her story takes on the mythical qualities of Edward's, and Will realizes that the fantasies of his father's youth extend beyond his father.

For all of the film's humor, at the center of Big Fish is the tension between magic and realism, and the sobering realities of the modern world, specifically economic depression. Nowhere can this be seen more starkly than in the changes that take place in Spectre between Edward's first and second visit. In the first visit, Spectre had been an idyllic, if somewhat creepily uniform, town, but in the second, it has been connected to the outside world, which harms its economy. The modern world might offer opportunity, the film suggests, but it also saps people of their resources, and harms utopian isolation and peacefulness.

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Big Fish (Film) Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Big Fish (Film) is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

I saw this so long ago. I took a look at the clip and it just has him walking away barefoot from the town party.

How long did Edward work at the circus for before knowing anything about Sandra?

Edward works at the circus for one month, after which, he learns one thing..... that Sandra's favorite flowers are daffodils.

How does Edward react to the role of becoming a father?

Edward reacts by being a distant father. He takes little interest in his son, and he continues to concentrate on his own pursuits. He followed his own dreams, never considering the dreams of his son.

Study Guide for Big Fish (Film)

Big Fish study guide contains a biography of director Tim Burton, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

  • About Big Fish (Film)
  • Big Fish (Film) Summary
  • Character List
  • Director's Influence

Essays for Big Fish (Film)

Big Fish essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Big Fish, directed by Tim Burton.

  • Magical Realism as Used by Tim Burton and Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Wikipedia Entries for Big Fish (Film)

  • Introduction

travelling salesman film summary

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Death of a Traveling Salesman

30 pages • 1 hour read

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Summary and Study Guide

Summary: “death of a traveling salesman”.

“Death of a Traveling Salesman” is Eudora Welty’s first published short story, which, upon its release in 1936, put her on the literary map and introduced her readers to her uniquely Southern and Modernist voice . As part of the Southern Renaissance movement, Welty’s writing spanned from the 1930s to the 1970s and included critiques of industrialism. Her 1972 novel The Optimist’s Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize, and she was awarded the National Medal for Literature (1979) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1980).

This guide cites the 2019 edition of The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty , published by Mariner Books at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt with an introduction by Ann Patchett.

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The story begins with the protagonist , R. J. Bowman , driving down a country road in Mississippi. He has just been released from a hotel doctor’s care after a long bout of the flu, and though he is still weak and feverish, he is steadfast in his desire to get back to work as a traveling shoe salesman. This has been his profession for the last 14 years; he perpetually drifts from hotel to hotel, his solitary life a blur of small rooms and lonely furniture. During his long “siege” of influenza, he was plagued by a very high temperature and fever dreams. Even earlier this afternoon, he experienced unbidden memories of his grandmother—memories that were simultaneously comforting and bewildering.

Bowman is now in search of a town called Beulah with the hope of making some sales, but he suspects he is lost and seems to be driving on some obscure “cow trail.” As he occasionally sticks his head out of the window to try to see up the dusty road, the sun beats on his head, almost like a person pushing down on him. The oppressive heat makes him feel even more frustrated and powerless. He sometimes sees people working out in the fields, but he feels hesitant to ask them for directions; they are strangers and too far away.

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As Bowman drives through a mass of dead oak leaves, he realizes he is on a thinning, unkept trail not meant for cars, and he suddenly finds himself on the edge of a ravine—a steep drop-off and a definite dead-end. He pulls the brake with all his might, but to no avail, and the car keeps rolling toward the edge and begins to tip. Knowing what’s about to happen, he gets out and helplessly watches his car tip into the ravine. However, the car doesn’t fall the whole distance; it’s caught by thick grapevines along the side of the ravine wall, “like a grotesque child in a dark cradle” (109).

Bowman is now feverish, confused, and on foot. He spots a house up on a hill and walks toward it to seek help. The house is a shotgun house (a common style for Southern homes built in the earlier 20th century), and a woman stands out in front, holding a lamp that she’s half-way through cleaning. Bowman, who believes himself capable of discerning a woman’s age on sight, thinks she looks to be about 50 years old with a large stature. He tries to speak to her but at first is overcome by the fitful beating of his heart. Though he has been ill the whole day, his heart now intensely palpitates:

Like a rocket set off, [his heart] began to leap and expand into uneven patterns of beats which showered into his brain, and he could not think. […] It began to pound profoundly, then waiting irresponsibly, hitting in some sort of inward mockery first at his ribs, then against his eyes, then under his shoulder blades, and against the roof of his mouth when he tried to say, ‘Good afternoon, madam.’ But he could not hear his heart—it was as quiet as ashes falling. This was rather comforting; still, it was shocking to Bowman to feel his heart beating at all (110).

When Bowman does finally mutter his request for help after a few failed attempts, the woman is gruff but helpful, telling him that “Sonny ain’t here, but he’ll be here” (110)—Bowman assumes this means she has a son who will help when he arrives. After entering the woman’s home to rest, his heart still hammering, Bowman sits on a yellow chair while the woman sits with her knees curled to her chest on the hearth of the unlit fireplace. As he peers around at the pine boards of the house, he feels calmer, and his heartbeat seems less jarring. From where he sits, can see into another room with an iron bed just visible; the bedcover is “a red-and-yellow pieced quilt that looked like a map or a picture, a little like his grandmother’s girlhood painting of Rome burning” (111).

Both he and the woman are quiet, but the silence makes Bowman restless, so he starts a sales pitch about a line of affordable women’s shoes. The woman responds only that Sonny will soon return and help retrieve Bowman’s car. When Bowman asks where Sonny is, she says he’s at the farm of someone named Redmond. This information—even just the name Redmond—makes Bowman inexplicably anxious. He’s glad he will never have to meet Redmond or other strangers with strange farms. Despite his inward agitation, however, Bowman finds himself compulsively asking yet another question to which he doesn’t even want an answer: whether the woman and Sonny live alone. Yes, she says, they do. She falls silent again. After having spent a month in isolated convalescence from the flu, Bowman feels overwhelmed by the interpersonal dynamic with this woman, and something about her quiet thoughtfulness flusters him. He wonders why she is paying attention to him instead of distracting herself with other chores. As he fretfully puzzles over what must be going on in her mind, he feels his pulse in his palms.

After some time, Sonny finally arrives—a self-assured, large, and capable man who looks to be about 30. Bowman falls silent for several minutes, seemingly unable to speak or to ask Sonny for the help he needs. When the woman relays the request on Bowman’s behalf, Sonny agrees to pull the car out of the ravine and sets out to do so without much fanfare. Bowman’s heart pounds again.

While Sonny and his mule work on pulling the car back up, Bowman sits quietly in the dark house with the woman. As he observes her silent figure, an intense but unidentifiable emotion surfaces:

This time, when his heart leapt, something—his soul—seemed to leap too, like a little colt invited out of a pen. He stared at the woman while the frantic nimbleness of his feelings made his head sway. He could not move; there was nothing he could do […] But he wanted to leap up, to say to her, I have been sick and I found out then, only then, how lonely I am. Is it too late? My heart puts up a struggle inside me, and you may have heard it, protesting against emptiness… It should be full, he would rush on to tell her, thinking of his heart now as a deep lake, it should be holding love like other hearts (113).

Despite his fervor, Bowman is mute and frozen in place, and he quickly feels ashamed of how close he’s just come to saying something “strange.” After what feels to Bowman like ages, Sonny returns and tells him that his car is safely back on the road. It’s now nighttime, and upon the thought of actually leaving the house, Bowman suddenly feels heartsick, both vulnerable and aggrieved: “These people cherished something here that he could not see, they withheld some ancient promise of food and warmth and light. Between them they had a conspiracy” (114). He asks if he can stay the night because, he says, he’s still weak and unsure if he can walk back to his car. Also, he’s lost. Sonny pats him down to make sure that he’s not really someone from the state who has come to check that they’re abiding by prohibition laws. Once satisfied that Bowman has no gun, Sonny agrees to let him stay. Then, the woman tells Sonny that he should go “borry some fire” (115), which means walking to their neighbor’s farm with a big stick, lighting it on fire, and then using it to make a fire in their home. Sonny heads out to do that, returning shortly with a torch. He lights the fire, brightening and warming the house, and after he and Bowman head out to retrieve a bottle of liquor from its buried place in the backyard, the woman cooks dinner.

The three spend the evening in the house, drinking, eating, and resting in front of the bright fire. With light in the house, Bowman can now see that the woman is not middle-aged or large at all, but young and pregnant. He suddenly realizes that the woman is Sonny’s wife and that the two are a married couple who are expecting a child. Upon this realization, Bowman feels as though someone has just played a joke on him, yet he also feels incapable of indignance. The couple’s hospitality has left him very emotional in ways he doesn’t understand, and though he feels ill, he doesn’t want to ask for further accommodations; he declares that he’ll sleep on the floor in front of the fire.

The couple goes to sleep in their bed, and in a half-slumber, Bowman repeatedly mutters one of his sales-pitch lines about shoe discounts. As the night’s silence stretches on, however, he is overcome with emotion. He thinks of the couple’s unborn child and wishes it were his. Deciding suddenly that “[h]e must get back to where he had been before” (118), he weakly arises and dons his coat, which now feels overheavy. He sees the lamp that the woman never finished cleaning; emptying his billfold, he puts all the money under the lamp’s base, intending to pay for his stay. He shivers, and as he heads to his car, his heart beats harder and harder:

On the slope he began to run, he could not help it [… H]is heart began to give off tremendous explosions like a rifle, bang bang bang.

He sank in fright onto the road, his bags falling about him. He felt as if all this had happened before. He covered his heart with both hands to keep anyone from hearing the noise it made.

But nobody heard it (118).

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  • Cast & crew

Traveling Salesman

Traveling Salesman

  • Tim Tucker is a traveling salesman returning to Pennsylvania from Florida when his car breaks down in Concord, NC one hot summer evening. A massive thunderstorm looms above him and he has two choices, stay in the car all night or walk half a mile to a farmhouse and rely on the mercy of strangers. He chooses the house, and when he gets there a young, sexy farmers daughter, Elsa, allows him in for the night. Elsa seduces Tim, but while his temperature begins to rise, the tea Elsa gave him to drink knocks Tim unconscious. Tim wakes up in a dark room somewhere inside the home and when he does all Hell breaks loose. He must survive the night in a house of pure lunacy to live another day and see home again. Is this the end of the traveling salesman, or was it all just his imagination?

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COMMENTS

  1. Travelling Salesman (2012 film)

    Travelling Salesman is a 2012 intellectual thriller film about four mathematicians who solve the P versus NP problem, one of the most challenging mathematical problems in history. The title refers to the travelling salesman problem, an optimization problem that acts like a key to solving other difficult mathematical problems. It has been proven that a quick travelling salesman algorithm, if ...

  2. Travelling Salesman review: film explores moral and political

    The movie isn't about the maths, though. Travelling Salesman is a film about power, and how it should be distributed. The government representative's job is to convince the four to sign off their ...

  3. Travelling Salesman (2012)

    Travelling Salesman: Directed by Timothy Lanzone. With Danny Barclay, Eric Bloom, David John Cole, Malek Houlihan. Four mathematicians are hired by the US government to solve the most powerful problem in computer science history.

  4. Travelling Salesman

    Picture Summary. Travelling Salesman is an intellectual thriller about four mathematicians hired by the U.S. government to solve the most elusive problem in computer science history — P vs. NP. The four have jointly created a "system" which could be the next major advancement for our civilization or destroy the fabric of humanity.

  5. Travelling Salesman (2012)

    Travelling Salesman is a hard sci-fi story that adds one new discovery to our world and imagines the consequences for the discoverers. In the movie, four mathematicians confront the US government official who has just overseen their successful breakthrough in math that will enable code breaking of every communication code.

  6. ‎Travelling Salesman (2012) directed by Timothy Lanzone • Reviews, film

    Travelling Salesman is clearly intended as a play, which is pretty evident from how rough much of the film is at a technical level. The entire film is bogged down in a strange blue filter, the camera shakes more than Cloverfield, and the credits look like they were put together by someone too cheap for a university license of Adobe Premiere.. That aside, the movie is really, really interesting.

  7. 'Travelling Salesman'

    But the movie Travelling Salesman is a rare movie: not only are almost all of the characters mathematicians, the central plot also hinges on the solution of one of the most important problems in mathematics. This tense thriller is an independent movie written and directed by Timothy Lanzone. We were lucky enough to host the UK premiere here at ...

  8. Travelling Salesman

    Watch the full film now: http://www.travellingsalesmanmovie.com • Winner - Best Feature Film - Silicon Valley Film Festival 2012• Winner - Best Actor - Silic...

  9. Travelling Salesman (2012)

    Travelling Salesman is a film directed by Timothy Lanzone with Danny Barclay, Eric Bloom, David John Cole, Malek Houlihan .... Year: 2012. Original title: Travelling Salesman. Synopsis: Travelling Salesman is an intellectual thriller about four of the world's smartest mathematicians hired by the U.S. government to solve the most elusive problem in computer science history -- P vs. ...

  10. Travelling Salesman

    Movie Info. The United States government hires four mathematicians to solve the hardest problem in computer science history. Genre: Mystery & thriller, Sci-fi. Original Language: English. Director ...

  11. What did I expect and what did I watch? Travelling Salesman (Movie)

    Instead, possible and limited consequences are stated in words! I felt that as if I am reading the scenario instead of watching the movie itself. Moreover, these outcomes are discussed on the same scene throughout the movie; 5 nervous men around a table. Actually almost the whole movie is captured in the same room.

  12. Travelling Salesman (2012)

    Visit the movie page for 'Travelling Salesman' on Moviefone. Discover the movie's synopsis, cast details and release date. Watch trailers, exclusive interviews, and movie review. Your guide to ...

  13. Travelling Salesman streaming: where to watch online?

    Synopsis Four mathematicians are gathered and meet with a top official of the United States Department of Defense. After some discussion, the group agrees that they must be wary with whom to trust and control their solution.

  14. Travelling Salesman' review by McCheaterson • Letterboxd

    In saying that.....this film isn't sci-fi? I know Letterboxd doesn't have sci-fi as one of the genres, but on my streaming service it categorised Travelling Salesman under that branch. It really is basically a drama, but the dialogue and subject matter is over complicated. It basically tries to be a 'smart person film' in the same vein as Primer.

  15. FILM REVIEW; A Traveling Salesman, An Adorable Foundling

    The foundling is the offspring of a traveling salesman and a naive local teenager he murders after she gives birth in the North Carolina backwoods. Accentuated by the twang of old-style country ...

  16. Travelling Salesman (2012): a film review by Mark R. Leeper

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  17. Big Fish (Film) Part 4: Edward, the Traveling Salesman Summary and

    Summary. That night in bed, Josephine tells Will that she talked to his father the previous night. When she confronts him for never telling her how his parents met, he insists that the whimsical details his father included aren't real, to which Josephine says, "but it's romantic." Josephine asks him if he loves his father, and he tells her that ...

  18. Death of a Traveling Salesman Summary and Study Guide

    Summary: "Death of a Traveling Salesman". "Death of a Traveling Salesman" is Eudora Welty's first published short story, which, upon its release in 1936, put her on the literary map and introduced her readers to her uniquely Southern and Modernist voice. As part of the Southern Renaissance movement, Welty's writing spanned from the ...

  19. Travelling Salesman

    PRE-ORDER NOW! http://www.travellingsalesmanmovie.com• Winner - Best Feature Film - Silicon Valley Film Festival 2012• Winner - Best Actor - Silicon Valley F...

  20. Salesman (1969 film)

    Salesman is a 1969 direct cinema documentary film, directed by brothers Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, about door-to-door Bible salesmen. Synopsis [ edit ] The documentary follows four salesmen as they travel across New England and southeast Florida , trying to sell large, expensive Bibles door-to-door in low-income ...

  21. The Travelling Salesman (2014)

    The Travelling Salesman (2014) on IMDb: Plot summary, synopsis, and more... Menu. Movies. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. TV Shows.

  22. Traveling Salesman (Short 2017)

    Tim Tucker is a traveling salesman returning to Pennsylvania from Florida when his car breaks down in Concord, NC one hot summer evening. A massive thunderstorm looms above him and he has two choices, stay in the car all night or walk half a mile to a farmhouse and rely on the mercy of strangers. He chooses the house, and when he gets there a ...