Shelf Life is a documentary created by producers Jennifer Sass and Lisa Day in 2011 about Powell’s Bookstore. The film, which will be played by the Northwest Film Center at the Portland Art Museum Jan. 12, begins when the store opens, ends when the store closes and captures everything that happens in between.
Shelf Life is a documentary created by producers Jennifer Sass and Lisa Day in 2011 about Powell’s Bookstore. The film, which will be played by the Northwest Film Center at the Portland Art Museum Jan. 12, begins when the store opens, ends when the store closes and captures everything that happens in between.
“We buy books,” read the original sign to Powell’s Bookstore.
Powell’s is owned by its president, Michael Powell. The store, its customers and staff form a community centered on the experience of books, and Shelf Life describes the store’s approach to selling books as a necessary part of the human experience.
“Michael doesn’t have a vision for the store. He has a vision for how to sell books. Michael sees a book and knows that somewhere in the world is a customer for that book, and it is his job to figure out how to connect that book with that customer,” Miriam Sontz, the store’s chief executive officer of strategic development, says in the film. “We don’t try to sell hundreds of one book; we try to sell one book to one customer, and do it thousands of times a day.”
In Shelf Life, Powell argues that books are an important part of human culture.
“The important thing is what the people do here. They are all committed, in common, to one thing, which is a passion for books and I hope, for some, for selling books,” Powell tells us. “A lot of people go into this business because they like books, but the only ones who succeed are those who like to sell books.”
One section of the film is full of stories about how books affect people’s lives.
“My dad was in the Air Force in World War II, and I always thought of war as glamorous and justified and worthy because America went after Hitler and got him,” Sass reveals in the documentary. “But then, in the late ’60s, when I read Johnny Got His Gun during the Vietnam War, I shifted while reading the book and became anti-war, and it changed my view of my dad and his experiences in the war. It began opening up a door to me, beginning to form my own beliefs rather than remaining in lock-step with my parents and what they thought.”
Sass was the true creator of the film, and it is her legacy.
“The reason the film is in existence is because my friend Jennifer Sass had decided she loved Powell’s,” Lisa Day said in a Vanguard interview. “She wanted to make a movie about her experience of what it was like for her to walk into Powell’s and go shopping at the bookstore.”
Day said that Sass funded the production of the film out of her nonprofit foundation, the Letting Go Foundation.
“It was the last piece of work which my wife did before she died [of cancer],” said Sass’ husband, Richard Sass, in a Vanguard interview. “The final DVD was delivered just before she went into the hospital for the last time, so it was completed just in time. It was a project that took six years.”
Powell’s Bookstore occupies an entire city block. There are color-coded maps available for navigating the many sections.
“We all know that Powell’s is not just the bookstore but the mail order and the online sales, so you feel like you’re walking through the middle of this great marketplace,” says teacher and humanities scholar Christopher Zinn in Shelf Life. “And the books fly by you to their various kinds of destinations and places of distribution and allocation.”
Unlike at other book stores, used books at Powell’s are sold next to new editions of the same book.
“It is like life itself,” Richard Sass said. “We’re all walking around next to each other, and there are some babies that are brand new on the shelf, and there are some teenagers that have been around for a decade or so, and there are some old people lying around, and we’re all co-mingled in the store, just like the books.”
Powell’s is a family business. Michael Powell’s father, Walter Powell, founded Powell’s in the early 1970s and was joined by his son in 1979.
“The magic was the way he would connect with a customer,” says author and longtime customer Stu Levy in the film. “He formed a relationship out of that purchase of a book and there was something in his warmth that was just unforgettable.”
Emily Powell, Michael Powell’s daughter, is the vice president and heir apparent of Powell’s. It has been her dream to run Powell’s since she was very young.
Powell’s sells books anywhere in the world, including China, Australia and Norway.
Powell’s is known for its vast collection of rare books, some of which are out of print.
“On a busy day we move 10,000 books through here,” Michael Powell says us in the film. “That’s a lot of books.”
The staff at Powell’s are very helpful. They are knowledgeable about their sections and help their customers find the books they are looking for.
“Reading, I think, is a really particular access to the imagination, like nothing else, that seems so unique and very necessary,” says author Ursula K. Le Guin in Shelf Life. “It strengthens the soul, I do believe.”
The Northwest Film Center is showing Shelf Life as part of its Northwest Tracking/Essential Northwest showcase, which features films made in the Pacific Northwest. Producer Day will attend as a guest speaker.
