Live stream preview

Watch this video and more on OVID.tv

Watch this video and more on OVID.tv

Start your free trial

Already subscribed? Sign in

Family Business

UR rating icon
February's Top 30 Films • 1h 26m

Directed by Tom Cohen • Documentary • 1982 • 90 minutes

Part of the acclaimed Middletown series.

Howie Snyder is an archetype: a retired Marine colonel in his mid 40s, he is an American entrepreneur struggling to make his business succeed.

Howie's Shakey's Pizza franchise in Muncie, Indiana employs his whole family: wife, nine children, and Howie himself. He's the representative of the American Dream: the chance to invest long hours and hard work in exchange for financial security for oneself and family. To watch Howie Snyder as he dickers for better treatment by the Shakey's chain, as he seeks additional financing to stave off looming bankruptcy, and as he sits morosely counting an evening's disappointing receipts is to watch America at work. And to see Howie's family rally around him in the hour of his greatest need is a heartwarming experience.

"Marvelous... as close to a genuine slice of life as television can muster."—Los Angeles Times

"Remarkably intimate... There are scenes that will stick with you for life."—Chicago Tribune

Tags
american studies, americas, anthropology and archaeology, business, doc, documentary, dvd, economic anthropology, economics, expository, family business, family issues, film, icarus films, indiana, labor and economics, management, middletown, muncie, ovid, ovid_ca, pizza, restaurant, s_0034, s_0081, s_0085, s_0104, s_0263, s_0306, s_0461, shakey's pizza, social significance of work in a small family-run business, social studies, sociology, the, the industrial heartland, title_defgh, title_f, title_m, united states, video, world regions

Up Next in February's Top 30 Films

  • The Pearl Button
    1:21:49
    The Pearl Button

    The Pearl Button

    Directed by Patricio Guzmán • Documentary • 2014 • 82 minutes

    The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds the voices of the Earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile...

  • My Brooklyn
    1:17:05
    My Brooklyn

    My Brooklyn

    Directed by Kelly Anderson • Documentary • With Jamel Shabazz, Craig Steven Wilder, Kelly Anderson • 2012 • 76 minutes

    My Brooklyn follows director Kelly Anderson's journey, as a Brooklyn gentrifier, to understand the forces reshaping her neighborhood. The film documents the redevelopment of Ful...

  • The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived
    1:08:52
    The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived

    The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived

    Directed by Heiny Srour • Documentary • 68 minutes

    In the late 60s, Dhofar rose up against the British-backed Sultanate of Oman, in a democratic, Leninist guerrilla movement. Srour and her team crossed 500 miles of desert and mountains by foot, under bombardment by the British Royal Air Force, t...

×