A tax bill drove Sartre to write a seven-hour Freud screenplay

Evidence

In 1958, Sartre had a chance to explore Freud’s life in more detail when the director John Huston commissioned him to write a screenplay for a biopic. Sartre took the job on partly because he needed the money: a huge tax bill had left him short. But, having agreed to do it, he threw himself into the job with his usual energy, and produced a screenplay that would have made a seven-hour film. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 711

Categorization

• CANDY: Fun trivia: the arch-existentialist’s Freud biopic would have run seven hours; Huston wanted something shootable.