An existentialist crime film script
It’s “Jean-Paul Sartre’s script for WITHOUT A TRACE”, at McSweeney’s. Hilarious. A couple of excerpts:
MALONE: Do we know how this void was created? How it came to be?
TAYLOR: Do you mean was it put here by God?
FITZGERALD: Or do you mean was it conceived by the same minds that created the concept of God?
TAYLOR: You know, Martin, your knee-jerk denial of God’s existence could seriously hamper this investigation.
—
JOHNSON: These books were on the nightstand, Jack. A Brief History of Time and Love Story.
SPADE: So there was a struggle.
MALONE: An internal struggle, you mean. Between human intellect and animal passion.
It reminds me of one of my favourite Woody Allen short stories, The Whore of Mensa, from his first collection of short stories, “Without Feathers”.