The Salesman (2016 film) make a film until he decided his protagonists should be stage actors. Part of this decision owed to Farhadi's own background in the theatre, and his desire to re-immerse himself in that atmosphere. He also felt actors had to think of themselves as other people and create empathy, and his male protagonist would be forced to feel empathy for another man. Looking for a play within the film, Farhadi researched the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Henrik Ibsen before finding Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman", which he described as "a gift for me". In Miller's play and his script,
Death of a Salesman (1951 film) was a more typical American salesman, and was an attempt to defuse possible accusations that "Death of a Salesman" was an anti-American film. Eventually, Columbia agreed to remove the 10-minute short from the film's theatrical run. Miller saw "Career of a Salesman" as an attack upon his work, proclaiming "Why the hell did you make the picture if you're so ashamed of it? Why should anybody not get up and walk out of the theatre if "Death of a Salesman" is so outmoded and pointless?" He argued against the portrayal of the salesman profession as "a wonderful profession, that people