Argo received eight Oscar nominations and has grossed over $166.4 million at the box office worldwide and now Iran wants in on the action. But don’t expect the Islamic Republic to toe the line of how events transpired in the version directed and starring Ben Affleck.
[Related: Iran A Possible Oscar No-Show After Boycott Threat AND Ben Affleck Goes For Gracious Post-Oscar Passover]
Iranian director Ataollah Salmanian an Iranian news agency that he is making a counter-feature to Affleck’s film which is based on the true story of a C.I.A. plan to rescue six Americans from Tehran during the outset of the Iran hostage crisis in 1979.
Titled The General Staff, Salmanian told the news agency his film “should be an appropriate response to the ‘a-historic’ film Argo,” according to BBC. Not surprisingly, Argo has ruffled feathers in the Iranian hierarchy and Salmanian is hoping to receive funding from the Middle Eastern country’s government.
Iran has long had a contentious relationship with its filmmaking community even as its filmmakers won awards around the world. Last year Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation won the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language film. Despite praise for the win at the time, the country’s establishment banned its filmmakers from submitting to the Oscars race officially due to the controversy surrounding the anti-Islam video that hit YouTube last year, Innocence of Muslims.
Others have faced persecution and silence including celebrated director Jafar Panahi who served house arrest and later prison. The director documented his house-arrest in This Is Not a Film, which was smuggled out of Iran in a Flash-Drive and hidden inside a cake. It later screened at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and other festivals.
[Source: The Guardian]
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Ben Affleck, director, makes his most ambitious movie yet in this fall’s Argo, the crazy true (and until recently, secret) story of how the CIA attempted to rescue six American diplomats during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis by disguising them as a film crew working on a science fiction movie. The first trailer for Argo ranks up there with the best we’ve seen all year, setting up the stranger-than-fiction premise with juicy moments from veteran thesps (John Goodman! Alan Arkin!) and up-and-comers (ladies and gentlemen, Scoot McNairy) alike as Affleck serves up a bizarre slice of history.
Affleck directs from a script by Chris Terrio (based on Joshuah Bearman’s engrossing 2007 Wired article “How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran”), casting himself as CIA officer Tony Mendez, the orchestrator of the so-called “Canadian Caper.” He’s joined by Goodman as Planet of the Apes Oscar-winner John Chambers, the Hollywood make-up artist who helped Mendez set up the operation, and Arkin as a producer delivering choice zingers (“If I’m doing a fake movie, it’s going to be a fake hit!”).
In addition to folks like Goodman, Arkin, Victor Garber, Bryan Cranston, Michael Parks, Zeljko Ivanek, Affleck tapped a few rising actors to fill out his cast: Scoot McNairy (Monsters), Christopher Denham (Sound of My Voice), and Kerry Bishe (Red State) join Tate Donovan, Clea Duvall, and Rory Cochrane as the six imperiled diplomats.
Add in the muted ’70s palette and sense of humor tempered by life-and-death stakes and you’ve got what promises to be an intriguingly layered ride, if Affleck the director can pull it off. Argo is slated for release on October 12, gunning for awards season.
Verdict: If it measures up to the true story…
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The directorial career of Ben Affleck is officially in overdrive: The Oscar-winning screenwriter is in talks to direct and star in Line of Sight, an actioner that “centers on an elite commando squad transporting cargo while dealing with a global threat.” Transporting cargo! That old cinematic treat. Affleck is about to start work on Argo, a CIA drama set during the Iran hostage crisis. Ooh, intrigue! Delicious. I’m yelling, “Gobble, gobble” already. [THR]
John Goodman is reportedly negotiating to join Ben Affleck’s Argo, the period political drama about a real-life covert operation to rescue six U.S. diplomats during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. The kicker, and where Goodman comes in, is in the unusual circumstances of said rescue, in which the Canadian government enlisted Hollywood make-up and effects experts John Chambers and Bob Sidell to help the Americans escape in disguise as crew members of a fake science fiction film.
Goodman would play Chambers, the Oscar-winning effects veteran who worked on the Planet of the Apes films and created Spock’s pointed ears for Star Trek, reports Variety’s Showblitz. According to the 2007 Wired article that formed the basis of the film, Chambers and Sidell collaborated with the CIA’s Tony Mendez and worked up an elaborate faux production company, dusted off a defunct sci-fi film script and named it Argo, announced the start of filming in the trades, and created fake papers to smuggle the six Americans out of Tehran.
Alan Arkin has already been cast as spy-turned-producer Lester Siegel, while George Clooney and Grant Heslov will produce.
⢠Goodman good to go to ‘Argo’ [Showblitz]
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Looks like Ben Affleck won’t get to flirt with Isla Fisher after all. Deadline reports that Affleck can’t star as Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby for Baz Luhrmann because of a scheduling conflict with Argo, the Iran hostage crisis film that Affleck will direct. Suggestions for a replacement Tom Buchanan are welcome in the comments. Perhaps Bradley Cooper? [Deadline]
