Argo: The Real Story of the Crazy CIA Caper to Rescue Six Americans in Iran

Posted on October 8, 2012 at 8:00 am

The employees of the US embassy in Iran were taken hostage in 1979, but six escaped and were hidden by the Canadian ambassador and his wife. A CIA “exfiltration” expert worked with the Canadian government and some Hollywood talent to create fake identities as members of a Canadian film crew scouting locations for the six Americans. The story was classified for many years (the CIA agent even had to give back his medal), but it is now public. This week, Ben Affleck directs and stars in “Argo,” based on the rescue mission. Affleck and the real-life former spook, Tony Mendez, were interviewed by Entertainment Weekly.

“I’ve spent my whole life trying to be boring,” Mendez said. “As an operative, you don’t want to be caught on camera. And here I am watching Ben on a big screen saying, ‘My name is Tony Mendez.’ That really is weird….The movie is so well-done that I felt exactly like I was back there.” You can catch the “boring” Mendez in the movie if you look carefully.

The story first came to light in a Wired Magazine article in 2007. As the movie acknowledges in its conclusion, there were some dramatic liberties taken with the facts. But the most outlandish aspects of the story really happened. Mendez had worked with Hollywood experts before on make-up and disguises, so he had some contacts. Mendez, using the name Kevin Harkin, really did set up a film production company that could credibly be scouting locations for a wild sci-fi/fantasy film.

In just four days, Mendez, Chambers, and Sidell created a fake Hollywood production company. They designed business cards and concocted identities for the six members of the location-scouting party, including all their former credits. The production company’s offices would be set up in a suite at Sunset Gower Studios on what was formerly the Columbia lot, in a space vacated by Michael Douglas after he finished The China Syndrome.

All they needed now was a film — and Chambers had the perfect script. Months before, he had received a call from a would-be producer named Barry Geller. Geller had purchased the rights to Roger Zelazny’s science fiction novel, Lord of Light, written his own treatment, raised a few million dollars in starting capital from wealthy investors, and hired Jack Kirby, the famous comic book artist who cocreated X-Men, to do concept drawings. Along the way, Geller imagined a Colorado theme park based on Kirby’s set designs that would be called Science Fiction Land; it would include a 300-foot-tall Ferris wheel, voice-operated mag-lev cars, a “planetary control room” staffed by robots, and a heated dome almost twice as tall as the Empire State Building. Geller had announced his grand plan in November at a press conference attended by Jack Kirby, former football star and prospective cast member Rosey Grier, and several people dressed like visitors from the future. Shortly thereafter, Geller’s second-in-command was arrested for embezzling production funds, and the Lord of Light film project evaporated.

Since Chambers had been hired by Geller to do makeup for the film, he still had the script and drawings at his house. The story, a tale of Hindu-inspired mystical science fiction, took place on a colonized planet. Iran’s landscape could provide many of the rugged settings required by the script. A famous underground bazaar in Tehran even matched one of the necessary locations. “This is perfect,” Mendez said. He removed the cover and gave the script a new name, Argo — like the vessel used by Jason on his daring voyage across the world to retrieve the Golden Fleece.

The new production company outfitted its office with phone lines, typewriters, film posters and canisters, and a sign on the door: studio six productions, named for the six Americans awaiting rescue. Sidell read the script and sketched out a schedule for a month’s worth of shooting. Mendez and Chambers designed a full-page ad for the film and bought space in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. The night before Mendez returned to Washington, Studio Six threw a small party at the Brown Derby, where they toasted their “production” and Mendez grabbed some matchbooks as additional props to boost his Hollywood bona fides. Shortly thereafter, the Argo ads appeared, announcing that principal photography would commence in March. The film’s title was rendered in distressed lettering against a black background. Next to it was a bullet hole. Below it was the tagline “A Cosmic Conflagration.”

New Yorkers can see some of the actual artifacts from what was called “The Canadian Caper” on display at Discovery Times Square, including the script for the fake movie. One of the State Department officials who was rescued wrote about what the movie gets right and wrong in Slate. My favorite footnote: in an interview with Joshuah Bearman, the reporter who wrote the first story about the declassified details, he says that the fake “Studio 6” production company set up by Mendez and named for the six Americans they were trying to rescue actually received 26 scripts, including one from Steven Spielberg!

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Spies The Real Story

The Bourne Legacy

Posted on August 9, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for violence and action sequences
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drugs, drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended spy-type violence with hand-to-hand combat, guns, chases, explosions, many characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	August 10, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	December 10, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B005LAIIPS

Different spy. Different program. Same evil conspiracy still trying to justify the nastiest of means with the most unprovable ends. This is “The Bourne Legacy,” the fourth in the Bourne series and the first not to star Matt Damon. Tony Gilroy, who wrote the first three films, wrote and directed this latest installment, with “Hurt Locker’s” Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross, like Jason Bourne an inconvenient reminder of an ambitious spy program that at least some people believe needs to be shut down with extreme prejudice. Those of us who felt there was not enough Renner in the crowded Avengers movie (he was the guy with the bow and arrow) are glad to see him take the lead here. He handles it gracefully.

The way he walks, runs, and punches is as important to defining the character as what he says, and Renner moves with an athlete’s economy, precision, and confidence. We first see Cross in an isolated, frozen location (the settings, even more than usual, really tell the story) and we immediately learn that he is brave, resourceful, and very capable. And that he takes some sort of pills. Soon he meets up with another guy (the always-outstanding Oscar Isaac) and even though they have never met, they communicate with the kind of shorthand that lets us know they recognize they share the same training and perhaps more and yet do not entirely trust one another. Soon we find that the same people who wanted to shut down any record of Jason Bourne’s Treadstone project are trying to erase any evidence of Cross’s project, Outcome and they will do anything to make that happen.

Jason Bourne could not remember who he was or how he came to be injured and floating in the water, and we shared his discovery of his own history and growing realization of the corruption and betrayal around him. So it seems logical that Gilroy would go in the opposite direction with Aaron Cross. His problem is not a loss of memory. In a way, he has too much memory. Slight spoiler alert here, though it is revealed in the trailer — the operatives in the Outcome project have been physically and intellectually enhanced with medication monitored by scientists, including Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz, who can carry off the brainy beauty role). Cross does not need to find out who he is. He needs to stay who he has become. When he runs out of the medication, he has to have her help to get him more.

One of the highlights of the film takes place in Marta’s home, a huge house in the country with beautiful lines and a great deal of potential but a shabbiness that tells us she is a person of taste and vision who never created the home she hoped to have. The confrontation that takes place there binds her to Carter and sets the rest of the story in motion. They end up in the Philippines, and Gilroy makes great use of the city for neatly-staged chase scenes.

Renner is a superb choice for an action hero, with easy charisma, intelligence, and mad fighting skills. He holds the screen effortlessly and is quickly becoming one of the most appealing leading men in Hollywood. The problem with the film is the decision to give him chemically enhanced capacities. It’s the Batman/Superman divide. The first three Bourne movies gave us a damaged hero we could identify with because he was so human. But with Cross, it is hard to identify with him or gauge his level of danger because we don’t really know what he can do or whether another hit of the meds could ramp him up further. We’re rooting for Renner all the way. Cross, not quite as much.

Parents should know that this film has extensive spy-style action violence with chases, explosions, fights, shoot outs, some strong language, drugs, drinking, and a non-explicit sexual situation.

Family discussion: How is Aaron Cross different from Jason Bourne? What do we learn from the scene with the other Outcome agent? Who is in the best position to stop Byer?

If you like this, try: the other “Bourne” movies and the novels by Robert Ludlum and “Hanna”

This Means War

Posted on February 17, 2012 at 6:01 pm

In the world of this film, American spies work in stylish and luxurious L.A. offices and live in cool apartments that look like the ads in Maxim with people toasting each other with expensive vodka. One of the apartments is underneath a swimming pool, so the occupant can look up at the way the light plays through the clear blue water as luscious lovelies swim by. And that’s the believable part.

Chris Pine plays FDR and Tom Hardy plays Tuck, quip-spouting spies, who are always going to elegant parties for glamorous undercover missions and exchanging purportedly witty barbs as they chase the bad guys. FDR (really?) is the playa and Tuck is the sensitive divorced dad. It’s a big-time bro-mance with such blurred boundaries that they seem to have the same mother, even though Tuck is British. At a family party, Rosemary Harris (“Spider-Man’s” Aunt May) gently chides them both for not producing grandchildren – and then strangely dismisses the fact that Tuck already has a son, who does not count any more, presumably because of the divorce or maybe because no one cared enough to check back to the other pages of the script.

Lauren (Reese Witherspoon) is a consumer products tester who has not dated for a while. She meets Tuck via an online match-up site and – another example of how completely out of date this movie is – she meets FDR in a DVD rental store. All of a sudden, she has gone from not dating anyone to dating two guys at once. And her specialty is product testing, even though she is a good girl who gets the flutters at the idea, egged on by her friend (Chelsea Handler), she decides to date them both. When they find out, they become intensely competitive in a way that is supposed to be charming and funny but in reality is just extremely stalker-ish and strongly suggests that she is just the hapless proxy for their intense attachment to one another, they use all of their training and resources to subvert and spy on each other. One is getting too close to having sex with Lauren? Bring out the tranquilizer darts. Sure, why not spend the billion dollar technology that is supposed to be trained on terrorists to eavesdrop on each other’s dates? We are supposed to find it endearing, but I was horrified.

Parents should know that this film includes action violence and peril with guns, chases, and explosions, sexual humor — some crude — and non-explicit situations, and strong language.

Family discussion: How did Lauren’s professional background affect the way she evaluated FDR and Tuck? Which man was more honest with her?

If you like this, try: “Get Smart”

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Safe House

Posted on February 9, 2012 at 6:10 pm

Denzel Washington is the vodka and Ryan Reynolds is the orange juice in this spy story with top-notch action, middle-notch story, and bottom-notch ending, with a “surprise” plot twist that is obvious from the first 10 minutes.

Apparently, the CIA has big, high-tech, empty “safe houses” all over the world, just in case we need to stash an “asset” there for debriefing with or without torture, but I gather more often with. Reynolds plays a junior CIA agent named Matt, stationed in Cape Town, South Africa. His lissome French oncologist girlfriend (the glorious Nora Arnezeder of “Paris 36”) has no idea that he is really a spy. He’s not so sure himself, after a full year of sitting alone in the safe house, throwing a ball like Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape” and waiting for something to happen. He begs his mentor back at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, David Barlow (Brendan Gleeson) to reassign him, but Barlow tells him to be patient.

And then the most notorious rogue spy to go AWOL from the CIA, Tobin Frost (Washington) , a man who ” has no allegiance and is wanted on four continents” walks into the American consulate. We know he has injected some sort of memory chip into his thigh and that some guys with guns are willing to kill a lot of people to get to him. Matt gets the call that a “guest” is en route and when Tobin arrives with an entourage of serious-looking guys, he escorts them to the interrogation room. They tell him to turn off the surveillance cameras and they start waterboarding Tobin, who calmly first offers to tell them whatever they want to know and then advises them that they are using the wrong kind of towels for torture. Then the other group of bad guys break in, shooting everyone they see, and Matt grabs Tobin, steals a car, and they’re on the run.

It’s “Bourne”-lite, a lot of well-staged action but without the personal or political identity issue resonance of the Bourne stories. Washington is superb as a spy whose specialty was manipulation and whose moral code is compromised, but clear. “I only kill professionals,” he tells Matt. “You’re not going to get in my head,” Mitch says. “I’m already there,” Tobin responds, and, predictable as it is, we know he is right. Part of what makes him effective is that he tells the truth. But Matt, whose specialty is analysis, strategy, and spycraft, gets into Tobin’s head, too, partly from observation and partly from the encounters along the way that show him

The hand-t0-hand combat and shoot-outs are intense, prolonged, and graphic. But when it comes to acting and holding our attention on screen, Washington wins by a knock-out.

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Action/Adventure Spies

Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol

Posted on December 15, 2011 at 7:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence
Profanity:	One s-word
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant action-style peril and violence, bombs, guns, chases, explosions, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	December 16, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	April 09, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B004EPYZUS

The first live-action film from animation director Brad Bird (“The Iron Giant,” “The Incredibles”) is pure adrenalin rush. It has the best stunts of the year and crackerjack mastery of pace in this fourth “Mission: Impossible” movie.

More “inspired by” than “based on” the 1960’s television series, the series features Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, an agent who operates outside even the ultra-clandestine world of spies. The most direct tie to the original program is in the presentation of new assignments. They include video as well as audio four decades later, but the recording still intones, “Your mission, should you decide to accept it…” and end by advising him that if anyone on the team is caught or killed, the US government will disavow any knowledge of the operation. And then it self-destructs — this time with a witty twist.

We begin with a classic spy setting, a document drop gone very wrong. There’s a guy with a laptop in a van. There are guards playing a card game in front of a bank of monitors. And there’s a field operative in some sort of hallway. Ethan has to be broken out of a Russian prison, and for some reason it has to happen before the end of the song, “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head” by Dean Martin. A meticulously orchestrated plan is amended on the spot and the guy in the van says, “I don’t know what he’s doing and for some reason I’m helping him.” What Ethan is doing is bringing another prisoner along with him. He sticks by his friends, he explains.

After Ethan is in the wrong place at the wrong time and aborts a mission that takes him to the heart of the Kremlin only to be blamed when the whole building blows up, “the Secretary” (Tom Wilkinson) shows up to say that the entire Mission: Impossible force has been shut down and it is time for “ghost protocol,” a mission that is off the books for those who are already operating off the books, kind of a spy version of double secret probation. I just have to ask — the Secretary of what? The head of the CIA has the title “Director.” Cabinet officers are hardly low profile. But he’s not around long anyway, and with the M:I force disbanded and no time, Ethan has to work with the people already there. That’s field agent Gorgeous (Paula Patton as Jane), tech guy Comic Relief (Simon Pegg as Benji), and Mystery Guest Who Says He is an Analyst But Fights Like a Field Agent (“The Hurt Locker’s Jeremy Renner, soon to be Hawkeye in “The Avengers,” as Brandt).

They’re after a dangerous guy code-named Cobalt (Michael Nyqvist of the Swedish “Dragon Tattoo” series). He’s one of those super-villains who is not only off-the-charts brilliant but also in great shape and with outstanding hand-to-hand combat skills. And if they don’t stop him a lot of very bad stuff is going to happen. The details are not important; they’re just a delivery system for action and stunts that includes a wild chase though a sandstorm, a crazy fight scene in a parking lot with vertical conveyer belts and revolving platforms (has Bird been consulting with his old boss re “Cars 2?”), a fall into fan shaft, kept just above the sharp blades by a magnet suit, and Ethan’s heart-stopping ascension along the side of Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, 100 stories above ground with nothing but a pair of very sticky mechanical gloves — and then just one glove. What’s fun is what goes right — all the cool gadgets and clever plans. What’s cooler is when things go wrong — mechanical failures and just plain being outsmarted by a very clever bad guy. Our crew visits world capitals and a secret hideout in a train car and has run-ins with an assassin, a weapons dealer, the Russian police force, and a playboy billionaire. And of course, as all glamorous spy movies must, there’s also a pause for a big, fancy party so our crew can get all gussied up. Though I can never figure out why no one at the party ever notices our crew having conversations with the air Patton is spectacularly beautiful.

Renner is terrific in this, playing very well off of Cruise’s intensity and performing the action scenes a Steve McQueen-style economy of motion (I was pleased to see that he is currently working on a biopic of McQueen). He also shows great comic timing in a scene where he has to force himself to do something dangerous. I liked the way the story tied into the third in the series (director J.J. Abrams of III was a producer on this one). But the post-mission coda was under-scripted, with dialog that would have been out of date in the days of the television series. And even by the low don’t-think-too-hard standards of chase and explosion films, the plot has some big holes. But no one is buying a ticket for witty repartee or realism. This is just for fun and it is enormously entertaining.

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