FILM · 2012 · USA
Argo
- Directed by
- Ben Affleck
- Runtime
- 120 min
- Studio
- GK Films, Warner Bros. Pictures, Smokehouse Pictures
54 archived facts 7 topics 1 source Last reviewed Nov 2026
As the Iranian revolution reaches a boiling point, a CIA 'exfiltration' specialist concocts a risky plan to free six Americans who have found shelter at the home of the Canadian ambassador.
54 Interesting Facts About Argo
Interesting Facts (36)
- #001
Contains a major spoiler — show
The dramatic escape from the airport, with a last-minute chase by the Revolutionary Guard, is entirely fictional. In reality, the diplomats arrived with pre-booked tickets for their flights and had no trouble boarding the plane. Because the flight was at 5:30 in the morning, no Revolutionary Guards were on duty; even they were not eager enough about the cause to get up that early and patrol the airport.
- #002
A longtime Led Zeppelin fan, Ben Affleck admitted he was desperate to use "When the Levee Breaks" (from "Led Zeppelin IV") and pursued the rockers relentlessly for permission, but they asked him to make one very specific change. The scene had first been shot with Tate Donovan placing the record needle at the start of the album, which was wrong: "When the Levee Breaks" is actually the last song on the second side of the album. Affleck agreed to make the change and went back to the editing room to please the band. He later told the Los Angeles Times that he appreciated the band's attention to detail, even though he had to pay for another shoot.
- #003
In the archival footage at the end of the film, the Iranian official who made serious threats over Canada's role in the rescue (Sadegh Ghotbzadeh) was later executed by the regime he served.
- #004
When Tony is dropped off at the airport to fly to Tehran, Ben Affleck walks behind him with his family.
- #005
Ben Affleck asked the actors playing the refugees in the embassy to live together for a week in a house decorated to 1979 so they could get to know each other better and understand the period.
- #006
Comic book artist Jim Lee owns some of the storyboards in the fake film. When this film was released, he stated on Twitter that he had no idea they had been used on the mission and had bought them only because he was a Jack Kirby fan.
- #007
John Goodman walks with a limp throughout the film because he had just had knee surgery, but after the film came out one of John Chambers's friends approached him and complimented his performance, specifically for imitating Chambers's limp, of which Goodman had been completely unaware.
- #008
In addition to playing Sahar, the Canadian ambassador's housekeeper, Sheila Vand narrates the prologue.
- #009
Contains a major spoiler — show
When the film was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival, it drew criticism for unfairly downplaying the Canadian government's role in the rescue. Ben Affleck acknowledged this and rewrote the footnote text to state that the CIA operations complemented the Canadian government's efforts and that the mission became an admirable example of international cooperation.
- #010
Tony Mendez died on January 19, 2019, at the age of 78, from complications of Parkinson's disease.
- #011
After the film's release, Iran hired a radical lawyer in France to sue the film, claiming it was designed to stir up anger against Tehran over the embassy hostage crisis and pave the way for US military operations against Iran. The lawyer filed the suit, saying Ben Affleck was guilty of war crimes because of this possibility. The case was heard in a French court by a judge who listened to this presentation and then immediately dismissed it as unfounded.
- #012
In an odd coincidence, the Swissair plane that flew the six "houseguests" from Tehran to Zurich had the code name "Aargau" (after the Swiss canton/region).
- #013
To match the film's period (around 1979), Warner Brothers used the "Big W" logo seen in the studio's films of that era and painted the Burbank Studios logo on the water towers. That was the building's name from 1972 to 1990, when Warner Brothers and Columbia Pictures shared the same facilities.
- #014
All of the Super 8 footage used in the opening scene of the attack on the embassy was entirely recreated. None of it is original.
- #015
The script originally opened by jumping straight to the protests outside the U.S. embassy. But director Ben Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio did not want the film to be a portrayal of irrationally crazed Middle Easterners. The opening title sequence and prologue, which detail how the U.S. helped the Shah come to power and the corruption and brutality that followed him, were created to make the anger after the Iranian Revolution understandable, while not endorsing the largely illegal and immoral hostage-taking at the embassy.
- #016
Several members of the real Tony Mendez's family appear as bus passenger extras after the group is allowed to board the plane.
- #017
During one of the film's many promotional appearances, Alan Arkin had not realized that Bryan Cranston was in Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and surprisingly quoted "Get out of here. I had no idea!" This was because the two actors did not share any scenes together (just as in Argo (2012)).
- #018
At the ceremony held in Canada to welcome the houseguests, the real Bob Anders can be seen holding a sign reading "WELCOME HOME! BOB ANDERS."
- #019
The stock footage showing the Iranian American being attacked by angry American protesters was shot in front of the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. The table read for the fake "Argo" film also took place at the same hotel.
- #020
Contains a major spoiler — show
The Iranian chief guard who questions Tony Mendez and his group as they are about to leave Iran is the same guard who arrested a woman at the airport when Tony entered the country.
- #021
Alan Arkin admitted that, although Lester Siegel is a composite character, he based his character mainly on Jack L. Warner, the last of the great studio moguls, who died shortly before the real hostage crisis.
- #022
The screenplay for Argo appeared on the 2010 Black List, the annual list of the year's most liked unproduced screenplays.
- #023
Argo is the first film Ben Affleck directed that is not set in his hometown of Boston.
- #024
Studio Six, the fake production company set up to give Argo more legitimacy, was convincing enough to receive numerous scripts, one of which is said to have come from Steven Spielberg.
- #025
Tony asks Chambers, possibly as a deliberate joke, "Can you teach somebody to be a director in a day?" and Chambers answers easily, "You can teach a rhesus monkey to be a director in a day." Immediately after the line, the camera cuts to a somewhat bewildered Ben Affleck, who directed the film despite a career built mostly on acting.
- #026
Ben Affleck was praised for his performance, particularly for showing the workings of a spy far more realistically. But Affleck is also 1.94 m tall and notably handsome, while the real Tony Mendez was 5'7", stocky, dark-skinned, dark-haired and ordinary-looking. Put simply, he was a man who could blend in unnoticed anywhere in the Americas, Europe or the Middle East. A tall, handsome man like Ben Affleck stands out in a crowd, most noticeably when he is scouting the bazaar.
- #027
While writing the screenplay, Chris Terrio imagined George Clooney playing Tony Mendez.
- #028
Argo was a major success in Iran in bootleg form, where none of the facts about the "Canadian Caper" have ever been made public (this does not mean the film is a completely balanced account of the events, as it drew criticism for its rather one-sided portrayal of the Iranian people).
- #029
Ben Affleck met former CIA agent and operative Tony Mendez for the first time in March 2011 to discuss the role. The meeting took place at Chadwicks Bar on K Street in Washington, D.C., where the notorious spy Aldrich Ames passed secret American documents to the K.G.B. In the film, however, the first meeting where the basic plan is devised is staged at the Smoke House restaurant in Burbank, California, a real-life haunt of many celebrities. George Clooney and Grant Heslov's company, SmokeHouse Productions, takes its name from this restaurant.
- #030
The rifles carried by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the film are correctly chosen fixed-stock G3-A4s, a variant of the German H-K G3 rifle produced locally in Iran by the country's Defense Industries Organization. The filmmakers resisted the temptation to use the easily available AK-47s, which were actually used by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, but only a few years after the hostage crisis, during the war with Iraq.
- #031
When Tony gets his visa for entering Iran from the embassy in Istanbul, the visa stamp has to be corrected because the revolution took place weeks earlier and the stamps had not yet been updated. The Iranian embassy was still using visa stamps for the "Kingdom of Iran," but since the revolution (which in the film occurred only a few weeks earlier) the country has been known as the "Islamic Republic of Iran." The embassy had not yet received updated visa stamps, so the clerk crosses out the words and corrects them. A wonderful, very small detail that is historically accurate.
- #032
In a 2021 interview, Ben Affleck said that although he loves Argo, if the project were offered to him nearly a decade after making it, he would want one major change: turning the Argo story into a cable or streaming-based miniseries.
- #033
In 1980, making a long-distance telephone call (especially from Tehran to Burbank) took a long time (possibly several hours), involved multiple operators and had a delay (latency) of at least 1 to 2 seconds. The calls most likely also had a great deal of static. This includes all the conversations between the CIA and Tony. In addition, none of them could have been "secure," because although technology for "secure" lines existed at the time, it involved heavy and bulky equipment rather than desktop telephones and was intended for military use only. In the reality of 1980, Mendez would not have had access to such a "secure" device with which to call the United States from a private residence (the Canadian ambassador's house).
- #034
The actors pronounced Hamilton Jordan's surname incorrectly. They pronounced it as "Jerdan."
- #035
In the frame used for the footnote text, Tony's son's shelf of science fiction toys and collectibles is visible. Among them are Star Wars figures standing on display with their proper name placards. According to their labels, the "Jawa" and "Sand People" figures have been swapped. Note that Threepio [sic] is missing and stands elsewhere on the shelves.
- #036
The silver robot costume used in Argo's Hollywood screenplay reading also appears as the character S.A.M. in the Adult Swim series NTSF: SD: SUV (2011).
Production Story (9)
- #037
The film states that both the British and New Zealand embassies in Tehran turned away the six American diplomats, leaving the Canadians as their only refuge. In fact, the British embassy had housed the six for a few days, but everyone agreed the Canadian embassy would be safer and more suitable, so they moved there. A New Zealand official transported them, and the British also helped other Americans stranded in the country at the time. Ben Affleck acknowledged that he deliberately deviated from the real events to speed up the pace and increase the tension.
- #038
To make the film feel like the 1970s, Ben Affleck shot on regular 35 mm film but used the minimum two-perforation widescreen frame size, and in post-production he further expanded the Tehran scenes to increase the perceived grain. He also copied camera movements and busy office scenes from All the President's Men (1976) for the scenes depicting CIA Headquarters, and borrowed from The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) for the Los Angeles exteriors.
- #039
The exterior of Zsa Zsa Gabor's Beverly Hills mansion doubled as the home of Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin). Gabor, who was at the house during filming, was too ill to observe the production.
- #040
In an interview with Piers Morgan, former President Jimmy Carter said he believed the film was a "great drama" and deserved to win the Oscar for Best Picture. However, Carter noted that although he said "ninety percent of the contributions to the ideas, and the consummation of the plan was Canadian" and that the film "gives almost full credit to the American C. I. A. With that exception, the movie's very good," Carter stated that "the main hero, in my opinion, was Ken Taylor, who was the Canadian ambassador, who orchestrated the entire process."
- #041
The dramatic escape from the airport, with the last-minute chase by the Revolutionary Guards, is entirely fictional. In reality, the diplomats arrived with pre-booked tickets for their flight and had no trouble boarding the plane. Because the flight was at 5:30 in the morning, no Revolutionary Guards were on duty; even they were not eager enough about the cause to get up that early and patrol the airport.
- #042
A longtime Led Zeppelin fan, Ben Affleck admits he was desperate to use "When the Levee Breaks" (from "Led Zeppelin IV") and pursued the rockers relentlessly to get permission, but they asked him to make one very specific change. The scene was first shot with Tate Donovan placing the record needle at the start of the album, which was wrong: "When the Levee Breaks" is actually the last song on the second side of the album. Affleck agreed to make the change and went back to the editing room to keep the band happy. He later told the Los Angeles Times that he appreciated the band's attention to detail, even though he had to pay for another shoot.
- #043
As shown in this film, in the late 1970s the Hollywood sign (first erected in 1923 as "HOLLYWOODLAND" to advertise an upcoming real estate development) had fallen into serious disrepair. In 1978, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce organized a fundraising campaign asking each of nine prominent individuals to contribute about twenty-eight thousand dollars (one donor per letter) for the restoration. Some of these benefactors were: Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, who gave the Y; singers Gene Autry and Andy Williams (the second L and the W, respectively); and heavy metal/shock rock star Alice Cooper, who replaced the third O (by far the most damaged of the letters) in memory of Groucho Marx. Later, Warner Brothers Records, a division of the company that released this film, donated the second O. However, this restoration was completed before the events depicted in the film began.
- #044
The character Jack Kirby (Michael Parks), briefly shown as the storyboard artist for the fake film, was one of the pioneers of the American comic book industry and the co-creator of groundbreaking comic book characters such as Captain America, Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, the Silver Surfer and teams known as the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. Kirby created storyboards for an adaptation of Roger Zelazny's novel Lord of Light that were used in real life as "proof" of filmmaking during the "Canadian Caper."
- #045
The person who actually got the story published was former director of Central Intelligence George Tenet (in office 1997-2004). Because of bureaucracy and the still-unresolved Iran hostage crisis, the story was never published, but only when Tenet took over as Director of the CIA, and in parallel with the Agency's fiftieth anniversary, did he persuade Tony Mendez to write his account of the mission and his memoirs.
Behind the Scenes (1)
- #046
For the opening scene, the cinematographer gave 8 mm cameras to some people in the crowd so that the opening scene would look like real footage of the uprising.
Characters & Cast (3)
- #047
Ben Affleck stated that the production was granted unprecedented access to CIA Headquarters, both inside and outside, and that the gratitude for this privilege belonged to retired CIA officer Tony Mendez, whom Affleck portrays in the film.
- #048
The script used for the fake film project was based on Roger Zelazny's 1967 science fiction novel "Lord of Light." In real life, makeup artist John Chambers (played by John Goodman) came up with the title "Argo" because he liked knock-knock jokes. In the film, the title turns into a crude joke.
- #049
Lester Siegel (played by Alan Arkin) is said to be a composite character. In real life, however, makeup artist Robert Sidell, a friend of John Chambers, posed as the producer of the fake film. Sidell's wife Andi was the receptionist of the fake production company. Ben Affleck assumed that Sidell, like Chambers, had died, but shortly before the film's release he was informed that Sidell was still alive and well. Affleck flew Robert Sidell to the film's Los Angeles premiere and acknowledged Sidell's role in the operation in his opening remarks.
Easter Eggs & References (1)
- #050
The fake movie poster created for the real Argo mission was quite plain and in black and white. In the film it is briefly visible in the background before the staged script-reading event for the press. The color fake poster used in the film also appears briefly in the same scene.
Deeper Meaning (1)
- #051
While John Chambers, Tony Mendez and Lester Siegel are trying to figure out how to make their fake film project convincing, Siegel recalls that he once made a film with Rock Hudson and draws this conclusion: if you want people to believe a lie, you have to get the media to spread it on your behalf. This seemingly irrelevant remark is a reference to the fact that Hudson, one of the biggest Hollywood stars and sex symbols of the 1950s, was secretly gay and that his manager Henry Willson actively fed the mainstream media false information about Hudson's "girlfriends" (dates actually arranged by the studio purely for publicity). When the gossip tabloid "Confidential" threatened to expose Hudson's homosexuality, Willson gave them scandalous information about two lesser-known stars on his roster, Rory Calhoun and Tab Hunter, and arranged a sham marriage between Hudson and his secretary Phyllis Gates. Hudson's homosexuality was little known outside Hollywood until his death in 1985.
Career & Awards (3)
- #052
In an interview with Piers Morgan, former President Jimmy Carter said he believed the film was a "great drama" and deserved to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Carter added, however, that "ninety percent of the contributions to the ideas, and the consummation of the plan was Canadian," and that the film "gives almost full credit to the American C.I.A. With that exception, the movie's very good." Carter also stated that "the main hero, in my opinion, was Ken Taylor, who was the Canadian ambassador, who orchestrated the entire process."
- #053
In the film, Tony Mendez gets the idea for the fake movie while watching Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) with his son. John Chambers designed the makeup for the original Planet of the Apes (1968) and received an honorary Oscar for that work.
- #054
With this film, Ben Affleck became the seventh person to win the Golden Globe for Best Director without being nominated for the Best Director Oscar for the same film. The first six are: * Laslo Benedek - Death of a Salesman (1951) * Elia Kazan - Baby Doll (1956) * Paul Newman - Rachel, Rachel (1968) * Charles Jarrott - Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) * Barbra Streisand - Yentl (1983) * Clint Eastwood - Bird (1988) Of these seven, only Benedek and Jarrott won the award without any nomination for an Oscar.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
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