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."
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.
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.
Ben Affleck stated that the production was granted unprecedented access to CIA Headquarters, both inside and out, and that the gratitude for this privilege belongs to retired CIA officer Tony Mendez, whom Affleck portrays in the film.
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.
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. 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.
In 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.
When Tony is dropped off at the airport to fly to Tehran, Ben Affleck walks behind him with his family.
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.
Ben Affleck wanted the actors playing the refugees at the embassy to live together for a week in a house decorated in 1979 style, both so they could get to know each other better and so they could better understand the period.
To make the film feel like the 1970s, Ben Affleck shot on regular 35 mm film, but used a minimum two-perf widescreen frame size, and also further expanded the Tehran scenes in post-production to increase the perceived graininess. He also copied camera movements and bustling 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.
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 would be used on the job and that he had only bought them because he was a Jack Kirby fan.
John Goodman limps throughout the film because he had just had knee surgery, but after the film came out, one of John Chambers's friends came up to him and complimented him on his performance, especially for imitating Chambers's limp, of which Goodman was completely unaware.
Ben Affleck was criticized by some viewers for taking the role of Tony Mendez (European-American) rather than a Latin/Hispanic actor. However, Mendez, who is half Mexican and half European, said Affleck had "no problem" with what he portrayed and that he liked his performance.
Much of the classified material seized in the raid on the American Embassy can now be seen in a museum in Tehran.
In addition to playing Sahar, the Canadian ambassador's housekeeper, Sheila Vand narrates the prologue.
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 a commendable example of international cooperation.
In reality, Tony Mendez was in Tehran for only a day and a half.
Tony Mendez, 78, died on January 19, 2019, from complications of Parkinson's disease.
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.
In a strange coincidence, the Swissair plane that flew six "houseguests" from Tehran to Zurich had the code name "Aargau" (after the canton/region in Switzerland).
To match the period in which the film is set (around 1979), Warner Brothers used the "Big W" logo used in its 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.
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.
The script initially began by jumping straight to the protests outside the US Embassy. However, director Ben Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio did not want the film to be a portrayal of unreasonably crazed Middle Easterners. The opening title sequence and prologue, which detail how the US 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.
Several members of the real Tony Mendez's family appear as bus passenger extras after the group is allowed to board the plane.
No scene in the film was actually shot in Iran.
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."
During one of the many promotions for this film, Alan Arkin had not realized that Bryan Cranston was in Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and was surprisingly quoted as saying, "Get out of here. I had no idea!" This was because the two actors did not share scenes together (just as in Argo (2012)).
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.
When Ben Affleck was snubbed for the Academy Award for Best Director, he joked that he did not feel much like a victim since he was not nominated for Best Actor either.
The story of the rescue was first filmed in 1981 by director Lamont Johnson under the title Escape from Iran: The Canadian Caper (1981).
Lester Siegel (played by Alan Arkin) is said to be a composite character. However, in real life, makeup artist Robert Sidell, a friend of John Chambers, posed as the producer of the fake film. Sidell's wife, Andi, was the receptionist for 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 speech.
At the ceremony held in Canada to welcome the houseguests, the real Bob Anders can be seen holding a sign that reads "WELCOME HOME! BOB ANDERS."
While John Chambers, Tony Mendez and Lester Siegel try 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 from it: If you want people to believe a lie, you have to get the media to spread it on your behalf. This seemingly unrelated 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 that were in fact arranged by the studio purely for publicity). When the gossip tabloid "Confidential" threatened to expose Hudson's homosexuality, Willson gave them scandalous information of the time 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 remained largely unknown outside Hollywood until his death in 1985.
The stock footage showing an Iranian American being attacked by angry American protesters was shot in front of the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. The read-through of the fake "Argo" film also took place at the same hotel.
The person who actually got the story published was former CIA agent and director 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.
In the film there is a dramatic chase scene as the plane takes off; this did not happen. As Mark Lijek noted, "Fortunately there were very few Revolutionary Guards in the area. That's why we boarded the plane at 5:30 in the morning; even they weren't eager enough to be there that early. The truth is, the immigration officers barely looked at us and we were processed normally. We boarded the plane for Zurich and were then taken to the US ambassador's residence in Bern. It was that simple."
The film was the one film critic Roger Ebert chose as the best film of the year, and it was the last film he would choose for that honor before his death in 2013.
The Iranian chief guard who interrogates 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.
Alan Arkin admitted that, although Lester Siegel is a composite character, he based his character mainly on Jack L. Warner, the last of the film moguls, who died shortly before the real hostage crisis.
The screenplay of this film was on the 2010 Black List; the list of the year's "most liked" unproduced screenplays.
It is the first film directed by Ben Affleck not set in his hometown of Boston.
In the film, Tony Mendez gets the idea for the fake film 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 won an honorary Oscar for that work.
It is the first film in seven years to win the Oscar for Best Picture without winning Best Director (the previous film was Crash (2004)). It is also the first film in twenty-three years to win the Oscar for Best Picture without being nominated for Best Director (the previous film was Driving Miss Daisy (1989)).
John Goodman appeared in two consecutive Oscar-winning Best Pictures: The Artist (2011) and this film. In both films he played a Hollywood character, a producer in The Artist and a makeup artist in this film.
The fake production company Studio Six, set up to give the film "Argo" more legitimacy, was realistic enough to receive many screenplays; one of them is said to have been from Steven Spielberg.
The exterior of Zsa Zsa Gabor's Beverly Hills mansion doubled for the home of Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin). Gabor, who was at home during the shoot, was too ill to observe the production process.
Tony asks Chambers, in what may be a deliberate joke: "Can you teach somebody to be a director in a day?" and he answers casually: "You can teach a rhesus monkey to be a director in a day." Immediately after the line, the camera cuts to Ben Affleck, who looks a little taken aback. This film was directed by Affleck, whose career is mostly built on acting.
Ben Affleck received praise for his performance, particularly for showing how a spy operates in a much more realistic way. However, Ben Affleck is also 1.94" and notably handsome. The real Tony Mendez was 5'7" tall, chubby, dark-skinned, dark-haired and had ordinary features. Simply put, he was a man who could blend in unnoticed anywhere in the Americas, Europe or the Middle East. A tall and handsome man like Ben Affleck stands out in a crowd; this is most noticeable when he is scouting the market.
While writing the screenplay, Chris Terrio imagined that Tony Mendez would be played by George Clooney.
It is the first film in which Ben Affleck was not involved in writing the screenplay.
The film was a great success in Iran in bootleg format, where all the facts about the "Canadian Caper" were never made public (this does not mean the film is a completely balanced account of the event, as it has been criticized for portraying the Iranian people in a rather one-sided way).
The fake movie poster created for the real Argo operation was quite plain and in black and white. In the film, it is briefly visible in the background before the press script-reading event. In the same scene, the color fake poster used in the film is also briefly shown.
Ben Affleck met with the former CIA agent. Operative Tony Mendez first came together 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. However, in the film, the first meeting where the basic plan was devised was 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.
Since Grand Hotel (1932), it is the first Best Picture Oscar winner that was also not nominated for Best Director or either lead acting category.
The rifles carried by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the film are correctly chosen G3-A4s with fixed stocks, a variant of the German H-K G3 rifles produced locally in Iran by the country's Defense Industries Organization. The producers resisted the temptation to use the readily 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.
Alan Arkin was the first actor cast in the film.
Hollywood makeup artist John Chambers, played by John Goodman, had a successful Hollywood career. He was known for the Spock ears in Star Trek and, as shown in the film, received an honorary Oscar for his work on Planet of the Apes (1968).
The first three films directed by Ben Affleck each earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor or Actress: Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone (2007)), Jeremy Renner (The Town (2010)) and, with this film, Alan Arkin.
While Tony is getting his visa from the embassy in Istanbul for entry into Iran, the visa stamp needs to be corrected because the revolution took place weeks earlier and the stamps did not yet reflect the change. The Iranian embassy is still using a visa stamp 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 great, very small detail that is historically accurate.
In a 2021 interview, Ben Affleck stated that although he loves this film, if the project were offered to him nearly ten years after making it, he would want a major change: turning the Argo story into a cable or streaming service-based miniseries.
Despite playing Iranian characters, Fouad Hajji is of Moroccan origin, and Yuri Sardarov is of Armenian and Georgian origin.
The winning of the Best Picture Oscar was announced live via satellite from the White House by First Lady Michelle Obama.
The real John Chambers worked with director Alan Arkin on the film Twigs (1975).
The film contains one hundred twenty speaking parts.
In Greek mythology, Jason's ship "The Argo" took its name from a man named Argus, who built it. Those who sailed on it were called "The Argonauts."
He appears as an Iranian Consulate official. He was also Ben Affleck's personal consultant on the film.
In 1980, making a long-distance telephone call (especially from Tehran to Burbank) would take a long time (possibly several hours), involve multiple operators and have a delay (latency) of at least 1 to 2 seconds. 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 be "secure," because although the technology for "secure" lines existed at the time, it involved heavy and bulky equipment, not 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 that would let him call the United States from a private residence (the Canadian ambassador's house).
It is included among "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die," edited by Steven Schneider.
The film is produced by two Batman actors: George Clooney and Ben Affleck. With this film, both men won their second Oscars.
Scoot McNairy (Joe Stafford) and Kerry Bishé (Kathy Stafford) played a husband and wife in the 1980s. In Halt and Catch Fire (2014), McNairy and Bishé also played a married couple in the 1980s.
The actors pronounced Hamilton Jordan's surname correctly. They pronounced it as "Jerdan."
It tied with Gigi (1958) and CODA (2021) as the Best Picture Oscar winner with the shortest title at four letters. The Best Picture winner with the longest title is The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) (ten words and thirty-five letters).
Ashley Wood Garcia's debut.
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 in a display with places for the appropriate names. According to their labels, the "Jawa" and "Sand People" figures have been swapped. See, Threepio [sic] is missing and stands elsewhere on the shelves.
Victor Garber is the second cast member of Toronto's legendary 1972 stage production "Godspell" to play Ken Taylor on screen. Martin Short played Taylor in a 1982 sketch on SCTV (1976).
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 at all. For an Oscar.
Hamilton Jordan and Kyle Chandler, who portrays him in the film, both graduated from the University of Georgia.
The silver robot costume used in Argo's Hollywood script reading also appears as the character S. A. M. in the Adult Swim series NTSF: SD: SUV (2011).
Tony Mendez was 5'7" in real life. Ben Affleck, who portrays him in the film, was 6'4", making him nine inches taller.
Costars Kyle Chandler and Bryan Cranston were both nominated for the 2010 Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. Chandler lost to Cranston, for Friday Night Lights (2006) and Breaking Bad respectively.
Ben Affleck and Rory Cochrane appeared in Dazed and Confused (1993).
This is the third collaboration between Ben Affleck and Titus Welliver, after The Town (2010) and Gone Baby Gone (2007), and the second between Affleck and Victor Garber, after The Town (2010).
Ben Affleck and Zeljko Ivanek had previously appeared in School Ties (1992).
In a news report in the film, someone mentions Network (1976). Bryan Cranston, one of Argo's stars, appeared in a play adapted from Network that premiered in 2017.
The film's cast includes two Oscar winners: Ben Affleck and Alan Arkin; and one Oscar nominee: Bryan Cranston.
Alan Arkin and John Goodman appeared in Mother Night (1996) and Love the Coopers (2015).
Ben Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio reunited in the DC Extended Universe. Scoot McNairy appears in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016).
It features several MonsterVerse stars: * Bryan Cranston appeared in Godzilla (2014) * John Goodman in Kong: Skull Island (2017) * Kyle Chandler appeared in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) and Godzilla vs. Kong (2021).
Ben Affleck and Philip Baker Hall had previously appeared in The Sum of All Fears (2002). In both films, Affleck plays a CIA analyst.