Did Argo Really Happen? Johnny Spoiler Goes Down the CIA–Hollywood Rabbit Hole
I’m watching Argo again, and about halfway through I stopped watching it like a movie and started asking the question that probably gets everybody eventually:
Wait. Did this stuff actually happen?
Turns out, yes. A surprising amount of it did.
In 1979, Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took American personnel hostage. Six Americans escaped the embassy and eventually hid with Canadian diplomats. CIA officer Tony Mendez came up with an absolutely ridiculous—and apparently brilliant—plan to get them out: pretend they were a Canadian movie crew scouting locations for a science-fiction movie called Argo.
That part is real.
The CIA created a fake production company called Studio Six Productions, established an actual Hollywood office, printed business cards, created production materials and even placed advertisements in Variety. Canada supplied passports for the six Americans.
But watching the movie sent me further down the rabbit hole.
Why Were Iranians So Angry?
Argo gives you the quick history lesson at the beginning, but the relationship between Iran and the United States goes much deeper than the hostage crisis.
And yes—the CIA really did help overthrow an Iranian government decades earlier.
In 1953, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh had become enormously important after Iran nationalized its British-controlled oil industry. The United States and Britain subsequently backed a covert operation to remove Mosaddegh and strengthen the position of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
This isn't conspiracy-theory territory. Declassified U.S. documents describe the CIA campaign and its objective of replacing Mosaddegh's government with a pro-Western government under the Shah.
That history became part of the resentment toward the Shah and toward American influence in Iran.
By 1979, opposition to the Shah included religious revolutionaries, nationalists, leftists, students and other groups with very different ideas about what Iran should become. So saying simply that "the Iranian people hated their government" doesn't quite cover it. There was enormous opposition to the Shah, but Iran wasn't politically unanimous.
The revolution eventually brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power, the Shah fled Iran, and the U.S. decision to admit the Shah for medical treatment helped ignite an already explosive situation.
Then came the embassy takeover.
Wait—Was That Really Comic-Book Art?
This may be my favorite piece of the entire story.
The science-fiction movie the CIA pretended to make wasn't invented completely from scratch.
Before the hostage rescue, producer Barry Geller had been trying to make a movie based on Roger Zelazny's science-fiction novel Lord of Light. The production fell apart, but it had already generated some spectacular concept artwork.
And the artist?
Jack Kirby.
Yes. THAT Jack Kirby.
The legendary comic-book artist behind characters and concepts associated with Captain America, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Thor and the New Gods inadvertently became part of a CIA operation.
John Chambers knew about the abandoned Lord of Light project and its Kirby artwork. Tony Mendez's team essentially repurposed the screenplay and artwork, renamed the fake production Argo, and used the materials to make their nonexistent Hollywood movie look legitimate.
So technically it isn't a comic book about the Iranian Revolution. It's something stranger: art from an abandoned sci-fi movie created by one of the greatest comic-book artists ever became a prop in a real CIA operation.
Hollywood couldn't make this up.
Except Hollywood literally helped make it up.
And John Goodman Is Playing a Real Guy?!
This was my other big discovery watching Argo.
John Goodman plays John Chambers, and Chambers deserves his own movie.
Seriously. Where is the John Chambers movie?
Chambers was the legendary Hollywood makeup artist who won an honorary Academy Award for his groundbreaking prosthetic makeup work on Planet of the Apes. He also worked secretly with the CIA, applying Hollywood makeup and prosthetic techniques to espionage.
The CIA says Chambers worked with its technicians during the late 1970s developing sophisticated facial disguises using techniques related to the ones he had pioneered in Hollywood.
Then Tony Mendez called him about Iran.
Chambers helped create Studio Six Productions and sell the illusion that Argo was an actual Hollywood movie.
That's a film right there:
Oscar-winning Hollywood makeup genius secretly makes disguises for the CIA and eventually helps rescue Americans from revolutionary Iran.
Somebody call John Goodman back.
The Cast Makes Argo Work
Knowing all this history actually makes me appreciate the performances more.
Ben Affleck keeps Tony Mendez remarkably restrained. He isn't playing him like James Bond. He's playing a guy trying to remain calm while executing an idea that sounds completely insane.
Then you've got John Goodman and Alan Arkin, who basically inject Hollywood electricity into the movie every time they appear.
But the supporting cast is ridiculously deep.
Scoot McNairy is fantastic. Clea DuVall is here. Tate Donovan is here. Bryan Cranston is here. Victor Garber is here.
It would have been very easy for Argo to become one of those historical dramas where everybody feels like they're walking around carrying a giant sign saying IMPORTANT HISTORICAL EVENT.
Instead, these performances make everybody feel human.
And that's ultimately what is raising the movie for me on this rewatch.
The history is fascinating. The CIA operation is unbelievable. The Jack Kirby connection is insane.
But Argo works because the cast sells the idea that underneath all this geopolitical history were a handful of terrified people who had absolutely no idea whether this crazy fake-movie scheme was actually going to get them home.
Johnny Spoiler verdict so far: Argo is still a hell of a movie—but the true story surrounding it might somehow be even better.
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