Scripts | Argo - with tales about the production, director, writer, cast

The Argo script was written by Chris Terrio, based on a selection from The Master of Disguise by Antonio J. Mendez and the Wired Magazine article ?The Great Escape,? by Joshuah Bearman.

Based on real events, the dramatic thriller ?Argo? chronicles the life-or-death covert operation to rescue six Americans, which unfolded behind the scenes of the Iran hostage crisis, focusing on the little-known role that the CIA and Hollywood played?information that was not declassified until many years after the event.

Academy Award? winner Ben Affleck (?The Town,? ?Good Will Hunting?) directs and stars in the film, which is produced by Oscar? nominee Grant Heslov (?Good Night, and Good Luck.?), Affleck, and Oscar? winner George Clooney (?Syriana?).

Argo movie trailer

On November 4, 1979, as the Iranian revolution reaches its boiling point, militants storm the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage. But, in the midst of the chaos, six Americans manage to slip away and find refuge in the home of Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor. Knowing it is only a matter of time before the six are found out and likely killed, the Canadian and American governments ask the CIA to intervene. The CIA turns to their top ?exfiltration? specialist, Tony Mendez, to come up with a plan to get the six Americans safely out of the country. A plan so incredible, it could only happen in the movies.

Bryan Cranston and Ben Affleck acting in Argo film scene in Washington

?Argo? also stars Bryan Cranston (TV?s ?Breaking Bad?), Oscar? winner Alan Arkin (?Little Miss Sunshine?), and John Goodman (?Trouble With the Curve?). The main cast also includes Victor Garber, Tate Donovan, Clea DuVall, Scoot McNairy, Rory Cochrane, Christopher Denham, Kerry Bish?, Kyle Chandler and Chris Messina.

Affleck directed the film from a screenplay by Chris Terrio, based on a selection from The Master of Disguise by Antonio J. Mendez and the Wired Magazine article ?The Great Escape,? by Joshuah Bearman.

Argo script

Argo script pdf ? Argo movie script pdf download

David Klawans, Nina Wolarsky, Chris Brigham, Chay Carter, Graham King and Tim Headington are the executive producers, with Amy Herman co-producing.

The behind-the-scenes creative team includes Oscar?-nominated director of photography Rodrigo Prieto (?Brokeback Mountain?), production designer Sharon Seymour (?The Town?); Oscar?-nominated editor William Goldenberg (?Seabiscuit,? ?The Insider?); and Oscar?-nominated costume designer Jacqueline West (?The Social Network,? ?The Curious Case of Benjamin Button?). The music is composed by four-time Oscar? nominee Alexandre Desplat (?The King?s Speech,? ?The Queen?).

Filming on ?Argo? was accomplished in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Istanbul.

Ben Affleck in a scene from Argo shot in Istanbul

About the Production of Argo

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In 1980, Studio Six Productions trumpeted a new film project that had the elements of a hit sci-fi movie: spa ceships, aliens, action and adventure, all happening on an arid, distant planet. Billed as a ?cosmic conflagration,? the epic feature was never greenlit by any studio chief.

It could only be given a green light by the country?s Commander in Chief.

Ben Affleck discusses the production of Argo

More than 30 years later, Ben Affleck directed, produced and stars in ?Argo,? a film based on the true story of the covert mission to rescue six Americans trapped in Iran, following the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran that shocked the world.

The group had narrowly avoided being taken hostage by Iranian revolutionaries and were given sanctuary at the home of Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor, who risked everything to help the Americans, even when others turned them away. But the ?houseguests??as they came to be known?were in constant jeopardy of being found out and captured?or worse. With time running out, the CIA?s top exfiltration expert, Antonio ?Tony? Mendez, devised a brilliant but outrageous escape plan.

Argo movie director Ben Affleck giving direction to actor Alan Arkin

Affleck explains, ?Tony was friends with a famous makeup artist named John Chambers and knew it was a viable prospect for movie people to be traveling around, checking out different locations. He came up with an idea no one else would ever have thought of.?

The plan was for the six to pose as a Canadian filmmaking team on a location scout and then simply fly out?although it was anything but simple. Tony Mendez emphasizes, ?This was a game with no rules, so it was extremely risky. The most dangerous thing about it was the capriciousness of the people we were trying to get around. We had no way of predicting what would happen if we got caught?to us or to those already held hostage.?

Joshuah Bearman, who, in 2007, chronicled the escape in a Wired Magazine article, relates, ?The embassy seizure was a seismic event on the world stage. No one knew quite how to respond to the hostage situation in the embassy compound. The problem of the hidden houseguests was even trickier because diplomacy wasn?t an option. And with each day, the likelihood that they would be discovered grew. Eventually, Tony Mendez, who had ?exfiltrated? sensitive people from Iran and elsewhere before, stepped in with this plan.?

Argo movie actors John Goodman and Alan Arkin

There was also a very real threat to those harboring the Americans. Ambassador Ken Taylor confirms, ?During those three months, the staff at the Canadian Embassy was dealing with the dangerous reality of the situation. We had all been offended by the violent breach of diplomatic protocol, but apart from that, these were our friends. The U.S. and Canada have always had a special relationship that transcends any boundaries. I have been given a lot of the credit, but an equal amount belongs to my wife, Pat, and my embassy staff, as well as my colleagues in Canada.?

Holding an emergency session, the Canadian Parliament made a rare exception to their own laws to provide the six Americans with fake Canadian passports, under the ?film crew?s? individual aliases. They arrived by diplomatic pouch to Ambassador Taylor, who rendezvoused with Mendez to deliver them. Applying his expert counterfeiting skills, Mendez imprinted them with the correct Iranian visas and entered dates to indicate that the six had arrived in the country only the day before.

?To me,? says Affleck, ?one of the most important themes of the movie is remembering when the United States stood up as a nation to say ?Thank you, Canada.? None of this would have happened without them, so America will always have a debt of gratitude to our friends to the north.?

In today?s instant information age, it seems inconceivable that the entire operation remained top secret until it was declassified by President Clinton in 1997. Surprisingly, even after Tony Mendez recounted the events in his 2000 book, Master of Disguise, and, later, Bearman detailed them in Wired, most people remain largely unaware of a story that even Affleck admits ?sounds utterly absurd. I understand that, because it seems completely unbelievable, but the fact that it happened is what makes it even more fascinating.?

?This operation was a little-known success story in an otherwise difficult chapter in history,? says Bearman. ?People knew at the time that six Americans escaped with the help of the Canadians a few months into the crisis, but until the operation was declassified years later, no one realized that the CIA had actually led the Americans to safety with such a daring mission and wild cover story.?

Bearman?s piece first came to the attention of producers Grant Heslov and George Clooney. Heslov offers, ?I remember the hostage crisis well, but I was unaware of this story, so I found it astonishing and also very cool. I knew immediately there was a film there and that it was one I wanted to make, and George felt the same way.?

The cast of the movie Argo at film festival

Screenwriter Chris Terrio was entrusted with turning this rescue operation into a script and went right to the source. He reveals, ?When I read the article, I was riveted, and I was especially curious about Tony Mendez, about what kind of guy could think outside the box enough to come up with this plan and then undertake it. If I had pitched this as an original concept, brows would furrow and people would say, ?No audience will ever believe that.? But Tony managed to convince the United States government to attempt something that was even crazier than what most Hollywood studios would dream up.?

Mendez counters, ?I don?t think it?s so unusual to associate Hollywood and the CIA, because an instrument of espionage is naturally stagecraft.?

?That makes sense,? Heslov nods. ?In both worlds, you?re forging fictional situations and playing dress-up to create convincing scenarios, so there is an overlap.?

More about the production of Argo?

Argo production notes pdf

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The Toughest Scene I Wrote: Screenwriter Chris Terrio on Argo script

By Kyle Buchanan

Chris Terrio discusses a tonally tricky scene from Argo:

Argo screenwriter Chris Terrio

One of the more common critiques of a screenplay one is likely to hear in Hollywood is that a script has ?too many men in rooms talking? (which always strikes me as bizarre, since roughly two thirds of?The Godfather?consists of men in rooms talking. Taken to heart, this note would have given us the tarantella and not ?I believe in America? as the opening of the greatest Hollywood film ever made).

I knew before I even attempted to write what became Scene 58 ofArgo?? a scene of nine men sitting in a conference room talking through various scenarios for a cover story to get Americans out of Iran ? that the scene would be more difficult to pull off than any of the more (ostensibly) complicated set pieces in the film.

Screenwriter Chris Terrio discusses writing the script Argo

A scene at Mehrabad Airport in 1979 is, by comparison, easy to write, because the story can be told through images: a portrait of the Ayatollah glowering over a crowd; the glimpsed tragedy of a refugee woman being yanked away from her husband. It?s the juxtaposition of image against image, as any good Bolshevik filmmaker knows, that tells the story; yet in a conference room, there?s nothing to cut to except the actors? faces. The writing in a scene like this is, in effect, naked. The tension has to come from the audience?s awareness of subtle shifts of power in the room.

Argo screenwriter Chris Terrio talking with Argo director Ben Affleck about the script

As Scene 58 proceeds, top-floor officials from the CIA and State Department debate ideas for cover stories, each idea worse than the last, though no one in the room dares to point out that these Important Men thinking Important Thoughts are, in fact, delusional ? no one except our hero, Tony Mendez. I knew that the crucial beat in the scene (and a major turning point in the film, both for its story and in its tone) would come when Mendez finally decided to speak up to his superiors, exposing the absurdity of their plans and, in effect, volunteering to take over the Tehran operation. I also knew that the moment was fraught: Mendez is a jaded CIA veteran, not an innocent pointing out that the bureaucratic emperors are naked. He couldn?t seem smug, or overtly disrespectful to his superiors, and he needed to speak in the jargon of intelligence professionals. Yet he had to make his case and lay bare the absurdity of the State Department?s plans (which, incredibly, were real: Officials at Foggy Bottom wanted to put the six escaped Americans on bicycles and tell them, in effect, ?Pedal north until you smell Turkish food?).

As I wrote and rewrote the scene, trying to get the tone right, I found myself returning to screenplays by writers like Chayefsky and Goldman, two masters who were writing at the time that?Argo?takes place (Goldman is, of course, still writing and still a master). In their films of the period, one line spoken by a man (or a woman) in a room could change the tone not only of a scene, but of an entire film. And these writers could do it without grandiloquence, but with precision, and often with spitballs ? shifting a conversation with an ironic barb that could render the boardroom of a television network or an editorial meeting at the Washington?Post?speechless. How would these guys write the scene?

I settled on the idea that Mendez would throw a spitball into the self-serious conversation by making a joke about giving the bicycle escapees Gatorade. (Which meant I had to determine whether Gatorade was on the market and a commonly recognized brand in December of 1979. I celebrated when I found aTime?Magazine from the year before featuring a dehydrated athlete with a Village People?style mustache: ?Gatorade: When You?re Thirsty to Win.? So the Gatorade could stay.) Mendez would make his off-hand joke. The table would go silent. The attention of the room would shift to the court jester speaking truth to power.

Script pages from Argo by screenwriter Chris Terrio

Script pages from scenes in Argo movie script by screenwriter Chris Terrio

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Source: http://gregorymancuso.com/2013/02/scripts-argo-director-writer-cast-production/

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