Hollywood Can't Make This Up: 'Argo' Recounts The CIA Rescue Of Six Americans In Iran

 

Patrick Hruby at the Washington Times reports on the new Ben Affleck film about the CIA's rescue of a half dozen Americans held in Iran.

The situation was dire. Unbearably tense. Three months after the late-1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by Iranian revolutionaries, six American diplomats who had secretly escaped the compound were attempting to flee the country.

Through the capital city’s airport.

Disguised as a flashy, oblivious Hollywood film crew.

Led by an undercover Central Intelligence Agency officer.

... As he watched a dramatic re-creation of that moment during a recent screening of the new film “Argo,” he felt the uneasiness all over again.

“Oh, absolutely, it brought back the emotions,” said Tony Mendez, a retired disguise specialist in the CIA’s office of technical service (seen in the below photo). “I went to screenings in [Los Angeles] and Toronto, and it was just like being there again. Both times.

“There’s nothing so final as ‘Wheels up.’ [On missions], we always were waiting for that wheels-up feeling before we broke out the Bloody Marys.”

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/10/hollywood-cant-make-this-up-argo-recounts-the-cia-/?page=all#pagebreak

Mat Damon And Ben Affleck To Make Film About Boston Gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger

Amy Wallace at GQ.com reports that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are planning to make a film about James "Whitey" Bulger.

Damon will portray Bulger and Affleck will direct.

Just days after Matt Damon confirmed that he's settled on his first directing project, the actor tells GQ that he and Ben Affleck have also chosen their next collaboration: a movie about the reputed former godfather of the Irish Mob, one of the coldest, most ruthless figures in the history of organized crime.

"We're doing a Whitey Bulger movie," Damon says of the leader of South Boston's Winter Hill Gang, who had been on the lam for 16 years and was wanted for 19 murders, among other things, when he was apprehended in Santa Monica in June. "Warner's got it for us."

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201110/whitey-bulger-matt-damon-ben-affleck-irish-mob