He's working his way over into hanoi jane ranks.
Posted on 08/13/2007 6:22:00 PM PDT by nuconvert
Clooney Company Working on Tehran Film
August 13, 2007
A/P
KNOXVILLE, Md. -- George Clooney's production company is writing a script for a movie based on the true story of a CIA fake-identity expert who smuggled six Americans out of Iran while dozens of others were being held hostage there.
"Escape From Tehran" is in development but hasn't been approved for production, Stan Rosenfield, a spokesman for Smoke House productions, told The (Hagerstown) Herald-Mail for a story published Monday.
The trade journal Variety has reported that the script will be a "dramedy" — a humorous drama — and that Clooney could direct and star.
The script would be based on a Wired magazine article published in April about the rescue engineered by retired CIA agent Antonio Mendez of Knoxville. Mendez told The Herald-Mail he agreed to be interviewed by Wired in exchange for sharing movie rights with the magazine writer.
Mendez, honored in 1997 as one of the 50 greatest spies in CIA history, devised the operation after the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, was overrun by a mob on Nov. 4, 1979. Fifty-two of the 90 people inside were held hostage for 444 days, but others fled. Six of the Americans who escaped hid in the homes of Canadian embassy officials.
CIA agents pitched several rescue schemes, including disguising the Americans as Canadian nutritionists or schoolteachers, Mendez said. Then Mendez proposed outfitting them as employees of Studio Six, a fictitious Canadian movie studio supposedly scouting locations for a science-fiction movie called "Argo." Using his Hollywood makeup-artist connections, Mendez bought full-page advertisements in Variety and Hollywood Reporter, prompting articles that helped create cover for the rescue.
Mendez, posing as Irish film producer Kevin Costa Harkins, went to Tehran, found the six Americans and coached them
(Excerpt) Read more at film.guardian.co.uk ...
I’ve heard the story told by Mendez in a radio interview. One of his specialties was disguise, not just false noses but rather creating the whole fake persona. The Tehran story was a great example of the cool missions he’s been on or supported and could make a neat film.
George Clooney should not be allowed to approach anything involving recent American history.
I’ve heard him too. Facinating life.
ping
No doubt it will be riddled with anti-US/CIA smears
and outright lies.
Yeah, like “The CIA left them there to die!” or stuff like that.
“George Clooney should not be allowed to approach anything involving recent American history.”
Those were my exact thoughts!
LLS
“The CIA left them there to die!”
I’ll bet they include exactly that... and more!
LLS
He's working his way over into hanoi jane ranks.
Maybe his family meant to warn about this person by his heritage...
Agreed!
I remember those billboards in Des Moines in 1980, shortly after the Gip took office (and the miserable peanutbrain left in disgrace) that said simply; “Thanks, Canada.”
What a stupid title. Did they even stop to think that people might mistake this for a sequel to the Escape from New York & L.A. movies?
Good point — but Clooney could never hope to be as cool as Snake Pliskin.
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