What 'Argo' Did to Me

I love history. For a long time, actually, my entire childhood, I read myself to sleep using '1000 Amazing Facts' or 'The World History Book'. That's really why I'm no stranger to Leon Trotsky or Charlemagne or The Great Fire of London. However, it's been a while since I went deeply back in time to exhume information. I was getting quite un-motivated and then I saw Argo. This is  a movie I was reluctant to see because some people somewhere had said 'O gosh it's boring. Sooo political.' Don't even know why I listened because they said the same thing about 'The Ides of March' and I enjoyed it! (thank you Ryan Gosling...and George Clooney for that!)
Anyways, so some weeks ago I saw Argo and oh my...it's Bryan Cranston-Alan Arkin-Ben Affleck-together-amazing dialogue-crazy-good! So back to what I was saying about history, before I digress, Argo brought to my attention, the story of Reza Shah Pahlavi and the introduction of the Ayatollah which I had never known prior to that. I did more research and now I guess I know about Black Friday and the dictatorship of the Shah in Iran.

To the main thing: I have compiled a list of the things Argo did to me below, much like the 'What I've Learnt from Movies' blog entries.


1. Foremost, it made me cry. It was so great to see that people under the risk of being taken hostage were safe. I had been traumatized by Daniel Pearl's story earlier in my life
         
P.S.- The one part in particular was when the announcement was made in the cabin              that they had left Iranian airspace :')

2. Taught me something new (aside history). I now know what an 'exfil' is. For those who don't, 

           
An exfil is the process of removing personnel when it is considered imperative that they be immediately relocated out of a hostile environment and taken to a secure area.

Stolen, I mean, culled from Wikipedia

3. Showed me that dialogue can't get any better :)

Tony Mendez: You. Where was your passport issued?

Bob Anders: Vancouver.

Mendez: Where were you born?

Anders: Toronto.

Mendez: "Torono", Canadians don’t pronounce the T.

Mendez: What's your middle name? [Stafford stammers] What's your middle name? What's your middle name?

Stafford: Leon.

Mendez: Shoot him. He's an American spy

and finally, my best...

Max Klein: You want me to be honest with you, Les?

Lester Siegel: No! I would like you to bullshit me, Max.

Max Klein: Alright. I enjoyed your films, the early ones. I took this meeting out of respect, because I wanted to say no to your face.

Lester Siegel: Thank you, very respectful.

Max Klein: You're finished, Lester. Get your cataracts fixed, read the trades. MGM just capitalized for six new films, they're screaming for Sci-Fi. They're offering me four times what you guys are offering me.

Lester Siegel: Well, what can I say? Congratulations. But see, it kind of worries me what you're saying. Let me tell you why. Couple of weeks ago I was sitting at Trader Vic's, I was enjoying a mai tai, when my pal, Warren Beatty comes in, he wishes me well, we have a little chat. Seems he was attached to star in 'Zulu Empire', which was gonna get anchored at MGM slate. But Warren confided in me that the pictures gone over budget, because the Zulu extras wanna unionize. They may be cannibals, but they want health and dental, so the movie's kaput. Which means, that the MGM deal ain't gonna happen, and your scrip ain't worth a buffalo shit on a nickel! So, the way it looks to me, through the cataracts I grant you, is that you can either sign here and take ten thousand dollars for your toilet paper script, or you can go f*** yourself! With all due respect.

4. Kept me tense for one hour straight (even Insidious didn't do that).

5. Finally, showed me another side  or should I say, another face, of Ben Affleck.

Ben Affleck (handsome as always)

Argo Ben aka Kevin Harkins or is it...Tony Mendez?