Sunday, July 10, 2011

Ben Affleck, the CIA, and the Hindu Gods

It's two years off, but Ben Affleck and Alan Arkin are making a movie of the greatest story never told, one I've loved for years: The CIA created a phony film production company, ostensibly scouting locations in Iran in 1979 for a production based on Roger Zelazny's awesome sci-fi novel Lord of Light, with visual designs by Jack Kirby -- and even a proposed amusement park -- all of it really a covert means of smuggling hostages out of Iran after the Islamist revolution.  


It will be called Argo.  The real movie, I mean.  About the CIA, not about scientists who transform themselves into Hindu gods, though a real Lord of Light movie would also have been sweet.  I was as duped as the Iranians back when I was ten years old and remember eagerly looking forward to the film after reading about it in Comics Scene magazine, no lie.  


And I do not resent the CIA for this.  Interestingly, I even remember hearing about the whole project at some interim stage when it appeared the filmmakers had been mere con artists but had not yet been revealed as part of a CIA rescue mission.  We dwell in the veil of Maya, clearly. 

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