Clooney Escapes from Tehran
No, it's not a John Carpenter sequel.
Brad forwarded this interesting Variety article about an upcoming George Clooney vehicle which I was doubly surprised by. Firstly, I didn’t realize Clooney and Soderbergh’s Section 8 went the way of the dodo. Apparently Soderbergh wants to focus strictly on directing so Clooney and fellow Good Night, and Good Luck scribe and producer, Grant Heslov, started up a new production company called Smoke House. That was the first “Huh” I had reading this article.
The second “Huh” was learning what story they optioned. The Oscar-nominated pair picked up the rights to a Wired magazine article called, “How the CIA Used a Fake Sc-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran”. I love self-explanatory titles like that. Saves everyone time, doesn’t it?
We’re way ahead of schedule so let me slow things down a bit. In 1979, the U.S. embassy in Iran experienced a takeover by Members of the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line. The hostages weren’t released until the day (literally) Reagan officially took office over a year later. This most of you already know, right? But here’s the story I didn’t know and maybe you didn’t either.
Not everyone at the embassy was captured. A group of Americans escaped during the takeover and had to fend for themselves on the streets of Tehran. They hid in empty buildings or the vacant apartments of those they knew were being held hostage. They did their best not to walk out in daylight. They were essentially fugitives in a hostile environment. They finally got in touch with the Canadian embassy who in turn go in touch with the U.S. government and what resulted were the events detailed in that great article title: The plan, forged by the CIA, was to fake an entire film production, create false Canadian identifications and get the escapees out of Iran with the “film crew”. And it worked.
The film, which is said to be a “dramedy”, will be called Escape From Tehran. I guess that’s pretty self-explanatory too. You can read the original Wired article right here.
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