Hanging out with Ben Affleck

A friend in the front row took this picture.

Last night I went to the Boston premier of a movie called Argo, directed by and staring Ben Affleck.  It's scheduled for release a little over a month from now, on October 12th.  Oh yeah, he was there too.

First off, Argo is really good.  It's about 6 people who escaped the U.S. Embassy at the beginning of the 1980 Iran Hostage Crisis, and how the C.I.A. later got them out of the country and back home by pretending that they were a Canadian film crew.  In the movie, Argo is the name of the fake sci-fi flick that the C.I.A. created (with some help from Hollywood) in order to pull the stunt off.  And all of this actually happened.  But, nobody knew about it until 1997 when President Clinton declassified the information.  Crazy.

Here's a two minute clip that I shot on my cell phone of Affleck discussing the film with channel 4's Joyce Kulhawik, and answering some questions from the audience.

Two things really stand out for me.  One, I was very impressed with how well Affleck answered all of the questions; some of which were vague and inarticulate.  He seemed like a pretty thoughtful and intelligent guy.  Also I'm guessing he's had some practice in the past with these sort of situations.

And two, although the movie obviously embellished some things for dramatic purposes, one scene that Affleck said was real absolutely blew my mind.  As the embassy was being overrun, American officials shredded every document in the building.  The Iranians later set up a "sweat shop" of children who for months picked through what must have been millions of tiny pieces of paper, looking to put back together anything they could.

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