It was about this time last year that The Bookshelf was showing Ben
Affleck's Argo. The film--which won Best Picture at the Oscar's that
year--dramatized The Canadian Caper, in which the our government
collaborated with the CIA to rescue six American diplomats not taken
hostage when the United States embassy was occupied by Iranian students
and militants supporting the Iranian Revolution. The high-stakes ruse,
which involved the fake production of a sci-fi movie, was perfect for a
Hollywood retelling. However, as much as our audiences here loved the
film, some of the historical inaccuracies put a stone in a lot of
peoples' shoes.
A year later, we're very pleased to be showing Our Man in Tehran, a documentary by Drew Taylor and Larry Weinstein. On December 8th at 3:30 and 6:00 both Mr. Taylor and Mr. Weinstein will be in attendance to talk about the doc and answer your questions. As a primer, the filmmakers did us a solid of fielding a few grounders.
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| Larry Weinstein (l) and Drew Taylor (r) |
The Bookshelf
I wonder why, after the popularity of Argo, you felt the need
to make Our Man in Tehran--does it get it that
wrong?
Larry Weinstein It's not that Argo got it wrong
or right. It's a Hollywood film and a
brilliant one at that. And perhaps it
should have said "Loosely based on a True Story," or as I like to say, "Inspired by a True
Story." We just believed that there
were a lot of details that were not known to the public and we were betting
that these facts (I don't want to give away too much) would be very appealing
to an audience. You know, at the
Premiere of the film at this year's TIFF the former PM Joe Clark said something
that really resonated. He said, "I
have seen Argo and I have seen Our Man in Tehran and the truth is a better
story!"
BS A certain sort of humbleness is stained into the cloth of our national
character, but when our story is gotten wrong, or we're not given our full due,
we're not shy about letting people know. What's the importance of "getting
it right?" Is there an added pressure to not only get the facts straight,
but to articulate what this story means to Canadians?
Drew Taylor I think the initial
response to Argo in Canada showed that we do have a sense of
National pride. For those that knew the story, and knew the risks Ken Taylor,
John Sheardown, Joe Clark, and many others took to ensure the safety of our
American friends, offense was taken when it was minimized in Argo. The greatest
disappointment came from specific lines in the script that countered how the
Canadians responded; for instance, CIA agents discussing the need to act
quickly because “the Canadians were getting cold feet.” When you approach any
historical story in a documentary there is a great deal of importance to get
the facts straight. But in film, it is impossible to tell the whole truth.
However, I do think we made more of a concerted effort than "the other film."
BS There was a lot of controversy
surrounding "the other film," not just the treatment (or lack) of the Canadian
story, but the Iranian context. Our Man in Tehran seems markedly different in
those regards, could you talk about that?
LW It's true that the Canadian participation is
poorly represented in Argo and we have rectified that in our
film. But we also wanted to give the
events portrayed in our film a context and that meant delving fairly
substantially into the Revolution - an understanding of the Shah, of
Khomeini. Nothing is black & white,
there are doses of benevolence and malevolence in those regimes. And there is the strange serendipity of
history--imagine students who stage a hostage taking that was likely meant to
last a day or two and how it was exploited and lasted 444 days.
BS But the film seems to tell the
American story as well.
LW Yes, we knew that the
American response to the crisis was key to the human drama. The more one knows of Jimmy Carter's role in
all of this, the more one feels empathy for his personal torment and the toll
it took upon his presidency. We didn't
interview him but he is ever-present, as you see.
BS I'm sorry to put this too much in the context of Affleck, but I
imagine that's a difficult shadow to get out of just now. When did you begin
work on this project? And at what point did you become aware that the story was
also being Affleck-ized? Did the splash that that film made affect your own
approach to presenting your film?
DT Our Executive Producer Elena Semikina met Ken Taylor in July of
2012. She immediately recognised during their conversation that some of the
details Ken was sharing were not common knowledge. Plans began to develop a
feature documentary. At that time it was known that
Argo was to be released
that fall, but it was interesting that Ken had not been contacted during
Argo’s
development or production. Having played such an enormous role in the planning
and execution of the exfiltration, we would have thought the story impossible
to tell without his involvement. It was apparent that
Argo would be, at the
very least, focusing on the CIA aspect to the operation. Our film was already
in development when
Argo was released, but once we saw it, it did create a
sense of urgency to get our film out. Not as an answer to
Argo, but
to compliment it, and provide a more complete story that included both the
Canadian and Iranian perspectives along with the American one.
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| Ken Taylor |
BS There must be some pros and cons to that association. Maybe you
could share a few?
DT Well, when
Argo premiered at
the Toronto International Film Festival in 2012, there was a worry that if the
film covered the Canadian contributions well, then essentially our idea would be
a mute point. Luckily, those fears dissipated when we saw the film and our
suspicions were confirmed--the Canadian component was mostly ignored.
BS Is there any worry that your film will be seen as a vehicle for
correction, as opposed to an autonomous look at a period of Canadian and World
History?
DT We set out to make a stand-alone film. Not to compete with
Argo or even correct it, but to
provide an alternative for those who were interested in a documentary. Many of
the interviews were conducted just after
Argo had released, so we were
constantly having to tell people not to reference Ben Affleck’s film. I think
it is inevitable, we will be tied to
Argo in some way, but hopefully
when the dust settles and a new crop of blockbuster Hollywood films have come
and gone, the next generation of young Canadians will be able to turn to
Our
Man In Tehran for a piece of Canadian history.
BS The film is presented in the first person, as opposed to the more common third person--or, narrated--means of telling a story. Why did you
choose that approach?
LW I've always been uneasy with third-person
narration--with "the voice of God" as it were…. I mean in the 30 or so films I've made
there's probably a total of ten lines of narration. I feel that narration distances the viewer
from the subject--makes it too historical and removed. What was exciting for us was having access to
all these people who were at the centre of the tornado of the Iranian hostage
crisis of 1979/1980 - the diplomats, the journalists, the politicians, the CIA
agents - and hearing their account in first person was something very powerful,
something very immediate. It seems as if
they're speaking of something that happened weeks ago and not a third of a
century ago. They really opened up for
us and I think the audience senses that.
BS I'm curious how audiences
respond to your film in relation to "the other movie," as you put it. Have there been striking
comparisons?
LW At one screening, one of
the audience members said something that was very striking to me and kind of
ironic. She said, "the thing with Argo was that you knew it was a Hollywood film with all the trimmings - it
was designed to put you on the edge of your seat and it accomplished that to
some extent but at the same time you knew that there would be a happy ending -
that's Hollywood. With Our Man in
Tehran there were so many unfamiliar twists and turns that I didn't know where
we were going to end up. So I was much
more on the edge of my seat with the documentary!" I love that. I think that by virtue of reality being less predictable than fiction or
dramatization there is a more nervous reaction to our film. And that's a great argument for documentary
treatment of great stories.
BS Our Man in Tehran is a two-hander. One
of you had never directed before and the other has a filmography of 30 films. How did that work? How did you divide
directing duties? Are you still
speaking?
LW Drew and I have become
great friends and are constantly talking about film ideas - ideas that we are
doing apart, but also ideas that would be great to collaborate on. I think that says volumes about our
"partnership" on Our Man. The collaboration worked well. Drew had a
jumpstart on the material and approached me after the initial idea was there,
so he headed most of the interviews while I kind of worked out some of the
aesthetic approach. But after a few
weeks the roles blended. It really was a
true and rather pure collaboration. And
our Q &A's have been hysterical. It's as if we've been friends for 30 years... Of course, Drew was only a year old 30
years ago - I was already directing films, but no matter. It's been a great journey and I hope it's the
beginning of a great adventure (to quote the great Lou Reed).
