Movie Magic
3. Affleck does a remarkable job of instilling humor in a seemingly humorless story. Most of the laughs come at the expense of the filmmaking industry when Mendez goes to Hollywood and collaborates with his friend John Chambers (played by John Goodman), a CIA operative who also won an honorary Oscar for make-up achievement on the original "Planet of the Apes" (1968). In order to provide the American refugees with a rock-solid cover, Chambers and Mendez set about producing enough of a movie that the Iranians might actually think it was getting made. This is part of the film Affleck admits he may have dramatized a tad: "They really did take out ads and really did go to lengths to demonstrate that the movie was the real thing, but they didn't have girls in bikinis at a script reading. That was my touch." This humor is evident in the clip above, which also features Oscar winner Alan Arkin, who helps produce the fake movie.
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