Mendez lives in rural Maryland, where we tracked him down to ask another question: Why call your fake film "Argo"?
They opened a real production office in Los Angeles and promoted the fake film — after which Mendez flew to Tehran to escort the diplomats out.
In the comments field here, tell us the three vital elements necessary to propel a fake film pitch into box office nirvana.
It was this drug-toking, street-savvy girl the fake film-makers wanted – even if that was a girl Contostavlos, now 26, had left behind some years ago.
However, patches of it are so ludicrously hammy it plays like one of those unbearably corny fake films teased at the beginning of Tropic Thunder.
Argo (available 20 December) Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning comedy about a fake film shoot sponsored by the CIA to rescue American office-workers taken hostage in Tehran.
Two were string quartets: a meditative essay centering on a short melody of Asian coloring, and a pair of essays in fake film music.
On a third wall is a set of more recent fake film stills, a series of 1996 "self-portraits" by Yasumasa Morimura, who photographs himself elaborately cross-dressed as Liza Minnelli, Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe and other screen divas.
In the movie, which has a gala screening at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday evening, Mr. Arkin plays a wily movie producer who sets up a fake film, called "Argo," to help spring a group of people from the clutches of hostile militants during the Iran hostage crisis of years past.
As Spinney walks down the street ala Keaton, Big Bird furiously asks him: "How many different ways can you learn the alphabet?" Were there an Academy Award for best fake film, Big Birdman's inevitable victory would give Spinney the recognition he so clearly craves.
Antonio J. Mendez, a senior official with the C.I.A.'s Office of Technical Services (O.T.S ., which had responsibility for things like disguises and false documentation, created a fake film production company, posed as the movie's director and led a team of covert operators into Tehran to free them.
