- LA Times Reporter: What does the title refer to?
- Lester Siegel: The Argo. You know, it's the thing.
- LA Times Reporter: Like Jason and the Golden Fleece, or what?
- Lester Siegel: No, no. It's the ship. It's the spaceship. It goes everywhere. It goes all throughout space.
- LA Times Reporter: So, it's Argonaut.
- Lester Siegel: No.
- LA Times Reporter: What does Argo mean?
- Lester Siegel: I don't know.
- LA Times Reporter: You don't know?
- Lester Siegel: It means "Argo fuck yourself."
- John Chambers: [referring to a monster movie he's filming] Target audience will hate it.
- Tony Mendez: Who's the target audience?
- John Chambers: People with eyes.
- Lester Siegel: Okay, you got 6 people hiding out in a town of what, 4 million people, all of whom chant "death to America" all the livelong day. You want to set up a movie in a week. You want to lie to Hollywood, a town where everybody lies for a living. Then you're gonna sneak 007 over here into a country that wants CIA blood on their breakfast cereal, and you're gonna walk the Brady Bunch out of the most watched city in the world.
- Tony Mendez: Past about a hundred militia at the airport. That's right.
- Lester Siegel: Right...
- [sighs]
- Lester Siegel: Look, I, I gotta tell ya. W-We did suicide missions in the army that had better odds than this.
- Max Klein: You want me to be honest with you, Les?
- Lester Siegel: No, I would like you to bullshit me, Max.
- Max Klein: All right. I enjoyed your films, the early ones. I took this meeting out of respect, because I wanted to say no to your face.
- Lester Siegel: Thank you. Very respectful.
- Max Klein: You're finished, Lester. Get your cataracts fixed, read the trades. MGM just capitalized for six new films, they're screaming for sci-fi! They're offering me four times what you guys are offering me.
- Lester Siegel: Well, what can I say? Congratulations. But see, if kind of worries me what you said, let me tell you why. A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in Trader Vic's, I was enjoying a mai tai, when my pal Warren Beatty comes in. He wishes me well, and we have a little chat. Seems he was attached to star in 'Zulu Empire,' which was gonna anchor that MGM slate, but Warren confided in me that the picture's gone over budget because the Zulu extras want to unionize. They may be cannibals, but they want health and dental. Which means the movie's kaput, so the MGM deal ain't gonna happen, and your script ain't worth the buffalo shit on a nickel. So the way it looks to me, through the cataracts I grant you, is that you can either sign here and take ten thousand dollars for your toilet paper script, or you can go fuck yourself! With all due respect.
- Joe Stafford: You really believe your little story's gonna make a difference when there's a gun to our heads?
- Tony Mendez: I think my story's the only thing between you and a gun to your head.
- Max Klein: You want me to be honest with you, Les?
- Lester Siegel: No, I would like you to bullshit me, Max.
- Jack O'Donnell: I am not going to leave him at the airport with six people and his dick in his hand. Tell the Director to call the White House. Do your fucking job!
- First A.D.: He says the Minotaur prosthetic is too tight, so he can't act.
- John Chambers: If he could act, he wouldn't be playing the Minotaur.
- John Chambers: [after hearing plan to exfiltrate the house guests] So you want to come to Hollywood and act like a big shot...
- Tony Mendez: Yeah.
- John Chambers: ...without actually doing anything?
- Tony Mendez: No.
- John Chambers: You'll fit right in.
- [smiles]
- Tony Mendez: You really know Warren Beatty?
- Lester Siegel: Yes, I do. I took a leak next to him once at the Golden Globes.
- Jack O'Donnell: Carter said you were a great American.
- Tony Mendez: A great American what?
- Jack O'Donnell: He didn't say.
- Lester Siegel, Tony Mendez: [on the phone] So I'm sitting in Jerry's this morning, having breakfast, a waitress comes over to me, she's waving a newspaper and she says, 'You see what those Canadians pulled off? Why can't we do something like that?' And I said to her, you know what I said?
- Tony Mendez: No, what?
- Lester Siegel: 'Argo fuck yourself!'
- John Chambers: If you're gonna do a $20 million "Star Wars" rip-off, you need somebody who's a somebody to put their name on it. Somebody respectable. With credits. Who you can trust with classified information. Who'll produce a fake movie. For free.
- Jack O'Donnell: If we wanted applause, we would have joined the circus.
- Tony Mendez: I thought we did.
- Nina: Lester?
- Lester Siegel: Nina, you look fabulous. You're doing the reading?
- Nina: I'm playing Circe, the Galactic Witch.
- Lester Siegel: Great. I'll call you.
- [walking away from Nina, talks to John]
- Lester Siegel: Keep that fucking space witch away from me.
- John Chambers: You know her?
- Lester Siegel: I was married to her.
- Tony Mendez: There are only bad options. It's about finding the best one.
- C.I.A Director Stansfield Turner: You don't have a better bad idea than this?
- Jack O'Donnell: This is the best bad idea we have, sir... by far.
- C.I.A Director Stansfield Turner: [pauses to make decision] The United States government has just sanctioned your science fiction movie.
- Landon Butler: They're claiming the embassy was a den of espionage.
- Hamilton Jordan: We wish it was a fuckin' den of espionage. CI's got three people over there, they don't see a revolution comin'? Call it somethin' other than intelligence.
- Tony Mendez: We got an office, we got business cards, we got a poster. If I'm the Revolutionary Guard, that's nothing we couldn't have made at home. Six people's lives depend on this. It's not enough. If we're gonna fool these people, it has to be big. And it has to have something that says it's authentic.
- John Chambers: I did a movie with Rock Hudson one time. If you wanna sell a lie...
- Lester Siegel: You get the press to sell it for you.
- Tony Mendez: [quizzing the house guests about their cover identities] You. Where was your passport issued?
- Bob Anders: Vancouver.
- Tony Mendez: Where were you born?
- Bob Anders: Toronto.
- Tony Mendez: [correcting him] "Torono". Canadians don't pronounce the "t".
- Lee Schatz: Some Komiteh guard is actually gonna know that?
- Tony Mendez: If you're detained for questioning, they will bring in someone who knows that, yes.
- Tony Mendez: Mike, if I were to say you were looking through the wrong end of that viewfinder, would I be right?
- [Lee casually turns the viewfinder around]
- Lee Schatz: Yup.
- Lester Siegel: We made history today. "History starts out as farce and ends up as tragedy."
- John Chambers: Quote's the other way around.
- Lester Siegel: Yeah? Who said it?
- John Chambers: Marx.
- Lester Siegel: Groucho said that?
- Tony Mendez: Sir, exfils are like abortions. You don't wanna need one. But when you do, you don't do it yourself.
- Tony Mendez: [reading a script] Fade in on a starship landing. An exotic, Middle Eastern vibe. Women gather, offering ecstatic libations to the sky gods. Argo. A science-fantasy adventure.
- Lester Siegel: [reluctantly] It's in turnaround. It's dog shit.
- Tony Mendez: It's a space movie in the Middle East. Does it matter?
- John Chambers: [to Lester] Can we get the option?
- Tony Mendez: [confused] Why do we need the option?
- Lester Siegel: You're worried about the Ayatollah? Try the WGA.
- Jack O'Donnell: [dropping Tony off at the airport] I'm required to remind you that if you're detained, the Agency will not claim you.
- Tony Mendez: They barely claim me as it is.
- John Chambers: Hmm, let's see... Well, this one's got an M.A. in English. She should be your screenwriter. Sometimes they go along on scouts 'cause, they want the free meals. Here's your director.
- Tony Mendez: Can you teach somebody to be a director in a day?
- John Chambers: You can teach a rhesus monkey to be a director in a day.
- Tony Mendez: This is what I do. I get people out. And I've never left anyone behind.
- Joe Stafford: I wish I could believe you, Mr. Harkins.
- Tony Mendez: My name is Tony Mendez. I'm from New York. My father worked construction. My mother teaches elementary school. I have a wife and a ten-year-old son. You play along with me today and I promise you, I will get you out tomorrow.
- [first lines]
- Sahar: [narration] This is the Persian Empire, known today as Iran. For 2,500 years, this land was ruled by a series of kings, known as shahs. In 1950, the people of Iran elected Mohammad Mossadeqh, a secular democrat, as Prime Minister. He nationalized British and U.S. petroleum holdings, returning Iran's oil to its people. But in 1953, the U.S. and Great Britain engineered a coup d'etat that deposed Mossadeqh and installed Reza Pahlavi as shah. The young Shah was known for opulence and excess. His wife was rumored to bathe in milk while the shah had his lunches flown in by Concorde from Paris. The people starved. The shah kept power through his ruthless internal police; the SAVAK. An era of torture and fear began. He then began a campaign to westernize Iran, enraging a mostly traditional Shiite population. In 1979, the people of Iran overthrew the shah. The exiled cleric, Ayatollah Khomeini, returned to rule Iran. It descended into score-settling, death squads, and chaos. Dying of cancer, the shah was given asylum in the U.S. The Iranian people took to the streets outside the U.S. Embassy, demanding the shah be returned, tried, and hanged.
- Tony Mendez: If we're caught, you and Pat go on trial for harboring the enemy. You know that, right?
- Ken Taylor: Pat and I have discussed it. It's the risk we took.
- John Chambers: [watching the Iranian demonstrators on TV] You ever think, Lester, how this is all for the cameras?
- Lester Siegel: Well, they're getting the ratings, I'll say that for them.
- Tony Mendez: The only way this works is if you believe that you're these people so much that you dream like them.
- John Chambers: Talk to me.
- Tony Mendez: It's an exfil.
- John Chambers: From where?
- Tony Mendez: The worst place you can think of.
- John Chambers: Universal City.
- [Tony hands John an issue of "Time" magazine, with illustrations of the Iranian hostages on the cover]
- John Chambers: How are you going to get into the embassy?
- Tony Mendez: They're not in the embassy. During the takeover, six people escaped. They're hiding out in Tehran. That's who I'm gonna go get.
- Swissair Flight Attendant: [bell chimes] Ladies and gentlemen, it is our pleasure to announce that alcoholic beverages are now available as we have cleared Iranian airspace.
- [house guests start laughing]
- Tony Mendez: You got any kids, Lester?
- Lester Siegel: Yeah, I have two daughters.
- Tony Mendez: See 'em much?
- Lester Siegel: I talk to 'em once a year... maybe.
- Tony Mendez: Why's that?
- Lester Siegel: [shrugs] I was a terrible father... The bullshit business... it's like coal mining. Y-Y-Ya come home to your wife and kids, ya can't, ya can't wash it off.
- John Chambers: Look, if you're gonna this, you gotta do it. The Kho-maniacs are Froot Loops, but they got cousins who sell prayer rugs and eight-tracks on La Brea. You can't build cover stories around a movie that doesn't exist. You need a script, you need a producer.
- Tony Mendez: Make me a producer.
- John Chambers: No. You're an associate producer, at best.
- [repeated line]: Argo fuck yourself!
- Alan B. Golacinski: Don't fucking shoot anybody. You don't wanna be the son of a bitch who started a war. They need an hour to burn the classified. I need you to hold. If you shoot one person, they're gonna kill every single one of us in here.
- Bob Anders: [as Mendez proposes plan to exfiltrate the house guests] We can't hold up under that. We don't know what the hell movie people do.
- Tony Mendez: That's why I'm here. I'm gonna help you. I'll be with you the whole way. This is what I do.
- Cora Lijek: Have you gotten people out this way before?
- Tony Mendez: This would be a first.
- Cyrus Vance: What's wrong with bikes, again?
- Jack O'Donnell: We tried to get the message upstairs, sir.
- C.I.A Director Stansfield Turner: You think this is more plausible than teachers?
- Jack O'Donnell: Yes, we do. One, there are no more foreign teachers in Iran.
- Tony Mendez: And we think everybody knows Hollywood people. And everybody knows they'd shoot in Stalingrad with Pol Pot directing if it would sell tickets.
- Tony Mendez: I need you to help me make a fake movie.
- John Chambers: [smiling] You came to the right place.
- Lamont: Call the Times, nail it to the goddamn door. CIA are the good guys.
- Rossi: The Canadians are the good guys.
- Lamont: Yeah, we're not greedy. Them, too.
- Rossi: Only. Canada takes the credit, or they retaliate against the hostages. Great Satan wasn't involved. No CIA.
- Lamont: Is that right, Jack?
- Jack O'Donnell: Involved in what? We were as surprised as anybody. Thank you, Canada.
- Tony Mendez: What about the White House?
- Jack O'Donnell: Carter's shitting enough bricks to build the pyramids.
- Tony Mendez: [shooting down exfiltration ideas] Sir, if these people can read or add, pretty soon they're gonna figure out they're six short of a full deck. It's winter. You can't afford to wait around till spring so it's nice enough to take a bike ride. The only way out of that city is the airport. We build new cover identities for them, you send in a Moses, he takes them out on a commercial flight.
- Tony Mendez: Okay, you know those science fiction movies? "Star Trek", "Star Wars". They need an exotic location to shoot. Moonscape, Mars, desert, you know. Now, imagine this: they're a Canadian film crew on a location scout for a science fiction movie. We put it out there - the Canadian producers put out there - that we're looking at Egypt, Istanbul. Then we go to the consulate and say "Hey, we wanna look at Iran, too." I fly into Tehran, we all fly out together as a film crew. Done.
- David Marmor: Flamboyant cover identities should be avoided, as it increases operational visibility.
- Tony Mendez: This is a lot more plausible than foreigners who wanna go be teachers in Iran.
- Bates: You wanna blend in with the population, you don't look like a rodeo clown.
- Adam Engell: Just gonna wake up tomorrow morning and be in the movie business? We already have credentials for the teachers.
- Tony Mendez: No, sir, we have a contact in L.A.
- Jack O'Donnell: Chambers.
- Tony Mendez: John Chambers. He's a Hollywood prosthetics guy. He's got an Oscar, he did "Planet of the Apes", and he's done a bunch of contract work for us in the past. I go see him, he sets us up. One, two days, make it look real.
- Tony Mendez: We are responsible for these people.
- Jack O'Donnell: What we are is required to follow orders.