Interview magazine
Affleck talks with Gus Van Sant for the October/November issue of Interview about working with a network of Persian filmmakers, taking the plot of Argo from a Wired magazine article and a book about the hostage crisis, and being advised by the State Department to stay out of Iran:
I wanted to go—just for research—very badly. I really wanted to be accurate. The studio, however, said, “This is a bad idea,” to which I responded, “Well, I’m just going to go as a private person, without any association with the movie or the studio—just as a tourist.” Then I talked to the State Department about it, and they said, “Look, you could go, but there’s a likelihood that people from the government will show up with a camera, shake your hand, take pictures, and say, ‘See, this American supports what we’re doing.’
The Talks interview
Van Sant gives an interview to The Talks. He discusses what he still takes photos of and why youth plays a big role in his work.
Somehow it was always the young characters that I related to the most. I remember how even when I first started I was writing stories that were set in high school. At that time, in the ’70s, there weren’t any youth-oriented films at all – except for a Disney film or something.