Ben Affleck's Argo is a real movie about a fake movie, and one based on a most astounding true story.To help explain, co-star Bryan Cranston -- currently the star of AMC's highly addictive TV series "Breaking Bad" -- and screenwriter Chris Terrio visited San Francisco on their way to the Mill Valley Film Festival.
According to the movie, during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, six Americans escaped the embassy and found refuge in the home of the Canadian prime minister.
The CIA came up with several ridiculous plans to get them out, but perhaps the most ridiculous was to disguise them as a film crew, traveling through the Middle East looking for locations for a Star Wars-like sci-fi film.
The real-life CIA agent Tony Mendez (played in the movie by Affleck) was in charge, and the ruse involved recruiting real-life Hollywood talent like makeup artist John Chambers (John Goodman).
The trouble, according to Terrio, was how to set silly scenes in Hollywood, and tense scenes in CIA headquarters and Tehran, and make them seem like the same movie.
"They're very distinct worlds, but they're worlds in which people are making up stories for a living," says Terrio. "They're creating stories around people, and characters, and even props. So once I started thinking about that, it became easier to wrangle these worlds into one."
It helped when Terrio began to realize the "causality" of the story: "a butterfly flaps its wings in D.C. and there's a hurricane in Tehran, or a typhoon in Burbank."
Cranston, who plays CIA manager Jack O'Donnell, only needed to concern himself with one part of the story. This is handy since the busy actor gets four to six months off between seasons of "Breaking Bad" and has already appeared in seven other movies in 2012.
He says he spent two days in Langley, Virginia, shooting exteriors and hallways at the actual CIA headquarters.
"It was cool!" he says. "The CIA police have asked everybody to turn off their phone. No transmitting, no searching. And if you're not going to tell them, they know. They know whose it is and what model it is and everything. In a way, it's comforting!"
Cranston says he spoke to CIA agents to get an idea of what it felt like to be working on a top secret operation like the one in Argo.
"It's inward," he explains. "Everything's kept tight. They don't show emotion. They have to think their way out of situations. I didn't want Jack to be an emotional guy."
Nevertheless, he figures out a subtle and moving emotional arc for his character, the mark of a skilled actor.
Cranston is just proud to be involved with a movie as good as Argo, however.
"The sense that, when we rise above and get out of ourselves and do something selfless," he says, "look what human beings are capable of."
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