Steven Spielberg was fooled by the biggest fake movie ever made

By Nick Venable | Published 9 seconds ago

When it comes to making films, up-and-coming writers and directors are ready to offer something to literally any studio that will listen. This is the case even when the studios aren't real. That was the case with Steven Spielberg, who actually submitted a script to Studio Six Productions. The only problem here? Studio Six Productions wasn't actually a real company. It was the front of the fake film Argo.

In 2012, former CIA technical operations officer Tony Mendez provided an entertaining account of some of the details surrounding the story of Ben Affleck's film on the CIA website.

Proving that nothing is too strange to be considered by the U.S. government, in 1979 Mendez devised perhaps the most bizarre rescue mission imaginable. This was all done to extract six members of the US Embassy in Tehran who had evaded capture by Islamist militants during the Iranian Revolution. As a frame of reference: This happened before Steven Spielberg's succession Jaw And Close encounters of the third kind, But before 1941 And Hunter of the lost treasure

With the help of Hollywood makeup artist John Chambers (Steven Spielberg), Mendez and a small team devised from scratch the creation and production of a fake film entitled “Argo.” They did all this within four days to trick the militants into thinking the six employees were filmmakers scouting locations in Iran.

But to be realistic for the Iranians, it had to hold here in the United States as well. As it turned out, Mendez's mock-up studio and promotional materials, combined with the involvement of Chambers and other Hollywood players, managed to deceive more than just foreign enemies. Steven Spielberg also took the bait.

It worked at home too, and when the fictional studio Six Productions closed its fictional doors, 26 real scripts had arrived, including one from Steven Spielberg himself.

Although it is not known exactly what the script was, given the time frame of the real events, it is quite possible that the film was an early version of a script by Steven Spielberg ET the alien. Perhaps a few dozen more rescue missions could have been funded if the script had sparked interest in using a fake film company to produce a real film.

It's a thoroughly wild story that doesn't even seem believable by Hollywood standards, and yet Hollywood has supported the whole thing. So in that sense it's a bit meta.

And what Steven Spielberg and ET the alien are worried, well I guess Studio Six Productions shouldn't feel so bad for never going ahead with the film (they weren't real after all). Many other real studios didn't see the potential of the film, MCA, Columbia and others passed on Steven Spielberg's story at the time.

It wasn't until Universal saw the promise in the script that it even went into production. By and large, they got that right.