Aaron Benjamin Sorkin is an American playwright, screenwriter, and film director. Born in New York City, he developed a passion for writing at an early age. As a writer for stage, television, and film, Sorkin is recognized for his trademark fast-paced dialogue and extended monologues, complemented by frequent use of the storytelling technique called the "walk and talk". Sorkin has earned numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, five Primetime Emmy Awards, and three Golden Globes.
Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is best known for his 2000 memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which became a bestseller and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Eggers is also the founder of several notable literary and philanthropic ventures, including the literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the literacy project 826 Valencia, and the human rights nonprofit Voice of Witness. Additionally, he founded ScholarMatch, a program that connects donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His writing has appeared in numerous prestigious publications, including The New Yorker, Esquire, and The New York Times Magazine.
Danny Strong is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. As an actor, Strong is best known for his roles as Jonathan Levinson in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doyle McMaster in Gilmore Girls and Danny Siegel in Mad Men. He also wrote the screenplays for Recount, the HBO adaptation Game Change, The Butler, and co-wrote the two-part finale of The Hunger Games film trilogy, Mockingjay – Part 1 and Mockingjay – Part 2. Strong also is a co-creator, executive producer, director, and writer for the Fox series Empire and created, wrote and directed the award-winning Hulu miniseries Dopesick.
Dennis Lehane is an American author. He has published more than a dozen novels; the first several were a series of mysteries featuring recurring characters, including A Drink Before the War. Four of his novels have been adapted into films of the same names: Clint Eastwood's Mystic River (2003), Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010), and Gone Baby Gone (2007) and Live by Night (2016), both directed by Ben Affleck. His short story "Animal Rescue" was also adapted into the film The Drop, noted for being the final film role for actor James Gandolfini.
The Believer is an American bimonthly magazine of interviews, essays, and reviews, founded by the writers Heidi Julavits, Vendela Vida, and Ed Park in 2003. The magazine is a five-time finalist for the National Magazine Award.
Antonio Joseph Mendez was an American technical operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who specialized in support of clandestine and covert CIA operations. He wrote four memoirs about his CIA experiences.
Vendela Vida is an American novelist, journalist, editor, screenplay writer, and educator. She is the author of multiple books, has worked as a writing teacher, and is a founder and editor of The Believer magazine.
Chris Terrio is an American screenwriter and film director. He is best known for writing the screenplay for the 2012 film Argo, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Terrio also won the Writers Guild Award for Best Adapted Screenplay of 2012 and was nominated for Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay, a BAFTA, and the 2013 Los Angeles Film Critics Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for this work.
The "Canadian Caper" was the joint covert rescue by the Canadian government and the CIA of six American diplomats who had evaded capture during the seizure of the United States embassy in Tehran, Iran, on November 4, 1979, after the Iranian Revolution, when Islamist students took most of the American embassy personnel hostage, demanding the return of the US-backed Shah for trial.
John Chambers was an American make-up artist and prosthetic makeup expert in both television and film. He received an Academy Honorary Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1968. He is best known for creating the pointed ears of Spock in the television series Star Trek (1966), and for his groundbreaking prosthetic make-up work on the Planet of the Apes film franchise.
Tony Tost is an American film director, poet, critic and screenwriter. He is the creator, executive producer, and showrunner of Damnation, a neo-western period drama about the labor wars in America during the 1930s that aired on USA Network and on Netflix outside the US. He is also the writer and director of Americana, a 2023 rural crime drama from Lionsgate.
Charles Chowkai Yu is an American writer. He is the author of the novels How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Interior Chinatown, as well as the short-story collections Third Class Superhero and Sorry Please Thank You. In 2007 he was named a "5 under 35" honoree by the National Book Foundation. In 2020, Interior Chinatown won the National Book Award for fiction.
Joshua Davis is an American writer, film producer and co-founder of Epic Magazine.
Nicholas Thompson is an American technology journalist and media executive. In February 2021, he became Chief Executive Officer of The Atlantic. Thompson was selected in part for his editorial experience, which includes stints as the editor-in-chief of Wired and as the editor of Newyorker.com. In early 2024, The Atlantic announced it had more than one million subscribers and returned to profitability. He was responsible for instituting digital paywalls at both The New Yorker and Wired; at Wired, digital subscriptions increased almost 300 percent in the paywall's first year. While at The New Yorker, Thompson co-founded Atavist, which sold to Automattic in 2018, and in 2009, he published his first book, The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War, a biography of George Kennan and Thompson's maternal grandfather, Paul Nitze. Thompson's assorted writing includes features on Facebook's scandals, his own friendship with Stalin's daughter, an unidentified hiker, and his marathon running.
Argo is a 2012 American biographical historical drama thriller film directed, produced by, and starring Ben Affleck. The screenplay, written by Chris Terrio, was adapted from the 1999 memoir The Master of Disguise by U.S. C.I.A. operative Tony Mendez and the 2007 Wired article "The Great Escape: How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran" written by Joshuah Bearman and edited by Nicholas Thompson. The film deals with the "Canadian Caper", in which Mendez led the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran, Iran, under the guise of filming a science-fiction film during the 1979–1981 Iran hostage crisis.
Culture+Travel is a travel magazine based in New York City, New York. Published by Louise Blouin Media and founded by former Conde Nast editorial director James Truman, it was launched in 2006 as a bi-monthly print magazine. It was later incorporated into art and lifestyle media Artinfo.com, and relaunched as an online publication in 2014, providing original articles and travel destination guides.
Jonna Mendez is an American former technical operations officer, photo operations officer, and chief of disguise for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
David Klawans is an American film producer. He is the executive producer of the movie Argo, winner of the Best Picture Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards. Klawans has been described in the press as a 'story detective' and is known for developing obscure true stories into movies.
Argo (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is a score album composed by Alexandre Desplat to the Academy Award-winning historical drama thriller film Argo. The film was directed by Ben Affleck, from a screenplay written by Chris Terrio, which was adapted from U.S. Central Intelligence Agency operative Antonio J. Mendez's eponymous novel released in 1999, his memoir The Master of Disguise, and the Wired article by Joshuah Bearman, "The Great Escape: How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran" (2007); Affleck also starred in the lead role as Mendez. The score album was released on October 9, 2012 by WaterTower Music, three days ahead of the film's release.
