Argo Quotes

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."

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. Look, I gotta tell you. We did suicide missions in the army that had better odds than this.

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!'

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.

Nina: Lester?
Lester Siegel: Nina, you look fabulous. You're doing the reading?
Nina: I'm playing Serksi, 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.