Hollywood is big business, so there is no doubt that there are people who want to gather the most information on big projects and simple great ideas. Let’s face it, tinsel town is full of scrupulous people. That’s the reason why we had A Bug’s Life and Antz, Armageddon and Deep Impact, movies with the same concepts and released nearly at the same time. Producers always want to create the next box office hit, no matter where the source is. If somebody’s already making a movie about it, they don’t care, as long as they haul in lots of money in the process. Information, like movie ideas, leak because there are Hollywood spies, but according to Arnon Milchan, there are real spies in Hollywood, actual people who worked for different spy agencies like the CIA and MI6.
Mr Milchan is one of the said spies who also dabbled on making movies. He is known as the Chuck Norris of the Israeli intelligence services. Recently, he broke his silence and revealed his past work as an undercover agent. In an Israeli show called Uvda, Milchan said that “I did it for my country and I’m proud of it.”
Arnon Milchan is a big Hollywood producer, responsible for famous films like Pretty Woman, LA Confidential, and Fight Club. His career has produced over 120 movies, some directed by the greatest of directors including Roman Polanski, Oliver Stone, and Martin Scorsese. The famous producer is worth 4 billion dollars.
Before Milchan became a spy, he was the head of a fertiliser company until he was recruited by Israel’s current President Shimon Peres. He was asked to help the Bureau of Scientific Relations, an organization responsible for supplying the nuclear programme of Israel.
He wasn’t the only spy who dabbled in Hollywood. Luigi Luraschi was the head of foreign and domestic censorship for Paramount back in the 1950s. One of his known accomplishments was the inclusion of well-dressed and respectable African Americans into American movies to undermine the Soviet propaganda about the state of race in the United States.
Also in the 1950s, the CIA bought the rights to George Orwell’s Animal Farm on which they funded the animated version which came out in 1954. They made sure that the book’s message was represented as anti-Soviet.
Graham Greene, an MI6 spy, despised the CIA in 1958 for revising the story of his novel The Quiet American. The original lead character had a dubious moral compass but the CIA wanted the protagonist to be noble and virtuous.
There are also a lot of collaborations between the CIA and Hollywood. Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears gave the producers of the movie the chance to have a personal tour of the CIA headquarters. Ben Affleck also worked with agency analysts to study for his role. Another movie by Affleck, Argo, has been accused of being produced for CIA propaganda. US academic Tricia Jenkins accuses the recent Oscar winner of white-washing the CIA’s involvement in Iran. Iranian media has taken this accusation further by suggesting that Mr Affleck is an actual spy. If he really is one, then he’s doing one hell of a job.
