Alan Arkin's Oscar-Nominated Argo Performance Was About More Than Just Cursing

Alan Arkin had not just a great career in Hollywood, but arguably one of the all-time great careers. The sort of career that most actors would kill to have even a fraction of. From "Wait Until Dark" to "Little Miss Sunshine" and everything in between, the man did it as well as anyone could do it for decades. Sadly, Arkin recently passed away at the age of 89. But that represents a life very well lived, and a career well worth celebrating. There is no better performance to examine in celebrating that body of work than Arkin's Oscar-nominated performance in "Argo."

The 2012 film, directed by Ben Affleck, ultimately went on to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Arkin had an incredibly important part to play as producer Lester Siegel – a fake person who helped to tell an unbelievable true story. The film centers on a CIA specialist named Tony Mendez (Affleck), who sets out to rescue a handful of American diplomats who are trapped in Tehran in 1979. Pretending to be a film location scouting crew, Mendez and a select crew of real Hollywood artists manage to smuggle the six embassy workers to safety by pretending to make a movie that doesn't actually exist.

Mendez convinced the U.S. Government to hatch the wild plan and, to pull it off, he tracked down actual Hollywood specialists to act as though they were making a movie, working from an unproduced script, titled "Argo." Arkin got to chew the scenery as a seasoned producer who helped pull the whole thing off. The line "Argo-f*** yourself" became a trademark of not just his character, but the film itself. And yes, that's a fun line to isolate, but what Arkin brought to the film was far greater than a memorable use of a swear word.

Part of what made "Argo" such a success is that Affleck managed to make a surprisingly fun, albeit tense, movie about a very real thing that happened that few people knew about. It used real people, such as Mendez and Oscar-winning "Planet of the Apes" VFX artist John Chambers (played by John Goodman), in addition to fictitious characters to tell the tale in a cinematic way. That's where Arkin came in.

The actor, who at that point had been in the business for nearly 50 years, played a fictitious producer who was central to the story. Arkin, it turns out, is a composite character that the actor cooked up using several different inspirations. "Believe me, it's not easy playing a composite. I had to play four people at the same time. You ever try doing that? It's not easy," Arkin said to The Hollywood Reporter in 2012. So, for as much as Siegel helped to make this story click, the credit is largely owed to Arkin even beyond what he did on screen. As for the specifics inspiration? The actor explained that he used Jack Warner, one of the founders of Warner Bros., as a basis.

"It was out of my imagination, but I used Jack Warner as a basis. He's someone who is very comfortable in his own skin, someone who knew the ins and outs of the business, backwards and forwards."

Similar to Arkin as an actor, Jack Warner was a driving force in the movie business as the head of Warner Bros. for decades. From "The Jazz Singer" to "My Fair Lady," the classics produced under his watch were wildly influential. Channeling him was a stroke of brilliance and proved to be just what the character needed. That crafted fiction help bring the deeper truth of the story to the masses.

The other stroke of brilliance in having Arkin play this part, very specifically, is that he was able to channel something very real through the character of Lester Siegel. Arkin was playing a producer who had quite a few hits in his day, but was in the twilight of his career, looking to take one last chance to do something truly great. As it just so happens, Arkin's career had a similar trajectory. He was about to be 80 years old when the movie was made, hailing from a director who had a lot of promise, taking on a role that had a lot of promise, and getting one last ride in the prestige spotlight.

Life imitates art, as the old saying goes, and Arkin's career (albeit loosely) mirroring the career of his character in "Argo" almost certainly helped him bring something very real to the proceedings. As a result, his Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his work in the film was not one of those "let's reward a great actor for a performance merely because it's overdue" situations.

Arkin earned that nomination by delivering a motherf***er of a performance in a Best Picture winner. So sure, Argo-f**k yourself is a great line, but let's not forget that line is just one part of a truly marvelous performance by a legendary actor. RIP, good sir.