Jack Kirby’s Concept Art For The Fake Film Behind Argo
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Think whatever you want about Ben Affleck as an actor or human being, but the guy is a pretty solid director, and he doesn’t need as Oscar nomination to know it. As much as I enjoyed watching his latest film, Argo — a movie about a fake sci-fi film production mounted by the CIA in order to rescue six hostages held up in the Canadian embassy in Iran — something tells me I would have probably despised the fake film Tony Mendes and Co. were lying about producing.
Joshua Bearman, the writer whose Wired article about the hostage rescue was the film’s initial inspiration, recently gave an interview with Buzzfeed where he mentioned some conceptual artwork that comics master Jack Kirby had drawn for Lord of Light, the film that the fake film within Argo is based on. Following me? Lord of Light was a successful sci-fi novel by Roger Zelazny, which was optioned by producer Barry Geller, who started raising money to fund the film’s production. Geller, who wrote the script himself, contacted producer/legendary makeup artist John Chambers (played by John Goodman in Affleck’s film) to create character masks, and called upon Jack Kirby to do the concept art. Trumped-up claims of a futuristic Science Fiction Land to be build from film sets combined with embezzlement charges ended up sealing Lord of Light‘s fate, but now it can sort of live on in infamy, I guess.
The website Lord of Light is a collection of information and artifacts from the failed film, including Kirby’s incredibly detailed and otherwordly pictures, which can be seen below. Prints can be bought on the website, just in case you just can’t live without the Royal Chambers of Brahma on your wall.
