Interview: 'Coup 53' writer/director Taghi Amirani and writer/editor Walter Murch

One of the year’s best films, and arguably its most important, the documentary Coup 53 tells the harrowing true story of the joint MI6/CIA effort to oust democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, and cements the mission’s place as a terrifying first chapter in the history of the U.S. government’s meddling in other nations’ affairs.

Utilizing a fascinating mix of approaches rarely seen in non-fiction films, Iranian director Taghi Amirani and three-time Oscar-winning editor/sound designer Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now; The English Patient) spin a masterful, boundary-pushing yarn that’s equal parts spy thriller, exposé, and dramatic recreation so convincing that, did it not involve a famous actor, viewers would swear it was real.

On a recent afternoon, the collaborators spoke with Asheville Movies via Zoom from their homes in London, which Murch says are a little more than a mile away from each other. Together, they discussed the factors that brought them together, the film’s evolving style, and recruiting Ralph Fiennes to chip in for a few hours.

Edwin Arnaudin: First off, I was just curious how both of you have been doing during the pandemic and the things that you’re doing to stay positive during this strange time.

Taghi Amirani: I think Walter has been more productive by almost finishing a book.

Walter Murch: As Taghi just said, I’m writing a book — another book on film. Kind of a sequel to In the Blink of an Eye. So, the lockdown has actually been an encouragement to stick to my lathe. But the other thing is that the lockdown has prompted this unusual way or releasing a film, because all the theaters are closed and this whole new system has emerged and really flowered. It existed before, but it was kind of latent. Now the climate has changed and suddenly there are these blossoms blooming all over the place, one of which is our film.

TA: Exactly. I got miserable and downbeat after the novelty of the lockdown wore off. In the early days, it was exciting. “Wow, it’s empty streets! How cool is that? And you can eat and watch TV all you like!” But then after a while, we thought, “We’ve got to do something,” because this doesn’t look like it’s going to be over quick.

The unique thing about Coup 53 that was very disruptive and unique is the way it was made and funded, and then suddenly we thought, “Maybe it needs to explore an unprecedented and unique way of getting out and reaching the audience.” The profile of the film is that it had no funding or support from any organization, and we had a studio who pulled out, so it was entirely funded privately. And then the complete lack of love that we had during production, we also got in distribution. We got zero love during distribution and we thought, “We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to get it out ourselves.”

And it’s grown into this staggering, potentially unique way of reaching the audience, as we are distributing…there are six of us, working from our kitchen tables, and next week, in distribution-speak, in the old school, we’re opening in over 60 markets and that’s entirely between us and the venues. And we’re supporting all these arthouse venues who are closed and could use support. We’re giving them 50% of the sales, and all they have to do is take our press kit and post it on their website. That’s less than half an hour’s work, so it’s a win-win and the reception has been amazing. In the beginning, we had to invite them and kind of persuade them, and, obviously, many of them are already doing this with distributors — but through filmmaker direct? It’s now, rather than us persuading, they’re coming to us. They’re saying, “Can we please join your party?”

EA: Excellent. Well, it’s a wonderful film and I’m very happy to have seen it, and I look forward to recommending it. We have two very strong arthouses in Asheville — we’re very lucky for that — and I’m going to be pushing the owners very hard to add it to their collection. It just seems like a gift in the middle of this strange time and I think it’s something that a lot of people need. Especially in the U.S. where I think, as we’re learning through the [Black Lives Matter] protests and everything that there’s a lot of history, whether it’s national or international, that we’re not being taught in schools, and we have to rely on artists like yourselves to educate us because we’re not getting it through the traditional means — so I thank you for that.

TA: Thank you very much.

WM: It was also a learning experience for us making the film, because when we started out it was just, “Here’s an arena.” Taghi obviously knew a lot more about it than I did, but I already knew something. “Let’s investigate it.” And the more we investigated, the deeper our plow went into the field, the more of these archeological artifacts began rising up to the surface. The biggest one was the whole Norman Darbyshire issue, which has multiple ramifications, both politically in a global sense and also, obviously, within the UK.

EA: Taghi, as you say in the film, the 1953 coup is an important part of your personal history and your family history, and that of Iran overall. But I was curious what prompted you to actually start making a film about the coup.

TA: Well, the timeline began in July 2009. I decided to make the film then. The exact date, I remember, I keep a journal, and I wrote in my journal, “That’s my next film.” There’s a backstory to that, which is quite complicated, but I’d been in Iran to make a film about the elections, which, the second term of [former president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad was coming up and I saw a lot of young people protesting on the streets — well, not protesting. This was not protesting. This was election rallies in the lead up to the election — and a lot of people were carrying overhead portraits of Mossadegh. And then it struck me that these people were not even born before the revolution, and for them, the symbol of a secular democratic Iran is still this guy, back in ’53, who was overthrown in an Anglo-American coup.

And I happened to be at home a lot — I had my own version of lockdown after the election clampdown and the violence and the [Iranian] Green Movement. And Stephen Kinzer’s book All the Shah’s Men was on my friend’s bookshelf, which I had in London but I never read because I thought, “Why would I want an American to tell me about our own country history? Why would I read this book?” Well, I had time, so I read it. And I read it in, like, three days and I finished it on the fifth of July. With what I’d seen on the street and what I’d just read, I thought, “That’s my next movie.”

But that’s the beginning of the production timeline and the conception of the idea. But I’ve grown up with the story of the coup. I think the coup is in every Iranian’s deep psyche. It’s in our DNA. It’s like our 9/11, writ large. And in some way, the subject chose me.

EA: And then Walter, when did you come aboard on the project?

WM: I met Taghi in 2012 in New York. I was working on another documentary about the search for the Higgs boson — the subatomic particle, based on physics. And I went to a party at one of the people who were financing that film, who, it turned out, was also financing Coup 53 in very early stage. And that’s where I met Taghi, and Taghi graduated in physics from Nottingham University, so we started talking physics. And we had been having trouble getting that film into festivals — Particle Fever is the name of the film — because it was too science-y. One of the people said, “It stinks of science.” [Laughs] 

But anyway, Taghi was on the selection committee of [Sheffield Doc/Fest]. He opened a door there for us. We got in and it won the audience prize, and then it went on to Telluride and other festivals and became a big success. So, Taghi and I stayed in touch and I was at loose ends at the end of a project in 2015. My wife is English. She and Taghi got talking, and they said, “It would be a good idea if Walter went to London and worked on this little documentary for six or eight months about an interesting topic.” So I thought, “Absolutely.” And, of course, once you get involved, things become more interesting and complicated, and here we are five years later.

EA: And you wear various hats in this film. You’re in it and the editor and co-writer. I was curious how your role evolved as the production developed.

WM: The first thing was to get Taghi onscreen, which was not part of the original plan. But when I saw the dailies of his interview with Malcolm Byrne at the NSA — something that wasn’t scripted or anything…it was just, “Here, we’re looking at a file cabinet,” and it really struck home that this was Taghi’s story. So I started campaigning: “Taghi, you’ve got to be in the movie!” And, so, that happened and once he’s in the movie, then it kind of was natural for me to be in the movie because, as you know when you see the film, part of the mystery is missing pieces of film. So the whole subtext of the story that emerges of Darbyshire is because of missing pieces of film, and being a film editor, that naturally brings me into the story. 

So, that’s basically it, and the other thing is that, as I mentioned, it’s not a scripted documentary, and under those circumstances, any editor of an unscripted documentary is a writer of the story, especially when you have 532 hours of material to comb through. It grew from a situation where it wasn’t originally intended for me to be in a film, or for me to be a writer of the film, but that’s what happened.

EA: And Taghi, I read about the difficulty that you had getting sources to talk and getting funding and that kind of came together building trust over time. What do you consider to be the major breakthroughs along the way in terms of finding interview sources?

TA: One of the major breakthroughs came early in the day when, by chance, I was in Los Angeles in 2012 and I heard from a friend that Mossadegh’s bodyguard was still alive, is visiting his son in Calabasas, who’s a heart surgeon. And I made a few calls, made some connections, and I hired a camera from a rental house in LA and drove up to Calabasas and said, “I’d love to talk to you about your memories of the coup.” And he sat down and, in fact, it was around mid-August — we were just coming up to the anniversary of the coup. And I spoke to him in depth and thought, “Wow! This is a witness who’s in his late 80s. He was around. He was at the central nexus of the events — the house of Mossadegh on the day of the event. Tanks and fire and fighting. And he remembers it so well and he speaks so eloquently.” And I thought, “Wow! That’s a huge thing. I’ve got an eyewitness. I need more people like him.”

The challenge in persuading other people is that, well, the coup is still a divisive and polarizing story amongst the Iranian community — and also outside, too. “We did it because we didn’t like communism. It’s not because we wanted your oil,” for example. And so, some people took longer to get than the bodyguard. The Shah’s ambassador and former foreign minister, who was the son of the general who became prime minister after the coup, Fazlollah Zahedi, his son Ardeshir — well, that took a long time to get him onboard, but he gives a very good, very revealing interview, which is pretty exciting to hear from a man who was there during the days of the coup from the other side of the story.

So, every scene you see, every scene that may take about two or three minutes on the screen would most likely have taken months, sometimes years to make it happen. And the funding is a different story. As I said, the funding was difficult, and so we shut down this production a couple of times, once for nine months, once for six months because the money ran out. But although it was distressing at the time — and, to their credit, huge thanks to the team, they could have gone and taken other jobs. They stayed around and waited. But those gaps were useful in research and digging deeper.

EA: Well, both of you have mentioned that the Darbyshire interview is the crux of the film — or seems to be, or is at least one of the main kernels. And even though I’d read that Ralph Fiennes was involved, I wasn’t prepared for how witty of a reveal it would be that he was going to play Darbyshire — so I definitely applaud you on that. How did you come up with the idea to cast an actor to bring that story to the screen?

TA: Walter.

EA: [Laughs] Walter did it?

WM: We had the transcript that…you see Taghi discover this transcript. That’s happening in real time. That isn’t a recreation. He’s going through these things. And he…“What’s this?” You know, all cut up. And that naturally led us to think, “Where’s the film of this?” Because all of those interviews for End of Empire were given by the producers to the British Film Institute for cultural reasons. Nobody had ever gone to look at them again since the last, whatever it is, 35-plus years. So we were the first, and that took a lot of digging on Taghi’s part. They wanted a lot of money and negotiating. But eventually, we got access to them and, lo and behold, all of the people interviewed were there except for Norman Darbyshire. There was no can of Norman Darbyshire.

So, that led us to think, “Well, where is it?” And that led to the interviews that you see where we talk to people who were involved at the time. “No, I don’t remember ever filming him. What is this interview anyway?” And then, on the other hand, “Yes, we did film him — at The Savoy hotel.” [Laughs] So, presented with that conflict and the fact that we were running out of time and money, would we ever find the thing? The real film? Probably not, in the time we had, so let’s get an actor to speak these words.

And then Taghi said, “Well, it would be better to actually film the actor reading them.” At that time, we were gonna do it in a recording studio and film somebody in a recording studio. And then, walking back from lunch one day, I thought of Ralph Fiennes because he had phoned me a couple of weeks earlier, wondering if I was available to edit [The White Crow,] the film that he was going to make about Rudolph Nureyev. And so, I said, “Taghi, what about Ralph?” And he thought, “Absolutely.” And once it becomes Ralph Fiennes, you can’t stick Ralph Fiennes in a recording studio with a pair of headphones. You’ve got to present him because of who he is. And that’s when Taghi came up with the idea of recreating the interview that must have happened at The Savoy hotel, in the same room overlooking the river that all the other interviews took place in.

And so, we approached Ralph, who was preparing to be Antony in Antony and Cleopatra — Shakespeare. And he was immediately taken with idea. He’s a director and a writer and an actor. His nose told him, “This is really interesting.” The only question he had was, “I have a beard for Antony. You don’t want me to pretend to be Norman Darbyshire?” And we said, “No, no. You’re an avatar. You’re channeling Norman Darbyshire. Come in your street clothes, keep your beard, and just sit down in this room, which we will prepare.” Ironically, it’s a room overlooking The National Theatre — you can see where he’s playing Antony on the other side of the river. So he just walked over, became Norman Darbyshire, walked back and became Antony. Taghi can talk about what the experience was like directing somebody of that caliber.

Photo by Ali Amirani

TA: So, imagine you’ve never ever directed actors ever before in your life, and suddenly you’re confronted with the challenge of…you’re directing Ralph Fiennes. [Laughs]

EA: [Laughs] Right, the best of the best.

TA: The word “direct.” I mean, he got it so quickly, he got it so well — he just arrived as Norman Darbyshire. We had a very short time. As Walter said, he had to get back to The National, because he had his dressing room and getting ready to go on the stage again — epic performance of three hours every night. So by the time we started rolling, after lighting and makeup and everything, we only had about an hour. And we did four takes. Warming up and doing a great job — obviously, he never had time to learn the lines. That wasn’t part of the deal. And, so, we had a kind of auto-prompter which he brilliantly and very expertly would refer to without you ever knowing that he’s actually looking at those lines. And he basically talks to me like in a real interview. I’m interviewing him and that’s how it works.

And by the fourth take, we had one more take before he could go, and it just occurred to me — if there’s any direction in that entire scene, this is it. I will take credit for it. I said, “Ralph, now this time, mess it up. Don’t be so good. Don’t be so perfect. This is an interview of a real man in a real situation with a documentary crew. He would ‘um’ and ‘ah’ and mumble and trip over his words. He would think. So, just be bad in a good way.” [Laughs] And then he got it! And he does this amazing, amazing kind of…really minutiae in the performance that kind of brings that moment to life. And I think Walter would confirm with me, quite a few takes used in the film are from the fourth take…

WM: Right.

TA: …where he’s not perfect, but he’s perfect in not being good. And so that was a real joy and it took the fear away from me in directing actors. I thought, “Oh my God! They’re just like us! Only better at being other people!” [Laughs]

EA: It’s an amazing effect and I was wondering if he’d memorized the lines because it comes off that way. It comes off as very practiced, rehearsed acting. And then to learn that it’s not just adds to his mystique for me.

TA: All credit to him. I think he had the lines to read in the cab on the way to the hotel. But he said something interesting. It’s a wonderful anecdote. He comes from a small town in the east of England, on the Suffolk coast, Aldeburgh. And Aldeburgh has an arthouse theater which celebrated its hundredth anniversary last year, and it’s a cinema that Ralph used to go to as a child where he discovered movies. So as a local movie star, they invited him to help them celebrate the hundredth birthday of Aldeburgh Cinema and said, “Bring one of your films and we’ll do a Q&A with you on the stage.” And he chose Coup 53. He could have chosen Schindler’s List. He could have chosen English Patient. He could have chosen one of his own films that he directed. He chose Coup 53.

And it was a packed house — unfortunately, Walter and I couldn’t be there. We were in California. And during the Q&A, he said somebody asked him exactly that: “How do you do that? How do you deliver those lines so well?” And he said, “Well, it’s because they are real words spoken by a real person, and they just sat in my mouth in a comfortable way. It just felt right in my mouth.” And that was…yeah! It’s perfect! It’s exactly what he does. And Mrs. Darbyshire, who’s still alive, came to a London Film Festival screening with extended family of sons and daughters and grandchildren, and afterwards she told us about Ralph, and said, “That’s Norman!” And that’s the highest credit any actor could get. And, in fact, he was there, too. So was John le Carré.

EA: Very nice. Well, Walter, considering your recent projects with this film and Particle Fever, it seems like you are kind of leaning towards documentaries lately. Is that a conscious decision or just sort of the projects that have excited you recently?

WM: The subject matter and the people involved were definitely exciting, and people that you just want to spend a year with. [Laughs] I mean, that’s a factor when you choose a film. It’s a very high-pressure, intense, long-term relationship and you have to like the people as much as you like the subject matter. And in both cases, that was true. And we kept making discoveries almost every day and that’s, as I said earlier, when you’re editing a scripted fiction film, you are interpreting the notes, so to speak. And it’s only very late in the process that you actually get to grapple with structural issues, usually to solve problems in the screenplay. Whereas with a documentary like this, you’re writing with images and sounds right from the get-go. And that’s also very exciting. But there’s no master plan here — with a lot of chance involved in the whole process, as our chance meeting in 2012 was purely in the lap of the I Ching. [Laughs]

EA: Well, I would hope that once in-person film festivals in the U.S. are possible again, I think you both would be great fits for the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, which I’ve been to several times and I think is a wonderful event. And I think the audience there would love to see this film and talk with you two about it, so keep that on your radar if it’s not already.

TA: Ah, well, if you know people there who program, let us know. We’re a bit in the dark about some festival programming and who makes what decision. Absolutely. And those two arthouse theaters in Asheville: put them in touch! Tell them…people in North Carolina will go on our website and if they can’t find Asheville, they’ll go to Winston-Salem and Aperture Cinema or they’ll go to Chapel Hill and Chelsea Cinema and miss out. So, they need to tap in and we are selling tickets. One cinema has sold over $1,000 worth of tickets in 24 hours.

EA: Nice. Well, in closing, I’ve got kind of two interrelated questions. First, for Taghi, I’m curious how do you think your life would be different if the coup of ’53 had not occurred?

TA: Wow. It’s one of those…

WM: The coup or the film?

EA: If the coup itself in ’53 had not occurred, and Iran had gone towards a true democracy, how do you think your life would be different now?

TA: Wow. It’s one of those biggest “What if”s. History is sprinkled with “What if”s. “What if Cardinal Ferdinand hadn’t been shot?” [Laughs] Well, I think the revolution would not have happened, because the revolution was a direct result of the coup.

WM: You would not be in London.

TA: I would not…if there was no revolution…I did come to England to learn English for a couple of months in ’75, but I was due to go back. If the revolution hadn’t happened, I would have stayed home. I love my country! I love its air and soil and smells and food and its history and landscape. I miss the…there’s nowhere with the landscape that Iran has. So, that’s one of the biggest “What if”s. I may not be here. I wouldn’t have needed to make Coup 53, and it’s even possible that I wouldn’t have become a filmmaker. I don’t know. There are so many “What if”s, though I did love cameras and shooting stuff since I was 10. So, yeah, I would be an Iranian filmmaker, of a different kind, and not an Anglicized Iranian.

WM: One of the “What if”s is this pendulum swing that, you know, Mossadegh was being a kind of secular ruler, Prime Minister of the country, and when he was deposed, the Shah grabbed power and squeezed everything as hard as he could except for the mosques, which he allowed kind of a free reign. So, when the Shah fell, power immediately swung to the mosques. Iran is a Shia Muslim country and the rise of a powerful Shia state sort of exacerbated the conflict with the Sunni Muslims who began rising up in a kind of counterpoint so that the whole — I mean, prior to this, Sunni and Shia would intermarry. There was always a kind of conflict, but it was sort of a friendly…but the nastiness that we have experienced in the last 40 years is a result of this pendulum swing.

EA: And then, in closing, I was curious what actions or changes that you would hope to see Coup 53 inspire. Perhaps a certain admission from the British government? I don’t know…

TA: That would be the dream dream outcome. It would be amazing if, somehow, the audience embraced the idea that this film should be a catalyst for persuading and suggesting that it’s a good idea that the British government finally, officially acknowledge their critical and leading role in this coup. This has been know for a long time as a CIA coup. This is not just a CIA coup. CIA came in later. [The U.S.] had some money and they had a new toy called the CIA and they wanted to play, and this was the first time they got to play. But this was an MI6 coup. It was led by the British. It was encouraged by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which latter became BP, and it was all about regaining control of Iran’s oil.

So, an admission, I think it would actually do good for the soul of the Brits. It will be a cathartic unburdening of themselves. It will open the way for a more mutually respectful relationship and understanding. “Confess and come clean and unburden yourself”, is what I would suggest. Apologizing is another dream — pipeline dream. Apologizing doesn’t come really easy to Boris Johnson, even to his own people, let alone to those foreigners. But one step at a time.

(Photo by Ali Amirani)