Winterguide 2013

Talk about a kitchen nightmare, Tehran-style. The true story of Chef Sam Sriweawnetr’s bravery during the 1979 hostage crisis may have been left out of this year’s Academy Award Best Picture winner Argo, but not out of the historical record.

by Colin S. Sargent

Jammed between the lush, graphic-novel-style introduction to Iranian history that is Ben Affleck’s Oscar-winning film Argo and the delicious irony of the CIA finding itself in need of Hollywood expertise, we see the fearful escape of six Americans from an embassy outbuilding in the midst of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy by Iranian student revolutionaries.

HELL’S KITCHEN

Amid the din of the chants of “Death to America,” we see the uncertainty gripping those six as they step out onto a side street. One of them says, “We need to get off the street.” Cut to one of those dark, wood-paneled rooms where secret government meetings happen, and we hear, “They made it to the Canadian ambassador’s house.”

In the movie, the jump is understandable–Affleck wants to tell a story of CIA agents pretending to be filmmakers (played by actors, in Christopher Nolan levels of recursion). But how did the six who escaped manage to get to the Canadian Embassy? How did they avoid being apprehended by other students? It’s not exactly like they could have checked into the Tehran Hilton  as ‘Ocean’s Six.’ And flagging a cab would have been dicey. It turns out, they were guided there by a streetwise and very brave chef with close ties to Maine, whose story was left out of the film.

Perhaps it wouldn’t have been if Ben Affleck could have played him. “Ahhh,” dismisses Somchai (Sam) Sriweawnetr, popular Maine restaurateur and hero of the first phase of the Canadian caper, when asked if he’s a little disappointed his story wasn’t part of the film. “They tell the story they want to tell. I know what happened, the people I helped know what happened, and my family knows. They were just six human beings in danger. How could I not help?”

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