Jon Stewart Takes a Dramatic Pause to Adapt Maziar Bahari’s Memoir

March 7, 2013

By Christine Spines

• Tweet
• Email
• Sharebar

Jon Stewart in The Daily Show with Jon Stewart © Comedy Central

• Tweet
• Email
• Sharebar

• Tweet
• Email

Anyone surprised by Jon Stewart’s decision to write and direct a serious-minded drama entitled “Rosewater,” about an absurdity-tinged miscarriage of justice in the Middle East (based on Maziar Bahari’s memoir, Then They Came for Me), hasn’t been watching “The Daily Show” (or Steward himself) closely enough.  Anyone who doubts his commitment to calling BS on the fear mongerers dominating the political landscape need only check out this appearance on Crossfire, where he calmly truth grenades at the show’s hapless hosts, effectively leading to the show’s cancellation.

It says a lot about the news media’s noncommittal relationship to honesty and personal integrity that a television satirist has come to be regarded as our go to reality check in an increasingly anarchic and uncertain world. But Jon Stewart has become the incisive goofball to inherit that hallowed role from the likes of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow among other truth-telling journalists with a televised soapbox.

As much as “The Daily Show” has continued to successfully remain relevant and nimble enough to adapt to the shifting political and cultural landscape since its 1999 debut, Stewart has made clear that he’s eager to emerge from the comedy provides to produce something that honestly reflects his values and sensibility. He checks off all those boxes and more in choosing to adaptat Bahari’s memoir, about the months he spent in an Iranian prison after being accused of plotting a revolution. In an unfortunate twist of irony, Bahari’s tongue-in-cheek appearance on “The Daily Show,” in which correspondent Jason Jones pretended to be a spy, was used as evidence in his conviction. Let’s be real here, at this point it’s hard to imagine Stewart taking on a project without an opportunity for some self-referential self-deprecation. That’s just integral to his charm and the trust he’s earned among his unwavering viewership.

But the real crux of Bahari’s memoir explores his fluctuating emotional state of mind as he awaited his fate while held captive and tortured in an Iranian prison, not far from where his father was incarcerated in the ‘70s by the Shah and where his sister was locked up for revolutionary activities during the Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime in the 1980’s. Bahari buoyed his spirits thinking about the legacy of survival in his family and the pregnant wife he left back in London. Fortunately, his story ends on a high note. After a public campaign for his release, which included a plea from Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bahari was set free time to witness the birth of his daughter.

This is the kind of uplift that Stewart might be tempted to satirize as a fairytale version of an Iranian hostage crisis. Only in this case he’s embracing it whole-heartedly, because, for one thing, it’s the truth. And perhaps more importantly, as he told The New York Times, “It’s a personal story but one with universal appeal about what it means to be free.”

Tags: Jon Stewart, Mazair Bahari, The Daily Show, Then They Came For Me