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Each day this week, the SF Chronicle is publishing Sean Penn's (very serious) account of his recent (terribly important) trip to Iran, in which he meticulously documents the activities of his unofficial ambassadorship...have you stopped caring yet? Yeah, we thought so. Anyway, we've pushed back our immature mental chants of "Spicoli's in Tehran! Spicoli's in Tehran!" long enough to follow along through the first three days, and, finally, Penn gets around to some movie talk (why is it always politics this, politics that with this guy?) at a dinner party:

Invited, at my request, were the pre-eminent filmmakers and actors of Iranian cinema, notably directors Abbas Kiarostami and Dariush Mehrjui. Though Kiarostami is widely acclaimed in international cinema, I was shamefully unfamiliar with his films and those of the other guests. (It should be said that I'm unfamiliar with the films of John Ford as well, not much of a cinephile.) We chatted a bit about censorship issues affecting Iranian filmmakers. It was explained to me that as the government finances the films, many of those filmmakers' works are simply banned within Iran. The lucky ones find distribution at international film festivals. It is mandatory to submit proposed screenplays to government censors prior to production. One young director was in the process of shooting a film in Tehran when we spoke, despite being pre-banned. He had found independent financing and went his own way. I asked if he had government interference on set. "Not really," he said, laughing. "Only the Baseej beat up my leading actress, and they shoot tear gas into my car window when I drive home each day." He grinned. This was considered mild interference.

It's got to be comforting for Penn to discover that even when traveling to the other side of the world, an actor can find a cocktail party full of people whose work he hasn't seen and trade stories about how the "studios" interfere with an artist's vision. You just know that before that director could finish his story, someone was piping up with, "Oh, that's nothing! This one time Harvey Weinstein made me eat a tear gas cannister when I wouldn't cut five minutes out of my last movie, then stabbed my editor in the kidney!"