Jon Stewart Taking a Break from ‘The Daily Show’ to Make a Film About an Iranian Prisoner
Comedy Central's long-running 'The Daily Show' host Jon Stewart is taking the summer off for the first time since getting the position in 1999 -- but it's for a good cause.
He's making a movie about Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari, who was arrested shortly after appearing in a 'Daily Show' sketch.
The film 'Rosewater' was penned by Stewart and is based off Bahari's 2011 book 'Then They Came For Me: A Family's Story Of Love, Captivity And Survival,' which is about his four-month imprisonment and torture in 2009 after covering the Iranian presidential elections.
Bahari was held for “conspiring to start a revolution,” and the government used his participation in a 'Daily Show' sketch (in which correspondent Jason Jones pretended to be a spy) against him.
"You can imagine how upset we were,” said Stewart about the mess, adding he later struck up a friendship with Bahari. After reading his book, Jon began to think of it in terms of a movie but had no initial intentions to write the screenplay himself. "It just kind of happened," he admitted.
'The Daily Show' won't go completely dark during Stewart's absence -- popular British correspondent John Oliver will sit in for eight of the 12 weeks.
We'll miss you, Jon, but we applaud your efforts here. We'll try to keep Stephen Colbert in line while you're gone.