Amir Shervan

Amir Shervan, was born Amir Hosein Ghaffar in Tehran, Iran on May 24, 1929. In the U.S. he is mostly known for directing the movies Hollywood cop and Samurai Cop but was better known in Iran for his directing, writing and acting in numerous films.

Shervan studied theater in Pasadena California in the 1940s and returned to Iran to begin his career in film. During the 1979 Iranian Revolution all movies were subject to review by the Iranian government and many of them banned due to their content while others were “purified” or altered to suit the growing anti-western and pro-Islamic sentiment. This caused a pause in his film career starting in 1980 and ending with his move to the United States where he settled in California to begin his work on Hollywood Cop. He apparently received a social security number in Alabama but it is unclear how long he was there or for what purpose.

On the set Shervan used improvisational acting and dialog often, in part due to this technique having cultural roots and later due to English being his second language. He often worked with actors/directors/writers in Iran who were never educated in film making, many of which had never graduated high school. His Iranian audience of the 1950s to 1980 was therefore accustomed to a much lower standard than the average U.S. viewer of the late 1980s. This combination of circumstances made for a large degree of accidental humor and bloopers as perceived by his new viewer base and also led to his post-mortem success as a cult-classic b-movie director. Ironically, Shervan was one of the more polished and educated filmmakers of his time in Iran and was respected as such.

He died on November 1, 2006 at age 77 soon before his rise in popularity in the U.S. as a b-movie director. He is survived by a son named Ben Shervan.