Wag the Dog, 1997
Produced by Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro and Barry Levinson
Directed by Barry Levinson
Story by Larry Beinhart
Screen play by Hilary Henkin and David Mamet
Starring Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and Anne Heche
Watching Wag the Dog in today’s political climate one wonders whether Barry Levinson operated with a crystal ball in 1997: fake news, fake wars, lying politicians manipulating public opinion—the film has it all. In an interview with Patrick Shanley in 2017 Levinson nailed the difference between the film and our present reality: “Wag was in the area of satirical absurdism and now we’re living in absurdism.”
The film opens deep in the bowels of the White House where presidential adviser Winifred Ames (Anne Heche) and her staff await the arrival of spin doctor Conrad Brean (Robert De Niro). Brean has been called in to fix the situation created by the president, who, just 11 days before the upcoming election, was caught having sex with a Firefly Girl in the office behind the Oval Office. (FYI, Wag the Dog was released a month before the Clinton/ Lewinsky story broke.
When Brean, a confident, fast-talking fixer arrives it doesn’t take him long to come up with the solution: Keep the President out of the country for the time being and distract the people. Distract them how? With a war. A war? A fake war.War with who? Albania. Why Albania? Why not?
Problem solved? Not yet. What they need now is someone to produce the war, and Brean knows just the man. He and Ames fly to Los Angeles and enlist the help of Hollywood producer Stanley Motss, pronounced Mosst, (Dustin Hoffman, in a brilliantly comic portrayal of a certain Hollywood type.) Motss is a veritable geyser of ideas, whose energy and enthusiasm for the project never flags—at least not until the bitter end.
I saw this movie twice. Liked it the first time, and really really liked it the second. Of course, both of those viewings were of satire.. If I were to watch it again now, I don’t know if I’d be able to stand it! This is a really good synopsis, so maybe I’ll just stick with that, especially since I already know the bitter end. If you haven’t seen it, do so — and you’ll be amazed at the look into what was then considered the future!