Wag the Dog is a 1997 black comedy film produced and directed by Barry Levinson. The screenplay by Hilary Henkin and David Mamet was loosely adapted from Larry Beinhart's novel American Hero. The film stars Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro, with Anne Heche, Denis Leary, and William H. Macy in supporting roles.
The film follows a Washington, D.C. spin doctor (De Niro) who, mere days before a presidential election, distracts the electorate from a sex scandal by hiring a Hollywood film producer (Hoffman) to construct a fake war with Albania.
Wag the Dog was released one month before the outbreak of the Lewinsky scandal and the subsequent bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan by the Clinton administration, which prompted the media to draw comparisons between the film and reality.
Plot
An unnamed President of the United States is caught making advances on an underage "Firefly Girl" (the movie's fictional equivalent of a Girl Scout) inside the Oval Office, less than two weeks before Election Day. Conrad Brean (De Niro), a top-notch spin doctor, is brought in to take the public's attention away from the scandal. He decides to construct a fictional war in Albania, hoping the media will concentrate on this instead. Brean contacts Hollywood producer Stanley Motss (Hoffman) to create the war, complete with a theme song and fake film footage of a photogenic orphan (Kirsten Dunst). The hoax is initially successful, with the President quickly gaining ground in the polls after appearing.
When the CIA learns of the plot, they send Agent Young (Macy) to confront Brean about the hoax. Brean convinces Young that revealing the deception is against his (and the CIA's) best interests. But when the CIA - in collusion with the President's rival candidate - reports that the "war" did happen but is drawing to an end, the media begins to focus back on the President's sexual abuse scandal. To counter this, Motss decides to invent a hero who was left behind enemy lines in Albania. Inspired by the idea that he was "discarded like an old shoe", Brean and Motts have the Pentagon provide the team with a soldier named Schumann (Woody Harrelson) around whom a POW narrative is constructed, complete with T-shirts, additional patriotic songs and faux-grassroots demonstrations of patriotism. At each stage of the plan, Motss continually dismisses setbacks in the deception as "nothing", comparing them to past movie-making catastrophes he averted.
When the team goes to retrieve Schumann, they discover he is in fact a criminally insane Army prison convict. On the way back, their plane crashes en route to Andrews Air Force Base. The team survives and is rescued by a farmer, who kills Schumann after he attempts to rape his daughter. Seizing the opportunity, Motss stages an elaborate military funeral for Schumman, claiming that he died from wounds sustained during his rescue.
While watching a political talk show, Motss gets frustrated that the media are crediting the president's upsurge in the polls to the bland campaign slogan of "Don't change horses in mid-stream" rather than Motss's hard work. Despite previously claiming he was inspired by the challenge, Motss announces that he wants credit and will reveal his involvement, despite Brean's offer of an ambassadorship and the dire warning that he is "playing with his life". After Motss refuses to back down, Brean reluctantly orders his security staff to kill him. As the movie ends, a TV newscast reports that Stanley Motts has died of a heart attack in his estate, the president was successfully re-elected, and an Albanian terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for a recent bombing, although it is ambiguous if the latter was a true event or simply a continuation of Brean's fictional war.
Cast
Title
The title of the film comes from the idiomatic English-language expression "the tail wagging the dog", which is referenced at the beginning of the film by a caption that reads:
Why does the dog wag its tail?
Because a dog is smarter than its tail.
If the tail were smarter, it would wag the dog.
Motss and Evans
Hoffman's character, Stanley Motss, is said to have been based directly upon famed producer Robert Evans. Similarities have been noted between the character and Evans' work habits, mannerisms, quirks, clothing style, hairstyle, and large, square-framed eyeglasses; in fact, the real Evans is said to have joked, "I'm magnificent in this film." Hoffman has never discussed any inspiration Evans may have provided for the role, and claims on the commentary track for the film's DVD release that much of Motss' characterization was based on Hoffman's father, Harry Hoffman, a former prop manager for Columbia Pictures.
Writing credits
The award of writing credits on the film became controversial at the time, due to objections by Barry Levinson. After Levinson became attached as director, David Mamet was hired to rewrite Hilary Henkin's screenplay, which was loosely adapted from Larry Beinhart's novel American Hero.
Given the close relationship between Levinson and Mamet, New Line Cinema asked that Mamet be given sole credit for the screenplay. However, the Writers Guild of America intervened on Henkin's behalf to assure that Henkin received first-position shared screenplay credit, finding thatâ€"as the original screenwriterâ€"Henkin had created the screenplay's structure as well as much of the screen story and dialogue.
Levinson thereafter threatened to (but did not) quit the Guild, claiming that Mamet had written all of the dialogue as well as creating the characters of Motss and Schumann, and had originated most of the scenes set in Hollywood and all of the scenes set in Nashville. Levinson attributed the numerous similarities between Henkin's original version and the eventual shooting script to Henkin and Mamet working from the same novel, but the WGA disagreed in its credit arbitration ruling.
Music
The film featured many songs created for the fictitious campaign waged by the protagonists; these songs include "Good Old Shoe", "The American Dream", and "The Men of the 303". However, none of these pieces made it onto the soundtrack CD. The CD featured only the title track (by British guitarist/vocalist Mark Knopfler) and seven of Knopfler's instrumentals.
Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes, Wag the Dog has an approval rating of 85% based on 72 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Smart, well-acted, and uncomfortably prescient political satire from director Barry Levinson and an all-star cast." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the film has a score of 73 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews"
Roger Ebert awarded the film four out of four stars and wrote in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, "The movie is a satire that contains just enough realistic ballast to be teasingly plausible; like Dr. Strangelove, it makes you laugh, and then it makes you wonder."
Accolades
The film was nominated for two 70th Academy Awards: Dustin Hoffman for the Academy Award for Best Actor, and Hilary Henkin and David Mamet for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film was also entered into the 48th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear â€" Special Jury Prize.
American Film Institute recognition
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs â€" Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
- "This is nothing!" â€" Nominated
TV series
On April 27, 2017, Deadline reported that Barry Levinson, Robert De Niro, and Tom Fontana are developing a TV series based on the movie for HBO. De Niro's Tribeca Productions will co-produce along with Levinson and Fontana's company.
See also
- Astroturfing, a controversial public relations practice depicted in the film
- Canadian Bacon and Wrong Is Right, films about an American war started for similar reasons
References
External links
- Wag the Dog on IMDb
- Wag the Dog at Rotten Tomatoes