Wag the Dog, 1997.
Directed by Barry Levinson.
Starring Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Anne Heche, Denis Leary, Willie Nelson, Andrea Martin, and Kirsten Dunst.
SYNOPSIS:
Wag the Dog may only be remembered by us jaded Gen Xers and younger Boomers, but it’s worth revisiting in today’s era of lightning-fast political manipulation in the social media era. In some ways, the way the characters manufacture a war to distract from a Presidential scandal may seem quaint, but it was really a warning for the social media age, even if that term wouldn’t exist for nearly a decade afterward. The movie’s Blu-ray debut is highly recommended for that reason alone, but you can’t go wrong with this director and cast either.
Let’s return to those seemingly innocent days of the 90s, when major political subterfuge required a high-paid “fixer” and a big-time Hollywood producer to pull it off, rather than a room full of people using fake accounts to spread misinformation via social media.
I’m not saying that the scheme cooked up by fixer Conrad Brean (Robert De Niro), movie producer Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman), presidential aide Winifred Ames (Anne Heche), and others is better than the nonsense peddled online over the past decade or so, but at least it required some major resources to make it work. I guess that’s better. Right? Yeah, maybe not.
Anyway, Conrad Brean is brought in to help Winifred and her team divert attention from a scandal involving the President of the United States and a Firefly troop girl who was alone with him for several minutes and alleges that he sexually assaulted her. Yeah, there’s a major ick factor here that the script by David Mamet and Hilary Henkin glosses over — it would have been better if she was over the age of 18, so at least there wouldn’t be the pedophilia angle too.
So, Brean decides that to distract from the scandal, he has to manufacture a war with Albania, of all countries, and he enlists Motss’s help doing so. The scheme begins with a simple shot of a supposed Albanian girl (Kirsten Dunst) in a bombed-out village and involves, in the end, an imprisoned ex-soldier (Woody Harrelson) who needs to be paraded around as a hero.
Along the way, Hoffman devours the scenery in pretty much every scene he’s in, playing the stereotype of a Hollywood producer to the hilt (based, of course, on Robert Evans). There’s one scene where I think Anne Heche was trying to do her best not to laugh out loud and they ended up editing around her in post-production. It’s truly a funny performance, and Hoffman deserved the Academy Award nomination he received for this one.
Revisit this one if you want a distraction from the latest nonsense about renaming Lake Ontario or getting into ridiculous trade wars or whatever else spews from the Oval Office these days. It still holds up, and it was certainly a prescient reminder that it has always been, and always will be, possible to mislead people with a marketing campaign disguised as issues they care about.
This new Blu-ray of Wag the Dog is from Warner Archive Collection, which continues its solid track record of digging deep into the studio’s back catalog. I’m pretty sure this is the film’s debut on the high-def format, and while the back of the case doesn’t say anything about the picture being restored, it looked great on my setup.
On the bonus features front, you don’t get a lot here, but you do get a great commentary track with director Barry Levinson and Hoffman, who were recorded separately. Lots of interesting information to be found here.
Moving on, we have the 24-minute From Washington to Hollywood and Back, which opens by noting that Wag the Dog predated President Bill Clinton’s own sex scandal and subsequent war (or “military action”). Levinson, Hoffman, producer Jane Rosenthal, screenwriter Bud Schulberg, journalist Tom Brokaw, and others discuss this. I’d love to see a new version of this featurette that updates the topic to the social media era.
Finally, there’s a six-minute Q&A with actor William H. Macy, who plays a small role and talks about his working relationship with Mamet, and the theatrical trailer.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
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Brad Cook
