Wag the Dog

Wag the Dog
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Barry Levinson
Screenplay by	Hilary Henkin David Mamet
Based on	American Hero 1993 novel by Larry Beinhart
Produced by	Barry Levinson Robert De Niro Jane Rosenthal
Starring	Dustin Hoffman Robert De Niro Anne Heche Denis Leary Willie Nelson Andrea Martin Kirsten Dunst William H. Macy
Cinematography	Robert Richardson
Edited by	Stu Linder
Music by	Mark Knopfler
Production companies	Baltimore Pictures TriBeCa Productions
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release dates	December 17, 1997 (1997-12-17) (Century City) December 25, 1997 (1997-12-25) (United States)
Running time	97 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$15 million[1]
Box office	$64.3 million[2]

Wag the Dog is a 1997 American black comedy political satire film starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro.^[1] Produced and directed by Barry Levinson, the film centers on a spin doctor and a Hollywood producer who fabricate a war in Albania to distract voters from a presidential sex scandal. The screenplay by Hilary Henkin and David Mamet was loosely adapted from Larry Beinhart's 1993 novel, American Hero.

The title of the film comes from the English-language idiom "the tail wagging the dog",^[3] used to indicate attention that is purposely being diverted from something of greater importance to something of lesser.

Wag the Dog was released one month before the news broke of the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal and the bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan by the Clinton administration in August 1998, which prompted the media to draw comparisons between the film and reality.^[4] The comparison was also made in December 1998, when the administration initiated a bombing campaign of Iraq during Clinton's impeachment trial for the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal.^[5] It was made again in spring 1999, when the administration intervened in the Kosovo War and initiated a bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, which, coincidentally, bordered Albania and contained ethnic Albanians.^[6]

The film grossed $64.3 million on a $15 million budget, and was well received by critics, who praised the direction, performances, themes and humor. Hoffman received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, and screenwriters David Mamet and Hilary Henkin were both nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.

The President of the United States is caught making advances on an underage girl inside the Oval Office less than two weeks before the election. Conrad Brean, a top spin doctor, is brought in by presidential aide Winifred Ames 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 to create the war, complete with a theme song and fake film footage of a fleeing orphan to arouse sympathy. The hoax is initially successful, with the president quickly gaining ground in the polls.

When the CIA learns of the plot, it sends Agent Young 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 has ended, the media begins to focus back on the president's sexual misconduct scandal. To counter this, Motss invents a hero who was left behind enemy lines in Albania.

Inspired by the idea that he was "discarded like an old shoe", Brean and Motss ask the Pentagon to provide a special forces soldier with a matching name (a sergeant named "Schumann" is identified), around whom a POW narrative can be constructed. As part of the hoax, folk singer Johnny Dean records a song called "Old Shoe", which is pressed onto a 78 rpm record, prematurely aged so that listeners will think it was recorded years earlier, and sent to the Library of Congress to be "found". Bream and Motss fling pairs of old shoes into a tree outside the White House grounds. Soon, large numbers begin appearing on phone and power lines, and a grassroots movement to bring Schumann home takes hold, completing a successful astroturfing.

When the team goes to retrieve Schumann, they discover he is in fact a criminally insane Army convict. On the way back their plane crashes en route to Andrews Air Force Base. The team survives and is rescued by a farmer, an illegal alien. However, Schumann is killed when he attempts to rape a gas station owner's daughter. Seizing the opportunity, Motss stages an elaborate military funeral for Schumann, claiming he died from wounds sustained during his rescue, and the farmer receives expedited citizenship for a better story.

As the President rallies toward re-election Motss gets frustrated that the media are crediting his upsurge in the polls to the bland campaign slogan of "Don't change horses in mid-stream" rather than to Motss' hard work. Despite Brean's offer of an ambassadorship and the dire warning that he is "playing with his life", Motss demands he receive credit for his production and will reveal his involvement unless he gets it. Realizing he has no choice, Brean orders his security staff to kill him. A newscast reports that Motss has died of a heart attack at home, the president has been successfully re-elected, and an Albanian terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for a recent bombing, suggesting the fake war is becoming real.

The title of the film comes from the English-language idiom "the tail wagging the dog",^[7] 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.

Hoffman's character, Stanley Motss, is said to have been based directly on famed producer Robert Evans. Similarities have been noted between the character and Evans's 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".^[8]

While Hoffman has never discussed deriving his portrayal from Evans, the commentary track for the film's DVD release makes the claim.^{[citation needed]}

Writing credits for the film became controversial 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 ensure that Henkin received first-position shared screenplay credit, finding that, as the original screenwriter, Henkin had created the screenplay's structure, as well as much of the screen story and dialogue.^[9]

Levinson threatened to quit the Guild (but he did not), 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 Writers Guild of America disagreed in its credit arbitration ruling.^[10]

The film features many songs created for the fictitious campaign waged to deflect the President’s sex scandal. These include "Good Old Shoe", "The American Dream" and "The Men of the 303". However, the film’s soundtrack CD features only the title track (by British guitarist and vocalist Mark Knopfler) and seven of Knopfler's instrumentals.

• "Thank Heaven for Little Girls": written by Lerner and Lowe, performed by Maurice Chevalier
• "I Guard the Canadian Border": written by Tom Bähler and Willie Nelson, performed by Willie Nelson
• "The American Dream": written by Bähler, performed by Bähler
• "Good Old Shoe": written by Edgar Winter, performed by Nelson and Pops Staples
• "Classical Allegro": written by Marc Ferrari and Nancy Hieronymous
• "Courage Mom": written by Merle Haggard and performed by Merle Haggard and the Strangers
• "Barracuda": written by Heart, referenced by Woody Harrelson in character
• "I Love the Nightlife": written by Alicia Bridges and Susan Hutcheson
• "God Bless the Men of the 303": written by Huey Lewis, performed by Lewis, Scott Mathews, and Johnny Colla
• "Wag the Dog": written and performed by Mark Knopfler

In a contemporary review Roger Ebert awarded the film four stars of four, 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."^[11] He ranked it as his tenth favorite film of 1997.^[12]

In 2020, Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post rated it at number 12 on her list of the best political movies ever made.^[13]

Wag the Dog has an approval rating of 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 78 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Smart, well-acted, and uncomfortably prescient political satire from director Barry Levinson and an all-star cast."^[14] On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating, the film holds a score of 74 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[15] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale.^[16]

Wag the Dog was released on VHS November 3, 1998, and on DVD November 15, 2005.^[29][30] It is not available on Blu-ray.^[31]

On April 27, 2017, Deadline reported that Barry Levinson, Robert De Niro and Tom Fontana were developing a television series based on the film for HBO. De Niro's TriBeCa Productions was to co-produce, along with Levinson's and Fontana's companies.^[32]

• 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

Wikiquote has quotations related to Wag the Dog.

• Wag the Dog at IMDb
• Wag the Dog at AllMovie
• Wag the Dog at the TCM Movie Database
• Wag the Dog at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
• Wag the Dog at Box Office Mojo
• Wag the Dog at Rotten Tomatoes