Wag the Dog
with Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Anne Heche, Woody Harrelson, Denis Leary, Willie Nelson
Directed by Barry Levinson
Written by David Mamet and Hilary Henkin
Based on the book American Hero by Larry Beinhart
by Scott Hefflon
Reality is popular fiction. As every barstool/living room philosopher knows, reality is merely what you believe to be real. And with such paraphrased phrases as, “It’s not a question of being too paranoid, it’s a question of being paranoid enough” from Conspiracy Theory, Freejack, or that movie with Arnold Schwartz and Jamie Lee, it’s a thought that rebounds throughout our culture. We all have too much free time on our hands. Reality is “Have you eaten today?” (Gratuitous quote from Last Decade/Dead Century by Warrior Soul.)
Think of it: Wag the Dog is a movie in which our beloved government and overpaid Hollywood showboats team up to keep the ever-thoughtful American TV viewer entertained (with a war, dammit – sure makes the World Series look like a little league game, don’t it? Who advertises at halftime, by the way, and how much does it cost?), while diverting them from investigating any “real” news. Like the rumor that the Pres. shared the First Penis (thanks, My Fellow Americans) with a “Firefly Girl,” evidently the Fly Girls’ recruitment camp for underage girls with fake smiles (the rest comes later). It’s rather ironic that our own President (Bill Clinton, in case y’all don’t watch the all-network soap opera) is in trouble for roughly the same thing, except with a hefty intern instead of a… yawn… I’m sorry, reality and its cross-referencing intricacies? Can we stick with an interesting topic like the movies?
There are themes going on in Wag the Dog which tie many a movie together, both actor-wise and plot-wise. Indulge me, if you will (and if you won’t, all I have to do is make a phone call, baby, remember that), as I chip away at the tip of the iceberg – just enough ice for a couple drinks – care to join me?
Consider Dustin Hoffman playing a Hollywood producer hired to stage a war (I think they called it a pageant) in Wag the Dog, when recently he played an “honest” (honestly headline grabbing) journalist “caught” (deliberately or not) in a hostage crisis with John Travolta in which he manipulates the media to show what he wants to show, when he wants to show it in Mad City. There are many other connections with government cover-ups and the twistings of the media involving Dustin Hoffman (such as Hero, Outbreak, and, in a different way, Sleepers), but I think more of them come from Al Pacino (perhaps Hoffman’s dark half, who I often confuse him with) who, among other great movies, was in Heat with Robert De Niro. And speaking of the devil (think Angel Heart, if you please)…
Perhaps you want to look at the movies of De Niro, the clean up guy (when he’s not available, Harvey Kietel steps in – Pulp Fiction good, Point of No Return bad [oh, surprise, surprise]), hired to stay cool and bad-ass (yet not as tough as Heat, or as twisted as that break-his-fingers scene in Reservoir Dogs – oops, that was Keitel) in extreme situations. De Niro doesn’t have to tilt his head much and repeat emphatically a single question (“You talkin’ to me? I said, Are you talkin’ to me?”) as he’s done in more movies than I can count (and more than I need to namedrop in articles like this to justify the write-off), but they are the wonderfully frightening equivalent of him saying, “This phrase is a baseball bat, and I’m going to keep beating you over the head with it until you get my point, fucko.” He did get to do it once (it’s probably in his contract) when convincing a CIA hotshot (William H. Macy from Fargo and Boogie Nights who, while having a small role, still got to trip over his fluctuating facial expressions as he was forced to change his tune) that simply because CIA satellites and operatives haven’t detected any threat from Albania and Canada (why these specifics? See the movie yer damn self!), that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. They are there, and if you can’t see them, that implies you don’t see a threat I see, and therefore your job, and your way of life, are threatened. (De Niro said it better.)
And what of Anne Heche? Well, what of her? She played a dweeby-yet-lovable scientist aside too-cool Tommy Lee Jones in Volcano, she’s made multiple appearances with partner (I’m unsure who’s the wife and who’s the hubby), Ellen DeGeneres (and I’m always surprised by how much more likable she is when she plays someone other than herself), and now she plays a White House bitch (think Judy Davis in Absolute Power, but blonde instead of redheaded, and less flighty – except the aforementioned scene with the CIA guy where she crumbles and The Man has to save the day [a terrifically stereotyped scene which, I’m sure, infuriated her, and perhaps that’s why I like it so much]) who’s always on the phone.
The fact that Denis Leary plays roughly the same role as the crass marketing whiz in Kids in the Hall’s Brain Candy is overlookable when you consider he could’ve been babbling on and on about his kids (Lock & Load, and the many, many talk show appearances [and spending time on the couch with Dr. Katz] that he did with the same, not-very-funny jokes) or repeating such ignorable performances as Operation Dumbo Drop (not to mention his recent attempts at “serious acting” in which he proved that he too can star in agonizingly useless, drippy movies). Unlike The Ref (co-starring Judy Davis) and National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon (alongside William Shatner [who did a much funnier appearance on The Daily Show pitching his new, gulp, Star Trek calling cards], and co-starring Samuel L. Jackson [also in Pulp Fiction with John Travolta and, oops, that was Harvey Keitel] spoofing Lethal Weapon [starring Danny Glover, who also made the mistake of appearing in Operation Dumbo Drop along with Ray Liotta who starred in Turbulence with Rachel Ticotin, and GoodFellas with De Niro and Joe Pesci, both of whom starred in Casino, and Pesci played vastly different roles in various Lethal Weapons, not to mention {ever} Gone Fishin’ with none other than Danny Glover]), Leary just isn’t that funny.
A brief appearance by Woody Harrelson (as the drugged-up homicidal headcase “Old Shoe”) creates a nice parallel to Natural Born Killers (with Tommy Lee Jones, and Juliette Lewis [oops, that was Keitel that starred in From Dusk Til Dawn with her and George Clooney {don’t get me started on Batman and Robin}, Tarantino {Pulp Fiction, and with Cheech Martin in Desperado – can we stop now before I mention Cheech and Eric Roberts in Rude Awakening?}, and Danny Trejo, the bad-ass bartender who was also in Desperado and Con Air {which starred Rachel Ticotin, also in Ray Liotta’s Turbulence, Nicholas Cage <who;, among other things, starred in Face/Off with Travolta and Gina Gerhson, the sultrier version of Sandy Bullock who’s never starred in anything of value and Cindy Crawford who couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag>, and Steve Buscemi from Fargo and practically every other movie that came out during that time period}]). In Natural Born Killers, Harrelson utters the words of wisdom comparing the media to the weather, only the media is man-made. And that, if nothing else, is the theme in Wag the Dog.
It’s funny that a theme similar to Conspiracy Theory (with Mel Gibson of Lethal Weapon and Sandra Bullocks, er, Julia Roberts {OK, she was in it, but the love interest was the weakest part of the movie, and therefore I still don’t like her. And while the idea was good, Bullock’s The Net was pretty sad as a movie and’ll probably be even worse as a prime-time network TV excuse to get advertisers}) and let’s not even talk (ever) of Shadow Conspiracy, we keep making movies about the rather obvious: the government lies and covers things up. The beauty of Wag the Dog is the fact that it takes that premise for granted, then makes a riveting movie, filled with dynamic acting and wonderful word volleying, around it. They don’t try to shock, they don’t have to take matters to a level of absurdity, they merely create a very realistic, very believable story based on the manipulation of what is “real.”
Both Hoffman and De Niro play producers. They make things happen. Hoffman is Hollywood, thinking in grand strokes of self-congratulatory genius, and De Niro is shadow, thinking fast and hard, pulling contingency plans out of the repugnant depths of what lines can be blurred. Both are sharp and articulate, thorough and detail-oriented. They mastermind a completely fabricated reality, and they sell it to the public. What is “real” is secondary to what is possible. And the question itself takes a major backseat to the respect you get while watching these two create. Sure, there is plenty to ponder: our government and the media could very easily dupe large segments of the populace into believing practically anything. Especially if it’s far away and we rely on that same government-influenced media to remind us where various countries are, and whose side they’re on. Politics are summarized, and popular opinion is based, not on what happens (hell, when was the last time you were in a hostile foreign land and actually saw any of the situations that start the conflicts we fight?), but what we’re told happens, and what we’re told it means. And that, of course, is the beauty of this movie. We know it’s just a movie. We think this kinda stuff probably happens all the time in, for lack of a better word, reality. But Wag the Dog shows imaginative people creating something believable and with purpose – in a phrase, creating their own reality. And that’s all any of us really do (albeit on a small scale and with only the eyes of those around us the viewers, not the eyes of the country or the world). But hell, it makes a great story. This is a movie you can (and should) watch again and again, each time picking up and appreciating more clues and details, each time realizing this is far from far-fetched.
