Legendary filmmaker Barry Levinson returns this week with the new HBO film The Survivor, which tells the amazing true story of Harry Hart (Ben Foster). Hart survived the Holocaust and became a world-renowned professional boxer. It's hardly the first time that Levinson told a true story of a political crisis. In recent years, he has helmed biographical television projects such as Dopesick, The Wizard of Lies, Paterno, and Shades of Blue.
While Levinson’s 1997 film Wag the Dog wasn’t based on real events, it came out at just the right time to sync up with reality. The film explores the aftermath of a political scandal, in which the President of the United States is caught having an extramarital affair with an underage White House staffer. Ironically, the film hit theaters only one month before the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke. At the time, audiences just assumed that Hollywood was extremely fast at ripping stories from the headlines.
Even more ironic than this coincidence is that by focusing on the similarities with the scandal, audiences completely missed the point that Levinson was making. Wag the Dog isn’t about the President’s sex life; it's a grim commentary on how media can mask the sinister things that the government is actually doing. The film explores how war generates fear and panic, and how these heightened emotions are weaponized by both the news cycle and the government. Yes, Wag the Dog was prophetic. However, what initially played as a light farce about the Clinton era now feels like a dark premonition of the Bush and Trump administrations.
In Wag the Dog, the White House staffers learn about the scandal only two weeks before the general election. The unnamed President’s entire campaign could collapse overnight. In an attempt to divert eyeballs away from his misdeeds, the President’s inner circle enlist the media spinster Conrad Brean (Robert De Niro). Brean decides that there’s only one thing that will be more interesting than sex: war. He contacts the Hollywood producer Stanley Moss (Dustin Hoffman in an Academy Award-nominated performance). Brean and Moss begin pumping out a marketing campaign to “promote” the war effort.
Due to the incorporation of the Hollywood satire, Wag the Dog was labeled a “comedy.” It’s a funny film in the same way that Doctor Strangelove is funny; you can laugh as you wince at how accurate the film is to reality. Perhaps Brean and Moss’ over-the-top television ads were seen as humorous, but they attempt to generate public favor by promoting imagery of starving children. This may have been an exaggeration in 1997, but today their ads are no different than the type of fear-mongering TV spot that pops up in front of a YouTube video.
Levinson explores the concept of a “star” to amass headlines. It doesn’t matter what the details of the war are, as the public is easily compelled by a tearful, lonely child. There’s immediately an outcry of support for the hoax. Emotional viewers don’t bother to research anything about Brean and Moss’ claims that there were violent terrorists in Albania. They demand action.
This again was a case where the film mirrored history as it emerged; two years after its release, the Clinton administration became involved in the Kosovo War. There are similarities to the Yugoslovian crisis, but now the idea of a sudden push for overseas conflict is indistinguishable from the headlines that popped up in mainstream publications during the Iraq War. Brean and Moss don’t utter the phrase “weapons of mass destruction,” but they might as well have.
The strategies that Brean and Moss utilize are in line with some of the tactics that Trump’s campaign uses. They enlist celebrity supporters and at one point, they create a fake “historical discovery” of a lost song by the legendary folk singer Johnny Dean (Willie Nelson in a genuinely amusing cameo). “Old Shoe” ends up starting a grassroots movement that Brean and Moss use to their advantage.
Brean and Moss also use the familiar technique of making broad appeals to veterans. They create another false media star in Sergeant William Schumann (Woody Harrelson), who they identify as the survivor of an Albanian raid. This leads to another only slightly ridiculous plot point in which Schumann is discovered to be criminally insane, and Brean and Moss have to kill their new hero. Even if this is the type of comedic exaggeration that lands Wag the Dog in the “satire” camp, the idea of appealing to emotion, and not fact, hasn’t aged a day.
It’s disheartening that the obvious cynicism of Wag the Dog didn’t leave viewers strong enough with viewers. By the end of the film, the President is successfully re-elected and the Albanians claim responsibility for another attack. The cycle of violence doesn’t just continue. It escalates. “War is show business,” Brean notes at one point. “That's why we're here.” Levinson didn’t know how accurate he would end up becoming.