American Heroes, International Disasters: Wag the Dog.

International Disasters: eroes, Wag the Dog 1 J )^^^ he central premise of V ^ # ^^m Wag the Dog [Barrj ^^^^^^^^ ^ ^ ^ Levinson. 1997) is dazzllngly ^ ^ H r simple: mass media don't ^ ^ ^ ^^^F\ mereiy publicize or record V ^ wars - tbey can create them. It's hardiy a new idea: Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) toid the story of a newspaper- 1 031 ' 2008 '^^"' ^^'^^^ o"^ publisher F ILM ÍTEXT had the power to shape events. This doesn't take away from tbe fact that Wag JONATHAN DAWSON the Dog is a remarkable satire in many ways, most notably because the further in time we move from it, the more chilling is its deftness at skewering the dangers of political spin. The 1995 novei upon which the film is based, Larry Beinhart's American Hero, is a styiisticaiiy complex work dense with authorial footnotes. The fiim cleaves to the bones of plot, and David Mamet and Hilary Henkin's literate, brutal script drives the narrative as fiercely as any thriller. As Beinhart has observed: if the film had tried to be faithful to the book it would have failed. It made cinematic choices. The movie had far more currency than the book. Movies do that. Wag the Dog jbecame an intemational byword for fake wars staged to distract from domestic problems . Did that awaken our media and make them sharper in their questions and evaluations? . (the answer is) a resounding 'No'! tn the ten years since the book and the seven years since the film the gullibility and credulity of the media has only grown. ' i r - ^ / • — ^ 1—135

'^I 2008 F ILM <TEXT The plot thickens At first glance (and even upon close reading) the novel and the subsequent film seem miles apart. Beinhart's hero Joe Broz powerfully inhabits the novel, providing the key narration as well as the plot motor, his love affair with Hollywood actress Maggie. The novel italicized chapters of history, from both primary and secondary sources. There's also some quite brilliant postdoctoral-level specula- tion about the great plots of the most effective war movies of the twentieth century, and how they might be raided and reworked to provide a brilliant and unforgettable 'montage' Conrad 'Connie' Brean: But there was never a war. Stanley Motss: All the greater accomplishment. This blend of high cynicism, melodrama and closely argued analysis of movie rhetoric is a real tour de force, but is very hard to translate directly from the book to the screen. A s the film gathers pace and thisvery modern and highiy credihie -in spite of the hiack comedy - piotmotor accelerates, it aiso hecomes increasingly clear that those wagging the dog in the film are the spin doctors. 136 also contains very 'postmod- ern' parallel narratives. All these things - including Joe himself - vanish in the film. The style of the novel swings between the master action set pieces (Broz's tough, sharp Philip Marlowe-style voice narrating) and the for an evil enemy who must be dealt with once and for all. The aim is to make the American president the hero he needs to (appear to) be to stay in power. Stanley Motss: The President will be a hero. He brought peace. In the novel. Spielbergian big-budget movie director Beagle is asked to create a scenario that will topple American public opinion over into inevitable war: Beagle wrote a note on a yellow pad: Scenario: 'The President is kidnapped by terrorists. ' This had a certain appeal. What a thought! Have the terrorists execute Bush! Then Dan Quayle becomes President, declares war. (Obviously) the client was not going to go for that Bush had to stay alive. The book constantly alternates between an alternative reality and real possibilities with (actual) named protagonists - like George Bush Snr and his entire cabinet. No one is spared. Even Barry Levinson appears briefly (long before he was considered for the filmmaker role for real). Novel into movie The film's snappy and familiar title is cleariy meant to draw attention to its key theme: political and media spin. As the film begins, spin doctor Conrad 'Connie' Brean (Robert De Niro) is called in by White House aide Winifred Ames (Anne Heche) to create a public diversion that will distract public and media attention

away from a sex scandal threatening to undermine the President's re-elec1ion campaign. This, of course, calls to mind the Clinton scandal(s) of the 1990s; in the screenplay this presiden- tial misbehaviour is laughed off as a lovable lapse by De Niro's Brean, but neverthe- less sets in motion some exercises in cinema's unmatchable power to play with people's minds.^ To create the desired and essential public diversion, Brean turns to Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman), a Hollywood producer who, with immense glee and even greater hubris, starts to cook up a movie clip (in the fomi of a fake newsreel 'from the front') and a larger storyline necessary to convince the public that America is going to war with Albania. But why little Albania? Because war is news and Albania is a country that few Americans know anything about. You could, of course, substitute almost any other country into that paradigm - Iraq, for example. Winifred Ames: Why Albania? Connie Brean: Why not? Winifred Ames: What have they done to us? Connie Brean: What have they done FOR us? What do you know about them? Winifred Ames: Nothing. Connie Brean: See? They keep to themselves. Shifty. Untrustable. Sure enough, the very word 'Albania' wilt soon sound sinister enough to create a sense of fear across the United States. The cavalier attitude with which Albania is chosen as 'enemy' only serves to emphasize the gap between the seriousness of war and the frivolity of entertainment. As the film gathers pace and this very modern and highly credible - in spite of the black comedy - plot motor accelerates, it also becomes increasingly clear that those wagging the dog in the film are the spin doctors: Brean, Ames and Motss. The President is never seen in the 'bunker', controlling the action - indeed the President is defined in the film by his absence. Politics and media are interchangeable. The spin doctors are responsible for creating the 'Albanian war'. And once the CIA cottons on to their subterfuge and the phoney war ends, the spin doctors are also responsible for the music, the images and the accumulating myths and stories about a missing all-American hero. Sergeant William Schumann (Woody Harrelson), also known as 'Old Shoe'. Essentially, they are creating an advertising and propaganda campaign - 'selling' a feel-good story to a trusting American public through the media. The subplot involving a Special Forces rescue of 'Old Shoe' is the funniest and also, perhaps, the truest part of the entire movie. All Hollywood epics - and elections and advertising campaigns - need a theme song, and the missing 'Old Shoe' needs his Orpheus. This comes in the form of country singer Willie Nelson playing a version of himself, hewing to his backwoods country persona with utter fidelity and conviction. His two emblematic songs here, the hokey Marine-style bellow 'I Guard the Canadian Border' and the almost Appalachian folk ballad 'Good Old Shoe', could have served honourable duty as lures for cannon fodder in any recent conflict you might care to name. He's the Runt of the Utter Waal that's true N'l found him jest hiding in an Old Worif Shoe N'he got into mischief, as a Rup will do. 6ur / never had a better than my Good Old Shoe. As a result of this inspired dramatic ploy, a number of targets apart from schmaltzy Yankee patriotic mush get a real going-over - in one glorious studio recording scene the manufacturing of an anthem is far too like the feel-good 'We are the World' of 1985's star-studded USA

2008 FILM <TEXT 138 for Africa effort to be anything but an act of delightful filmmaking malice. Of course, by now, producer Motss is seeing all this mythologizing as a matter of earning screen credits rather than as part of the blacker, anonymous art of warmaking: Connie Brean: You can't tell anyone about this. Tracy Lime: Is it like a union thing? Connie Brean: Stanley, don't do this. You 're piaying with your life here. Stanley Motss: Fuck my life. I want the credit. Naturally, there will be no end credits for this producer - ex- cept a tombstone. We only have to catch Brean's reaction shot to this demand for credit to see what awaits poor Motss, with his blithe Hollywood belief in redemptive on-screen moments and happy endings. It is not the media wagging the dog, but covert, behind- the-scenes operatives. While entertainment may have subverted politics for a time, politics is eventually bigger than entertainment. Shooting a war Levinson's choice of Robert Richardson as director of photography was a crucial one. Part of the visual power and kinetic stylistics of Wag the Dog comes from Richardson's fluid, noirish cinematography. One of the most widely respected and more serious directors of photography in IHollywood, Richardson had always been keenly sought out for movies with a darker and often more political edge, and some of his best work has been for Oliver Stone. In Born on the Fourth of July (1989), JFK (1991) and Natural Born Killers (1994), Richardson used a wide range of film stock and lenses to recreate the look of such evocative and non-standard cinema technologies as 8mm home movies, grainy 1960s news film and early home-use amateur color videotape. For Wag the Dog, Richardson created two distinct and contrasting looks: the more grainy, noirish look of the key live action and the cheesy and melodramatic style of Stanley's 'news footage' featuring a terrified 'Albanian Girl' (Kirsten Dunst as actress Tracy Lime) in scenes that look like something from a World War Two propaganda movie. The result is a film that both reflects and comments upon prevailing Hollywood obsessions and stylistics while avoiding the clunkier effects of pure wide-shot comedy. Indeed, the scenes which depict the production of the Albanian Girt footage indicate just how easy it is to fabricate authentio-looking images - one moment Tracy Lime runs against a blue- screen background clutching a bag of crisps, the next, Albanian Girl flees for her life in war-torn Albania with a cute, helpless kitten superim- posed over the crisps. The last act, or 'be careful what you wish for' Wag the Dog (and its progenitor, American Hero) are never simply allegories. Reread closely, in the context of the last Iraq war, it is reality: the reality of war itself. War, like a movie blockbuster, is something to be sold to a public eager to buy. Connie Brean: War is show business, that's why we're here. Stanley Motss: What did television ever do to you? Winifred Ames: It destroyed the electoral process. In his cultural history of the 1960s, The Dream Life: Movies. Media and the Mythology of the Sixties. J. Hoberman engages with a time when politics and pop culture became one. What he discerned in a film like The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962) was that by the second year (1962) of John F. Kennedy's…