Come Watch Wag the Dog With Us
Mid-way through October—and aaaaalmost approaching the finish line of this long-running election season—it seems appropriate to consider, for the next installment of Political Theater, the October surprise.
Wag the Dog, the 1997 satire starring Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Anne Heche, William H. Macy, Kirsten Dunst, Willie Nelson, Woody Harrelson, and a handful of many other mid-’90s luminaries, is all about the last-minute revelations that can change the course of an election. That might be why it was one of your most up-voted movie selections for Political Theater. As one reader explained, “This movie gave me my first look into the government communications machine and drove my interest in political PR, which I ended up making my career.”
Wag the Dog, indeed, is all about the interplay between politics and pageantry. It follows the PR guy Conrad Brean (De Niro) as he attempts to distract the U.S. electorate from a presidential sex scandal—by orchestrating, with the help of a Hollywood producer, a fake war with that unlikeliest of foes: Albania.
Yes. A little bit Argo, a little bit Canadian Bacon, Wag the Dog is uniquely cynical—and, in that, possibly even more relevant today than it was when it premiered nearly 20 years ago.
Here’s a preview:
We’ll be watching Wag the Dog on Monday, 10/17, starting at 6:30 p.m. East Coast time. (Wag the Dog is streaming on Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, and other digital platforms for $2.99.) If you’re free to watch it at the same time, please join in! I’ll be tweeting some initial thoughts about it then, with the hashtag #AtlanticPoliticalTheater. As before, though, watch it whenever is good for you, and join the conversation whenever you’d like—via Twitter (I’m @megangarber) or via an email to hello@theatlantic.com.
Looking forward to watching and chatting with you!