Wag the Dog

In a 29-day shoot, Barry Levinson filmed this $15 million political and media satire, adapted by Hilary Henkin and David Mamet from Larry Beinhart's novel, -American Hero. Two weeks prior to re-election, the President (Michael Belson) is accused of cornering an underage girl in the Oval Office. To ...more

Barry Levinson filmed this dead-on political satire in a mere 29 days, working from David Mamet and Hilary Henkin's smart adaptation of the Larry Beinhart novel -American Hero. Wag the Dog came out not long before the nation found out about its own President's sexual misconduct; the prophetic script gets its laughs not from outlandish fantasy, but from the realization that it's only marginally removed from plausibility. The fake war the movie cooks up, for example, is set in the real nation of ...more