Thinking Ahead

"Wag The Dog" (watch the film in its entirety by following the link) hit movie theaters in 1997 and coincidence or not Presidential scandal that was behind the plot of this satirical film occurred in real life just months later. "Wag The Dog" is based on Larry Beinhart's novel American Hero (available new and used at Amazon.com for as low as one cent by following the link.) The novel chronicles George Herbert Walker Bush--the forty-first President of the United States of America, but the movie itself does not follow the complete story line of the novel, whereas Bush is never mentioned nor seen.

The novel was published in 1994 and in the late '90s Producer and Director Barry Levinson cast big names including Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Anne Heche, musician Willie Nelson and up and coming Kirsten Dunst for the novel's adaptation in to film titled "Wag The Dog" in reference to the joke, "Why does a dog wag its tail? Because a dog is smarter than its tail. If the tail was smarter, the tail would wag the dog."

My Memorable Movie Quotes:

• Repeated commercial Campaign slogan: "Don't change horses in midstream."
  
• "Change the story, change the lead."
• "Let the American people decide."
• "War is show business, that's why we're here."
• The Presidential campaign: "It's a pageant."
• On voting: "Futile." "I vote for the Academy Awards." "I don't like the rooms, they're too stuffy."
• Movie director to President: "It's all a change of wardrobe."
• "Thinking ahead...like being a plumber, think ahead and nobody gets (explicative) on."
• Big corporations to help carry campaign as election day nears: "The Schumann cheeseburger...call Burger King and Johnny Rockets."
• Whenever something in 'campaigning' went wrong: "This is nothing, this is nothing..."
  
• "What did television ever do to you? It destroyed the electoral process."
  
• "The President is a product...commercials, commercials, commercials."

National Public Radio's (NPR) program Day to Day reported in a January 23, 2007 radio news article on "Hollywood's Impact on American Politics." The piece mentions "Wag The Dog" along with other notable political films. Listen to Karen Grigsby Bates' report here.