“Wag the Dog” quotes
(1997)
Title Wag the Dog
Year 1997
Director Barry Levinson
Genre Drama, Comedy
Year 1997
Director Barry Levinson
Genre Drama, Comedy
Plot – Only two weeks are left to the presidential elections. The current US president is involved in a scandal and before it causes some irreparable damages for his re-election, Conrad Brean is called. He's an advisor expert in mass media communication and must cover the possible trial involving the President. Conrad has an extraordinary ability to manipulate politics, press and public, so he travels to Los Angeles and involves Motss Stanley, a director and a producer. After several ideas, they find the right one, that is to let people believe there's a war bursting and that the United States are forced to participate.
All actors – Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Anne Heche, Denis Leary, Willie Nelson, Andrea Martin, Kirsten Dunst, William H. Macy, John Michael Higgins, Suzie Plakson, Woody Harrelson, Michael Belson, Suzanne Cryer, Jason Cottle, David Koechner, Harland Williams, Sean Masterson, Bernard Hocke, Jenna Byrne, Maurice Woods, Roebuck 'Pops' Staples, Phil Morris, Chris Ellis, Ed Morgan, J. Patrick McCormack, Jennifer Manley, Edrie Warner, Richard Lawson, Drena De Niro, Alberto Vazquez, Stephanie Kemp, Jack Esformes, John Cho, Michael Reid Davis, Brant Cotton, Kenneth Kern, Michelle Levinson, Ron McCoy, Derek Morgan, Garry R. Roleder, Merle Haggard, James Belushi, George Gaynes, Rick Scarry, Cliff B. Howard, Furley Lumpkin, Sean Fenton, Nikki Crawford, John Franklin, Kevin Furlong, Lu Elrod, Michael Villani, Shirley Prestia, Warren Wilson, Terry Anzur, Melissa Gardner, Giselle Fernandez, Christine Devine, Richard Saxton, Geoffrey Blake, Jerry Levine, Jack Shearer, Emmett Miller, Bill Handel, Arlene Afshangol, Hope Garber, Gina Menza, Maggie Mellin, Tom Murray, Ralph Tabakin, Marguerite Moreau, Jay Leno, Nicole Avant, Tom Bähler, Allen Carter, Carmen Carter, Lance Eaton, Karen Geraghty, James Gilstrap, Jennifer Gross, Wendy Lou Halvorsen, Anthony Holiday, Brad Kalas, Merle Haggard and the Strangers, Billy Trudel, Mark Vieha, Maxine Waters Willard, Julia Waters, Oren Waters, Phillip V. Caruso, Sean Ireland, Craig T. Nelson, Glendon Rich, Robert Richardson, Chelsea Talbott, Paul Webster
show all“Wag the Dog” Quotes 20 quotes
“We're not gonna have a war, we're gonna have the appearance of a war.”
“All combat takes place at night, in the rain, and at the junction of four map segments...”
“They're war slogans. We remember the slogans, we can't even remember the fucking wars. You know why? That's show business. Naked girl covered in Napalm. 'V for Victory'. Five Marines raising the flag. You remember the picture 50 years from now, you'll have forgotten the war. The Gulf War, smart bomb falling down a chimney. 2500 missions a day,...” (continue)(continue reading)
“Look at that! That is a complete fucking fraud, and it looks a hundred percent real. It's the best work I've ever done in my life, because it's so honest.”
“- Stanley Motss: He's fine as long as he gets his medications...
- Winifred Ames: And if he doesn't get his medications?
- Stanley Motss: He's not fine.”“- Winifred Ames: Fuck you!
- Conrad Brean: Leave it alone! What did television ever do to you?
- Winifred Ames: It destroyed the electoral process!”“- Tracy Lime: What would they do to me if I did tell someone about this?
- Conrad Brean: They could come to your house in the middle of the night and kill you.”“- Conrad Brean: If Kissinger can win the Peace Prize, I wouldn't be surprised to wake up and find out I'd won the Preakness.
- Stanley Motss: Yes but, our guy did bring peace.
- Conrad Brean: But there wasn't a war.
- Stanley Motss: All the greater accomplishment.”You said "Go to war to protect your way of life". This is your way of life. Isn't it? And if there ain't no war, then you, my friend, can go home and prematurely take up golf. Because there ain't no war but ours.
“- Conrad Brean: You're playing with your life here.
- Stanley Motss: Fuck my life! I want the credit.”“To go to that war, you've got to be prepared. You have to be alert, and the public has to be alert. Cause that is the war of the future, and if you're not gearing up, to fight that war, eventually the axe will fall.”
“The war of the future is nuclear terrorism. It is and it will be against a small group of dissidents who, unbeknownst, perhaps, to their own governments, have blah blah blah.”
“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”
“- Stanley Motss: I bet you're great at chess.
- Conrad Brean: I would be if I could remember how all the pieces moved.”“It's like a plumber: do your job right and nobody should notice. But when you fuck it up, everything gets full of shit.”
“There are two things I know to be true. There's no difference between good flan and bad flan, and there is no war.”
“- Winifred Ames: Why Albania?
- Conrad Brean: Why not?
- Winifred Ames: What have they done to us?
- Conrad Brean: What have they done for us? What do you know about them?
- Winifred Ames: Nothing.
- Conrad Brean: See? They keep to themselves. Shifty. Untrustable.”“- Conrad Brean: You watched the Gulf War, what do you see day after day? The one smart bomb falling down the chimney. The truth? I was in the building when we shot that shot - we shot in a studio, Falls Church, Virginia. One-tenth scale model of a building.
- Stanley Motss: Is that true?
- Conrad Brean: How the fuck do we know? You take my point?”
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