Summary: Pearse Redmond joined me again to discuss the 1997 film Wag the Dog, a black comedy about a White House spin doctor and a Hollywood producer faking a war with Albania to cover up a presidential sex scandal. We dug beneath the comic overtones to find a much darker subtext, talking about the total absence of moral values in the film, how the tone of the movie develops from a very light beginning to a very dark ending, and how both of the two main characters are probably based on very real and very significant people. In the case of film producer Stanley Motss that is Stanley Kubrick - a man rumoured to have been involved in the biggest government-hollywood conspiracy of all time, the supposed faking of the moon landings. Meanwhile spin doctor Conrad Breen is likely based on CIA Entertainment Industry Liaison Chase Brandon, who began working in Hollywood at the time this film was developed, and went on to work on several films with Robert De Niro. (Read more...)
