In a blockbuster 1997 film
Wag the Dog, Robert De Niro plays a fixer extraordinaire who’s summoned to the White House after a potential front-page scandal threatens to sink the president’s reelection. To deflect attention away from this controversy, De Niro and Hollywood producer Dustin Hoffman plan a fake war, or pageant, as they call it.
As De Niro famously quipped, “We’re not going to have a war. We’re going to have the
appearance of a war.” Playing on this sentiment, director Barry Levinson stressed, “We’re reaching a point where it’s no longer easy to differentiate between what’s fabricated and what’s real.”