"Who knows from Albania?"

On this day in 1946, the People’s Republic of Albania was officially established. Happy birthday, Albania.

Commemorate the momentous anniversary with Barry Levinson’s biting political comedy, ‘Wag The Dog’ (1997). Robert DeNiro stars as Capitol Hill spin doctor extraordinaire Conrad Brean, who gets called in to the White House to manage a PR crisis: The President has been caught having a sexual liaison, and the country needs to be distracted from the issue. (Right. As if that could ever happen.)

Conrad decides what the country needs is a huge distraction – like, say, maybe going to war. Not a real war, God forbid, but a staged, smoke-and-mirrors facsimile to deflect public attention, complete with false rumors, false denials, faked video footage, and a patriotic anthem composed by Willie Nelson. So Brean concocts a diversionary phony war with Albania.

“Why Albania?” asks an aide (Anne Heche).

“Why not? What do you know about ‘em?”

“Nothing.”

"Precisely. They seem shifty. They seem standoffish. I mean, who knows from Albania? Who trusts Albanians?”

Brean recruits the services of one Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman, doing a deadly accurate impression of producer Robert Evans) to “produce the pageant”. Motss delivers the goods, and more. A little too much more than for his own good.

‘Wag The Dog’ left a bitter taste in the public’s mouth when it was initially released; it hit just a little too close to the truth, and the public was both weary and wary of the then-ongoing Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton scandal. But seen on the small screen years later, with Hilary Henkin and David Mamet’s screenplay properly distanced from history, ‘Wag The Dog’ emerges as a delightfully subversive little satire.

But rest easy. It’s just a fable. It could never really happen in America.

No. Really.

Here's a look at the original trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnSauj2855M



(If link fails, just copy and paste http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnSauj2855M to the website address bar above.)