Wag the Dog (1997) - Quotes

Brean: Our job's over come election day.

Brean: [Motss nods; [Henry Kissinger|Kissinger] What, just for the symmetry of the thing? Well, if ] can win the Peace Prize, I wouldn't be surprised if I woke up and found I'd won the Preakness.

Motss: Yeah, but our guy did bring peace.

Brean: There was never a war.

Motss: All the greater accomplishment.

Motss: As long as he gets his medications, he's fine.

Ames: What if he doesn't get them?

Motss: He's not fine.

Motss: Yeah, it's like a plumber: do your job right and nobody should notice. But when you fuck it up, everything gets full of shit.

Brean: Let me ask you a simple question: Why do people go to war?

CIA Agent Charlie Young: I'll play your silly game.

Brean: Okay. Why do people go to war?

Young: To ensure their way of life.

Brean: Would you go to war to do that?

Young: I have.

Brean: And if you went to war again, who would it be against? Your ability to fight a two-ocean war against who? Who? Sweden and Togo? That time is passed. It's over. The war of the future is nuclear terrorism, and it'll be against a small group of dissidents who, unbeknownst perhaps to their own government, have... blah blah blah. To go to that war, you have to be prepared, you gotta be alert, the public has gotta be alert. Because that is the war of the future, and if you're not gearing up to fight that war, then eventually the axe will fall, and you're gonna be out on the street. You can call this a drill, you can call this job security, you can call it anything you like. But I got one for you: You said go to war to preserve your way of life? Well, Chuck, this is your way of life. And if your spy satellites don't see nothin', if there ain't no war, then you can go home and prematurely take up golf, my friend. Cause there ain't no war but ours.

Brean: You can't tell anyone about this.

Amy Cain: But there isn't a B-3 bomber.

Conrad Brean: Where'd you go to school, kid? Wellesly?

Cain: Dartmouth.

Brean: Then show a little spunk. There Is no B-3 Bomber. General Scott, the best of your knowledge, is not in Seattle to talk with Boeing...

Winifred Ames: It won't hold, Connie, it won't prove out.

Brean: We don't need it to prove out. We've got less than two weeks till the election, so we just need to distract them.

Ames: What on Earth would do that?

Brean: Well, I'm working on that.

Johnny Dean: I was just on my way to get drunk.

Johnny Dean: Albania's hard to rhyme.

CIA Agent Charlie Young: When the fit hits the shan somebody's going to have to stay after school.

CIA Agent Charlie Young: 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: Oh, God. What do we do now? Huh? Huh? What do we do now, huh, boy producer? Huh? Mister win-an-Emmy, social-conscience, whale-shit, save-the-rain-forest, peacenik-commie, fuckin'-hire-a-convict-shithead? Huh? What do we do now, liberal, affirmative action, shithead, peacenik commie fuck? What do you want to do now?

Stanley Motss: Corny? He says it's corny? Of course it's corny. We wouldn't be doing the flippin thing if it wasn't corny.

Stanley Motss: King, King, I got a thing here, a product placement, gonna have a bigger back-end than Hattie McDaniel.

Stanley Motss: Johnny, I got a lot of people here who are a little depressed because the war just ended, please give me a new song.

Stanley Motss: That's right. During the filming of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, three of the horsemen died two weeks before the ending of principle photography. This is nothing, this is nothing. This is... this is... this is act one- The War.

Stanley Motss: Look at that! That is a complete fucking fraud, and it looks 100% real. This is the best work I've ever done in my life - because it's so honest.

Stanley Motss: The war ain't over til I say it's over. This is my picture. You think you're in a spot? You think this is a tight spot? Try making the Hunchback of Notre Dame when your three lead actors die, two weeks from the end of principal photography.

Stanley Motss: Y'know, producing is being a Samurai warrior. They pay you, day in, day out, for years, so that, ONE DAY, when called upon, you can respond, your training at Its peak, and save the day.

Stanley Motss: This is nothing. D'you ever shoot in Italy? Try three Italian starlets wacked out on Benzedrine and grappa, this is a walk in the park...

Stanley Motss: You take the fruit of 40 years - hard lessons, mistakes - and you call it wisdom.

Conrad Connie Brean: Can't have a war without an enemy...You could have one, but it would be a very dull war...

Conrad Connie Brean: This is a shitty business, and it needs no ghosts coming from the grave to tell us so. But Lord willing and Jesus tarries, in eight days I will be taking you into the second term.

Conrad Connie Brean: [[w:Phan Thị Kim Phúc|Naked girl, covered in Napalm; [w:Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima|Five marines Raising the Flag] 54, 40 or fight. What does that mean?...Remember the Maine...Tippecanoe and Tyler, too...They're war slogans Mr. Motss. We remember the slogans, we can't even remember the fucking wars. Y'know why? Cause its show business. That's why I'm here. ]. ], Mount Suribachi. V for Victory, Y'remember the picture, fifty years from now, they'll have forgotten the war. Gulf War? Smart bomb, falling down a chimney. Twenty five hundred missions a day, 100 days, one video of one bomb Mr. Motss. The American people bought that war.

Conrad Connie Brean: All combat takes place at night, in the rain, and at the junction of four map segments.

Conrad Connie Brean: A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.