Wag the Dog is a 1997 American political satire black comedy film produced and directed by Barry Levinson and starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. The film centers on a spin doctor and a Hollywood producer who fabricates a war in Albania to distract voters from a presidential sex scandal. The screenplay by Hilary Henkin and David Mamet was loosely adapted from Larry Beinhart's 1993 novel, American Hero.
Bugsy is a 1991 American biographical crime drama film directed by Barry Levinson and written by James Toback. The film stars Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Harvey Keitel, Ben Kingsley, Elliott Gould, Bebe Neuwirth, and Joe Mantegna. It is based on the life of American mobster Bugsy Siegel and his affair with starlet Virginia Hill.
Barry Lee Levinson is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. His best-known works are mid-budget comedy drama and drama films such as Diner (1982), The Natural (1984), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Bugsy (1991), and Wag the Dog (1997). Levinson won the Academy Award for Best Director for Rain Man (1988). In 2021, he co-executive produced the Hulu miniseries Dopesick and directed the first two episodes.
Toys is a 1992 American fantasy dark comedy film directed by Barry Levinson, cowritten by Levinson and Valerie Curtin, and starring Robin Williams, Michael Gambon, Joan Cusack, Robin Wright, LL Cool J, Arthur Malet, Donald O'Connor, Jack Warden and Jamie Foxx in his feature film debut. Released in December 1992, the film was produced by Levinson's production company, Baltimore Pictures, and distributed by 20th Century Fox.
Diner is a 1982 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Barry Levinson. It is Levinson's screen-directing debut and the first of his "Baltimore Films" tetralogy, set in his hometown during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s; the other three films are Tin Men (1987), Avalon (1990), and Liberty Heights (1999). It stars Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Paul Reiser, Kevin Bacon, Timothy Daly and Ellen Barkin and was released on March 5, 1982. The movie follows a close-knit circle of friends who reunite at a Baltimore diner when one of them prepares to get married.
Liberty Heights is a 1999 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Barry Levinson. The film is a semi-autobiographical account of his childhood growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s. The film portrays the racial injustices experienced both by the Jewish and African-American populations. Both of Nate Kurtzman's sons find women "prohibited" to them; for Van because he is Jewish and white, and for Ben because he is white. Their father goes to prison for running a burlesque show with Little Melvin, an African-American and known local drug dealer.
Tin Men is a 1987 American comedy film written and directed by Barry Levinson, produced by Mark Johnson, and starring Richard Dreyfuss, Danny DeVito, and Barbara Hershey. It is the second of Levinson's tetralogy of films set in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, along with Diner (1982), Avalon (1990), and Liberty Heights (1999).
Michael Tucker is an American author and actor, widely known for his role in the television series L.A. Law (1986–1994), for which he received two Golden Globe nominations and three Primetime Emmy Award nominations.
John Allen Daviau was an American cinematographer known for his collaborations with Steven Spielberg on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), The Color Purple (1985), and Empire of the Sun (1987). He received five Academy Award nominations and two British Academy Film Award nominations, with one win. In addition to his work in film, Daviau served as Cinematographer-in-Residence at UCLA.
Charles Newirth is an American film producer.
Baltimore, a city in the US state of Maryland, has been described by some as "Charm City", by others as "Bodymore, Murderland". F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived there for five years in the 1930s, wrote of it, "I belong here, where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite."
Mark Johnson is an American film and television producer. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture for producing the 1988 film Rain Man.
Samuel Levinson is an American filmmaker and actor. He is the son of Academy Award-winning director Barry Levinson. In 2010, he received his first writing credit as a co-writer for the action comedy film Operation: Endgame. The following year, he made his directorial film debut with Another Happy Day (2011), which premiered at Sundance Film Festival. He then received a writing credit on his father's HBO television film The Wizard of Lies (2017). He continued writing and directing for the feature films Assassination Nation (2018) and Malcolm & Marie (2021).
Howard Burton "Chip" Silverman, Ph.D, M.P.H., M.S., C.A.S., was the author of five books, coached the NCAA's only African-American college lacrosse team and was the former head of the Maryland Drug Abuse Administration.
Stewart Bridgewater Linder was an American film editor with 25 credits. He shared the Academy Award for Best Film Editing for the 1966 film Grand Prix, which was the first film on which Linder was credited as an editor. Linder is particularly noted for his long collaboration (1982–2006) with the director Barry Levinson. Perhaps the best remembered film from their collaboration, which extended over 20 films, was Rain Man (1988), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Linder won an ACE Eddie award for editing this film, and was nominated for both the Academy Award and the BAFTA Award for Best Editing.
The Maryland Film Festival is an annual five-day international film festival taking place each March in Baltimore, Maryland. The festival was launched in 1999, and presents international film and video work of all lengths and genres. The festival is known for its close relationship with John Waters, who is on the festival's board of directors and selects a favorite film to host within each year of the festival.
Ron Clark is an American playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for several plays that he co-wrote with Sam Bobrick and for co-writing the screenplays for the films Silent Movie, High Anxiety, and Life Stinks with Mel Brooks.
Herbert S. Levinson was an American television and movie actor. Levinson played a variety of character roles, often set in Baltimore, Maryland. Most notably, he played the character Dr. Lausanne in the NBC police procedural series Homicide: Life on the Street.
Louis DiGiaimo was an American casting director and film producer. He was one of the casting directors of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather and went on to help cast multiple films each for directors William Friedkin, Barry Levinson and Ridley Scott. He also produced Mike Newell's Donnie Brasco alongside Levinson and, in 1998, he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series for Levinson's television series Homicide: Life on the Street.
