Shattered Glass is one of the most interesting and compelling films you will see this year.
Shattered Glass stars Hayden Christensen as Stephen Glass, a staff writer for the respected current events and policy magazine The New Republic. By the mid-90s, Glass' articles had turned him into one of the most sought-after young journalists in Washington, but a bizarre chain of events stopped his career in its tracks. It turns out that Glass had been making up many of his stories. When Forbes Digital started investigating one of Glass' stories that led to The New Republic's editor Chuck Lane uncovering a web of lies which Glass had perpetuated. By doing so Glass had involved other members of the New Republic's staff and one of his best friends, former editor Michael Kelly.
This, is accomplished screenwriter Billy Ray's directorial debut and it is a labor of love. Billy Ray is a former journalism student who spent years researching the Glass case before writing the screenplay.
Peter Sarsgaard is a very accomplished actor well-known to Suicide Girls members for such turns in Boys Don't Cry and The Salton Sea. In Shattered Glass he takes on his most complex role as Chuck Lane the man who will do anything to keep his journalistic integrity and the integrity of The New Republic by destroying Glass for his lies.
Shattered Glass opens November 7th.
Daniel Robert Epstein: Billy what made you want to make this movie?
Billy Ray: I loved the world it was set in. I'm fascinated by journalism and I always have been. In the house where I grew up Woodward and Bernstein were heroes. They were guys who had done something enormously important for the country. To see that legacy handed down to this generation and what this generation had done with it I thought was fantastic. I love the cautionary tale and the characters. I thought Stephen Glass, Chuck Lane, Michael Kelly were fascinating. I'm endlessly curious about what makes those people tick.
DRE: Did you speak with Stephen Glass?
BR: No. In 1999 when I was assembling the research to do this story I contacted everyone involved including Glass' people. But Glass said no and ultimately I think that's a good thing.
DRE: I see Shattered Glass as kind of like a 1984 scenario. By Stephen Glass making up the news he was making up history. Is one the things the film is trying to say, don't believe everything you read, not the New Republic not the New York Times?
Peter Sarsgaard: I think it's more interesting than that. I always told Billy, the reason people believe Stephen Glass is that, one; he makes things entertaining, reporters have to be stars just like actors have to be stars; two because he wrote stories that confirmed what we already thought was true, like young conservatives abusing a fat woman, draining the mini-bar and you're like, hell yeah I already knew that. Even if it's not true it fits. He made everything satisfying in that way.
DRE: As well liked as Stephen Glass was he got caught because of that one story. Why was he never caught before?
BR: I get that question all the time. It's a complicated answer and had the Forbes Digital staff not caught him I don't think anyone would have.
PS: Tell them the thing about the lobster.
BR: The frog?
PS: Yeah the frog.
BR: Chuck Lane says if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water it jumps out. But if you a put a frog into water that's room temperature and then slowly increase the heat eventually he'll boil to death and never know what hit him. That's what the Stephen Glass case was. There were several factors that made him very difficult to catch. He was at one point head fact checker of the magazine. He understood the fact checking system inside and out, how to bullshit his way through. Can I say that?
PS: You could say cocksucker and they'll just take it out.
BR: [laughs] That's good to know. Also he was so tough on everyone else's material with the facts that they assumed he applied that level of stringency to his own material.
PS: The best defense is a good offense.
BR: He also was the hub of gossip in the office. He knew who the receptionist was dating, your roommate's family issues, what was going in your world better than you did. So when he would show up with these strange stories that had all this intimate personal detail it clicked and made sense. They assumed he gets the dirt on people.
PS: Then he becomes known for the outlandish story. The first time it's a little tough to believe but by the fifth time, that's a Stephen Glass story.
BR: I think that's what hung him also. He had set the bar so high in terms of the level of entertainment on his pieces that he was afraid to write anything normal so he had no choice but to cook his pieces.
Have you ever read one of his pieces? They're amazing.
DRE: Do you think Glass is a bad guy?
PS: I think what he did is very bad. If you look at the media today and how polarized everything is. Nothing just gives you the facts anymore. Things like FOX News are all hyperbole. Maybe some of those things are true but taken out of context it's all a lie. The fact that it influences the public which influences policy making. It's on the left too, with people like Bill Mayer. He's hyperbolic and making it interesting and entertaining. Entertainment does not belong in straight news.
BR: There is also the personal level which is the most disturbing thing to me about Stephen Glass. The people at the New Republic were his best friends in the world. His family was in Chicago but his real family was in his office. They hung out all day at work then at night as well. He hosed and betrayed those people. Sometimes they co-wrote articles with him so they didn't know they were complicit in them. Those people care about their reputations as journalists and now they will have that little taint forever. Then on top of that, once he got caught he never spoke to them ever again.
What we talked about a lot while we were making this movie is that you are what you do. Your actions and choices define who you are. I don't think it's up to me to say whether Glass is a good or bad person but I think his actions totally defined who he is.
DRE: I do remember the scene where Stephen pitches and then Chuck had to follow. So Chuck had his chance to get his revenge on Glass.
PS: But Chuck did like Stephen, he was suspicious of him, jealous of him and jealousy is different from not liking someone. Chuck was just amazed at how he comes up with it and now no one cares about Chuck's story. As I've been saying straight news is not entertaining. MacNeil/Lehrer is a little dry. You'd rather watch Wolf Blitzer.
DRE: Do you feel the Jayson Blair story enhanced this movie?
PS: Well it just shows these aren't the only two. If you catch your girlfriend sleeping with someone else then he's not the only one she's sleeping with. You just caught her that time.
DRE: How challenging was it for you to get this to be your directorial debut?
BR: The way I got this directing job is that I wrote a script that people responded to. Then I went into the studio that wanted to finance it and said that if you let me direct it this is how I intended to shoot it. Then I pitched better than Stephen Glass could pitch on his best day. I went in there and sounded like a director who knew exactly what he was talking about. I stepped outside myself as I was pitching and watched myself doing it. I had no idea what I was talking about and had none of the necessary skills to articulate that vision.
PS: You had me fooled.
BR: [laughs] But I knew I would cross that bridge when I got to it. I have enough Stephen Glass in me to know what makes him tick.
PS: We all do especially, actors. The actor's syndrome is that we all feel like frauds because our jobs are weird. Everyone feels like they could be an actor in some way like everyone thinks they could be a photographer because they've taken pictures of their family. There are so many days where I wake up and I think that I got away with it again. It's a weird way to make a living.
BR: I think being creative in general is a weird and tough way to make a living because you're always butting up against the economic necessities of a given business. For me I firmly believed everyday walking on that on set that I was going to turn around and the Director's Guild police were going to come in and take me away in handcuffs saying that directing is a grownup job and I was a charlatan.
DRE: Is this revenge from when you dropped out of journalism school?
BR: [laughs] No and I want to be clear about that. There was an article in the LA Times and in the first paragraph there was a misquote and two fact checking errors. I went into Northwestern to be a journalist. I got into a freshman journalism class and ran into a teacher who thought I would be a lousy journalist. She thought my writing wasn't concise enough and too dramatic. She was right I probably would have made a bad journalist.
DRE: Who gave you the best interpretation of Stephen Glass?
BR: What was stunning about was the unanimity of the response I got. People that were around Stephen Glass all described him in the same way with varying levels of anger but everyone was pretty pissed off.
PS: They were charmed.
BR: They all were dazzled, they all wanted to mother him, protect him and it broke their hearts when he would be so tough on himself. When he was so extravagant in the way he would flagellate himself over an article. That also became cloying.
DRE: How involved was Michael Kelly in the movie before he died in Iraq?
BR: Michael Kelly was enormously involved and vital. I couldn't have made the movie without him. He was the most principled guy I ever met who was haunted until the day he died by his experience with Stephen Glass. All Michael Kelly cared about was his reputation as a journalist. Not only was he not the guy who caught Glass but because he was such a heavy rewriter he helped make Stephen Glass a star because he polished Glass's prose.
Michael Kelly didn't want this movie made which I understand. He was completely embarrassed and ashamed.
DRE: But he was still forthcoming enough to talk to you.
BR: That's Kelly. Even though he was desperate to see the movie derailed the higher value for him was that he wanted to see the story told right. Because in his heart of hearts he was a journalist. So he spent time talking with him, he signed off on the rights to use his name. He could have told me to go jump in the lake and in fact the first time I spoke to him he did tell me that.
PS: The current people at the New Republic liked the film and in fact are throwing us a party at the Washington DC premiere.
DRE: Could you see Stephen Glass sneaking into a theatre and watching the film?
BR: We've been told he has seen the movie and you should ask him what he thinks of it. If you called him I would be surprised if he didn't talk to you.
PS: Of course. This is a guy who needed attention.
BR: I would also like to say that the existence of this movie will obviously bring pain to Stephen Glass and his family. I don't celebrate that and that's an unhappy side effect of this movie. I thought the movie was important to make and Glass made himself vulnerable.
DRE: What was your opinion when Esquire was going to have Jayson Blair write a review of Shattered Glass?
BR: My initial thought is that it wasn't a good idea. I don't think we should be the vehicle by which he gains another fifteen minutes of fame. I just thought that was wrong. But Esquire took such a pounding that they balked. Also he's not a movie critic.
PS: What if he got another career reviewing movies? Like "I got killed by Blair".
DRE: Peter, Suicide Girls are very into a couple of your films. Boys Don't Cry and The Salton Sea. What was your experience like on those films?
PS: They were both amazing experiences. The movie I made right after Boys Don't Cry, The Center of the World, is the movie that most stuck in me as the film I most enjoyed working on. But judging by box office that doesn't translate to most seen movie or best movie. I was allowed to do whatever I wanted on The Center of the World.
The Salton Sea was crazy because I was acting with Val Kilmer. You absolutely never know what is going to happen from one second to the next on and off set, anywhere. So when you are filming he still has that quality. He's so soft much of the time then you just feel something is about to happen. For that movie we went to crystal meth meetings, we learned how to make crack pipes. The greatest gift you have as an actor is to be more than an actor. I've gotten to be a rapist, killer, drug dealer, drug addict, editor, multimillionaire, quadriplegic and you cut yourself short if you don't try to feel what that is.
By Daniel Robert Epstein
Shattered Glass stars Hayden Christensen as Stephen Glass, a staff writer for the respected current events and policy magazine The New Republic. By the mid-90s, Glass' articles had turned him into one of the most sought-after young journalists in Washington, but a bizarre chain of events stopped his career in its tracks. It turns out that Glass had been making up many of his stories. When Forbes Digital started investigating one of Glass' stories that led to The New Republic's editor Chuck Lane uncovering a web of lies which Glass had perpetuated. By doing so Glass had involved other members of the New Republic's staff and one of his best friends, former editor Michael Kelly.
This, is accomplished screenwriter Billy Ray's directorial debut and it is a labor of love. Billy Ray is a former journalism student who spent years researching the Glass case before writing the screenplay.
Peter Sarsgaard is a very accomplished actor well-known to Suicide Girls members for such turns in Boys Don't Cry and The Salton Sea. In Shattered Glass he takes on his most complex role as Chuck Lane the man who will do anything to keep his journalistic integrity and the integrity of The New Republic by destroying Glass for his lies.
Shattered Glass opens November 7th.
Daniel Robert Epstein: Billy what made you want to make this movie?
Billy Ray: I loved the world it was set in. I'm fascinated by journalism and I always have been. In the house where I grew up Woodward and Bernstein were heroes. They were guys who had done something enormously important for the country. To see that legacy handed down to this generation and what this generation had done with it I thought was fantastic. I love the cautionary tale and the characters. I thought Stephen Glass, Chuck Lane, Michael Kelly were fascinating. I'm endlessly curious about what makes those people tick.
DRE: Did you speak with Stephen Glass?
BR: No. In 1999 when I was assembling the research to do this story I contacted everyone involved including Glass' people. But Glass said no and ultimately I think that's a good thing.
DRE: I see Shattered Glass as kind of like a 1984 scenario. By Stephen Glass making up the news he was making up history. Is one the things the film is trying to say, don't believe everything you read, not the New Republic not the New York Times?
Peter Sarsgaard: I think it's more interesting than that. I always told Billy, the reason people believe Stephen Glass is that, one; he makes things entertaining, reporters have to be stars just like actors have to be stars; two because he wrote stories that confirmed what we already thought was true, like young conservatives abusing a fat woman, draining the mini-bar and you're like, hell yeah I already knew that. Even if it's not true it fits. He made everything satisfying in that way.
DRE: As well liked as Stephen Glass was he got caught because of that one story. Why was he never caught before?
BR: I get that question all the time. It's a complicated answer and had the Forbes Digital staff not caught him I don't think anyone would have.
PS: Tell them the thing about the lobster.
BR: The frog?
PS: Yeah the frog.
BR: Chuck Lane says if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water it jumps out. But if you a put a frog into water that's room temperature and then slowly increase the heat eventually he'll boil to death and never know what hit him. That's what the Stephen Glass case was. There were several factors that made him very difficult to catch. He was at one point head fact checker of the magazine. He understood the fact checking system inside and out, how to bullshit his way through. Can I say that?
PS: You could say cocksucker and they'll just take it out.
BR: [laughs] That's good to know. Also he was so tough on everyone else's material with the facts that they assumed he applied that level of stringency to his own material.
PS: The best defense is a good offense.
BR: He also was the hub of gossip in the office. He knew who the receptionist was dating, your roommate's family issues, what was going in your world better than you did. So when he would show up with these strange stories that had all this intimate personal detail it clicked and made sense. They assumed he gets the dirt on people.
PS: Then he becomes known for the outlandish story. The first time it's a little tough to believe but by the fifth time, that's a Stephen Glass story.
BR: I think that's what hung him also. He had set the bar so high in terms of the level of entertainment on his pieces that he was afraid to write anything normal so he had no choice but to cook his pieces.
Have you ever read one of his pieces? They're amazing.
DRE: Do you think Glass is a bad guy?
PS: I think what he did is very bad. If you look at the media today and how polarized everything is. Nothing just gives you the facts anymore. Things like FOX News are all hyperbole. Maybe some of those things are true but taken out of context it's all a lie. The fact that it influences the public which influences policy making. It's on the left too, with people like Bill Mayer. He's hyperbolic and making it interesting and entertaining. Entertainment does not belong in straight news.
BR: There is also the personal level which is the most disturbing thing to me about Stephen Glass. The people at the New Republic were his best friends in the world. His family was in Chicago but his real family was in his office. They hung out all day at work then at night as well. He hosed and betrayed those people. Sometimes they co-wrote articles with him so they didn't know they were complicit in them. Those people care about their reputations as journalists and now they will have that little taint forever. Then on top of that, once he got caught he never spoke to them ever again.
What we talked about a lot while we were making this movie is that you are what you do. Your actions and choices define who you are. I don't think it's up to me to say whether Glass is a good or bad person but I think his actions totally defined who he is.
DRE: I do remember the scene where Stephen pitches and then Chuck had to follow. So Chuck had his chance to get his revenge on Glass.
PS: But Chuck did like Stephen, he was suspicious of him, jealous of him and jealousy is different from not liking someone. Chuck was just amazed at how he comes up with it and now no one cares about Chuck's story. As I've been saying straight news is not entertaining. MacNeil/Lehrer is a little dry. You'd rather watch Wolf Blitzer.
DRE: Do you feel the Jayson Blair story enhanced this movie?
PS: Well it just shows these aren't the only two. If you catch your girlfriend sleeping with someone else then he's not the only one she's sleeping with. You just caught her that time.
DRE: How challenging was it for you to get this to be your directorial debut?
BR: The way I got this directing job is that I wrote a script that people responded to. Then I went into the studio that wanted to finance it and said that if you let me direct it this is how I intended to shoot it. Then I pitched better than Stephen Glass could pitch on his best day. I went in there and sounded like a director who knew exactly what he was talking about. I stepped outside myself as I was pitching and watched myself doing it. I had no idea what I was talking about and had none of the necessary skills to articulate that vision.
PS: You had me fooled.
BR: [laughs] But I knew I would cross that bridge when I got to it. I have enough Stephen Glass in me to know what makes him tick.
PS: We all do especially, actors. The actor's syndrome is that we all feel like frauds because our jobs are weird. Everyone feels like they could be an actor in some way like everyone thinks they could be a photographer because they've taken pictures of their family. There are so many days where I wake up and I think that I got away with it again. It's a weird way to make a living.
BR: I think being creative in general is a weird and tough way to make a living because you're always butting up against the economic necessities of a given business. For me I firmly believed everyday walking on that on set that I was going to turn around and the Director's Guild police were going to come in and take me away in handcuffs saying that directing is a grownup job and I was a charlatan.
DRE: Is this revenge from when you dropped out of journalism school?
BR: [laughs] No and I want to be clear about that. There was an article in the LA Times and in the first paragraph there was a misquote and two fact checking errors. I went into Northwestern to be a journalist. I got into a freshman journalism class and ran into a teacher who thought I would be a lousy journalist. She thought my writing wasn't concise enough and too dramatic. She was right I probably would have made a bad journalist.
DRE: Who gave you the best interpretation of Stephen Glass?
BR: What was stunning about was the unanimity of the response I got. People that were around Stephen Glass all described him in the same way with varying levels of anger but everyone was pretty pissed off.
PS: They were charmed.
BR: They all were dazzled, they all wanted to mother him, protect him and it broke their hearts when he would be so tough on himself. When he was so extravagant in the way he would flagellate himself over an article. That also became cloying.
DRE: How involved was Michael Kelly in the movie before he died in Iraq?
BR: Michael Kelly was enormously involved and vital. I couldn't have made the movie without him. He was the most principled guy I ever met who was haunted until the day he died by his experience with Stephen Glass. All Michael Kelly cared about was his reputation as a journalist. Not only was he not the guy who caught Glass but because he was such a heavy rewriter he helped make Stephen Glass a star because he polished Glass's prose.
Michael Kelly didn't want this movie made which I understand. He was completely embarrassed and ashamed.
DRE: But he was still forthcoming enough to talk to you.
BR: That's Kelly. Even though he was desperate to see the movie derailed the higher value for him was that he wanted to see the story told right. Because in his heart of hearts he was a journalist. So he spent time talking with him, he signed off on the rights to use his name. He could have told me to go jump in the lake and in fact the first time I spoke to him he did tell me that.
PS: The current people at the New Republic liked the film and in fact are throwing us a party at the Washington DC premiere.
DRE: Could you see Stephen Glass sneaking into a theatre and watching the film?
BR: We've been told he has seen the movie and you should ask him what he thinks of it. If you called him I would be surprised if he didn't talk to you.
PS: Of course. This is a guy who needed attention.
BR: I would also like to say that the existence of this movie will obviously bring pain to Stephen Glass and his family. I don't celebrate that and that's an unhappy side effect of this movie. I thought the movie was important to make and Glass made himself vulnerable.
DRE: What was your opinion when Esquire was going to have Jayson Blair write a review of Shattered Glass?
BR: My initial thought is that it wasn't a good idea. I don't think we should be the vehicle by which he gains another fifteen minutes of fame. I just thought that was wrong. But Esquire took such a pounding that they balked. Also he's not a movie critic.
PS: What if he got another career reviewing movies? Like "I got killed by Blair".
DRE: Peter, Suicide Girls are very into a couple of your films. Boys Don't Cry and The Salton Sea. What was your experience like on those films?
PS: They were both amazing experiences. The movie I made right after Boys Don't Cry, The Center of the World, is the movie that most stuck in me as the film I most enjoyed working on. But judging by box office that doesn't translate to most seen movie or best movie. I was allowed to do whatever I wanted on The Center of the World.
The Salton Sea was crazy because I was acting with Val Kilmer. You absolutely never know what is going to happen from one second to the next on and off set, anywhere. So when you are filming he still has that quality. He's so soft much of the time then you just feel something is about to happen. For that movie we went to crystal meth meetings, we learned how to make crack pipes. The greatest gift you have as an actor is to be more than an actor. I've gotten to be a rapist, killer, drug dealer, drug addict, editor, multimillionaire, quadriplegic and you cut yourself short if you don't try to feel what that is.
By Daniel Robert Epstein
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
hyde665:
this is a film i will have to see, as an ameteur(sic) writer and ex journalism student this intrigues me to no end. this is also something i knew nothing about until now.
korben:
i saw a preview for this movie and i thought it looked interesting.