Shattered Glass

Dir: Billy Ray

2003

****

Shattered Glass was one of the most hyped films of 2003 but has since become almost forgotten. I’m not sure why though, as the story is still intriguing and as relevant as ever. The performances are also very strong, although I think Star Wars may have hampered Hayden Christensen’s career now to the point where people may well be avoiding anything that he stars in – staring in straight to DVD pap also doesn’t help. A real shame because he carries this film brilliantly and he really proves his worth as a great actor. He is surrounded by other great actors including Peter Sarsgaard, Chloë Sevigny, Hank Azaria who also turn in impressive performances but he still holds his own. Billy Ray is a great writer and an occasional director, his directorial work is good but his writing is superb. I’m generally hesitant about films based on magazine articles but this one was particularly compelling. Stephen Glass (Christensen) was a reporter at The New Republic, where he made a name for himself for writing colorful stories. His editor, Michael Kelly (Hank Azaria), was revered by the magazine's young staff at the time. This is where the story begins. When David Keene (at the time Chairman of the American Conservative Union) questions Glass's description of minibars and the drunken antics of Young Republicans at a convention, Kelly backs his reporter when Glass admits to one mistake but says the rest is true. Kelly is fired after he stands up to his boss Marty Peretz on an unrelated personnel issue, and fellow writer Charles "Chuck" Lane (Peter Sarsgaard) is promoted to replace him. The magazine publishes an entertaining story by Glass titled "Hack Heaven" about a teenage hacker named Ian Restil who was given a lucrative job at software company Jukt Micronics after hacking into its computer system. After the article is published, Adam Penenberg, a reporter at Forbes Digital Tool, begins researching the story in order to discover how Glass scooped everyone else. Penenberg is unable to uncover any corroborating evidence for Glass's story. Questioned by the Forbes reporter, Lane becomes suspicious when Glass cannot provide sources for his article and when the few pieces of concrete evidence are discovered to be an amateurish website representing Jukt Micronics and a Palo Alto phone number where every call goes directly to voicemail. Penenberg and his colleague, Andy Fox, can find no proof Jukt or any of the people mentioned in the story: Ian Restil, Jukt president George Sims, former NBA agent Joe Hiert, and Nevada law enforcement official Jim Ghort even exist. Lane drives Glass to the convention center where the hacker convention supposedly took place. When Lane asks a security guard for information, he is told the convention center was not open that day. Lane also discovers that the restaurant where the hackers supposedly ate dinner afterwards closes in the early afternoon. After haphazardly trying to defend himself, Glass finally "admits" to Lane that he wasn't actually at the hacker convention, but relied on sources for information and pretended he was there to give the article a first-person feel. Lane is outraged, but proceeds cautiously while seeking the truth. He suspends Glass, earning him the enmity of staff reporters, who all are fond of Glass. Caitlin Avey (Chloë Sevigny - a fictional character based on Hanna Rosin), a writer at the magazine, is so angered by Lane's actions that she considers quitting. When a colleague calls Lane to express concern for Glass's state of mind, he also mentions that Glass has a brother living in Palo Alto. Lane realizes the brother must have posed as the president of Jukt Micronics on the day he returned Lane's phone call. Glass pleads for another chance, but Lane orders him out of the office and takes his security access card. Searching through back issues of The New Republic, Lane realizes that much of Glass's previous work was falsified. When an emotional Glass returns, Lane fires him. Caitlin accuses Lane of wanting to get rid of everyone who was loyal to Kelly, but he challenges her to act like the good reporter she is. He reminds her that half of the falsified stories were published on Kelly's watch, after being fact-checked, and that the entire staff will have to apologize to their readers for allowing Glass to continue to hand in fictitious stories. The following day, a receptionist wryly remarks to Lane that all this trouble could have been averted if the stories required photographs. Lane discovers the staff has written an apology to their readers. They spontaneously applaud their editor, signifying their unity. At a meeting with Glass and a lawyer, Glass tacitly admits that 27 of the 41 articles he wrote for The New Republic were fabricated in whole or in part. An epilogue reveals that Glass decided to complete law school and wrote a novel called The Fabulist about a reporter who fabricates his stories, and that Michael Kelly was killed in Iraq while covering Operation Iraqi Freedom. Producer Craig Baumgarten, working with HBO executive Gaye Hirsch, optioned H.G. Bissinger's Vanity Fair magazine article about Stephen Glass for an HBO original movie. They hired screenwriter Billy Ray based on the script he had written for the TNT film Legalese. Ray grew up with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as his heroes and studied journalism for a year. It was this love for journalism that motivated him to make Shattered Glass. A sudden change in management put the film into turnaround and it remained inactive for two years until Cruise/Wagner Productions bought it from HBO. They took it to Lionsgate and Ray asked the studio if he could direct in addition to writing it. Ray stuck with the project because he knew Bissinger, having previously adapted one of his books, Friday Night Lights. The challenge for Ray was to make the subject matter watchable because, according to the filmmaker, "watching people write is deadly dull ... in a film like this, dialogue is what a character is willing to reveal about himself, and the camera is there to capture everything else". The breakthrough for Ray came when he realized that the film's real protagonist was not Glass but Chuck Lane. According to Ray, "as fascinating as Stephen Glass is by the end of the movie people would want to kill themselves – you just can't follow him all the way". He used the Bissinger article as a starting point, which gave him a line of dialogue on which to hook the entire character of Glass: "Are you mad at me?" According to Ray, "you can build an entire character around that notion, and we did". To prepare for the film, Ray interviewed and re-interviewed key figures for any relevant details. He signed some of them as paid consultants and gave several approval over the script. Early on, he spent a considerable amount of time trying to earn the trust of the people who had worked with Glass and get them to understand that he was going to be objective with the subject matter. The real Michael Kelly was so unhappy about how he was portrayed in Bissinger's article that he threatened to sue when Ray first contacted him about the film and refused for two years to read Ray's script, which he eventually approved. Ray attempted to contact Glass through his lawyers but was unsuccessful. Lionsgate lawyers asked Ray to give them an annotated script where he had to footnote every line of dialogue and every assertion and back them up with corresponding notes. Ray shot both halves of the film differently – in the first half, he used hand-held cameras in the scenes that took place in the offices of The New Republic, but when the Forbes editors begin to question Glass, the camerawork was more stable. It was a subtle but effective technique. It’s funny, one one hand I really wanted Glass to get away with it and I disliked Lane for investigating him but as the film progressed – watching Glass squirm out of every accusation – I soon wanted justice to prevail and for Lane to give him everything he got for making a mockery of journalism. The problem these days is that there are too many Glass and not enough Lane’s working in media, so the film is an interesting investigative recreation and also a lesson that viewers should heed the next time they pick up a newspaper with wild allegations.