Film Review : Shattered Glass
Posted on September 16, 2003 at 11:00 am | No Comments
The final night of this year’s Boston Film Festival brought writer/director Billy Ray to town to show off his new film “Shattered Glass“, the cautionary tale of infamous journalist Stephen Glass.
In case the story (and the 60 minutes piece) passed you by, Glass was a veritable writer’s rockstar at well-respected D.C.-based political mag The New Republic, and his freelance work included stories for Harpers, George, and Rolling Stone. The talented 24 year-old’s career was in full swing until Forbes Digital Tool, an online-only tech news site, dug way deep into a Glass story called “Hack Heaven“. Needless to say, Forbes had no idea exactly how much their fact-checking would uncover. Buzz Bissinger followed the revelations with a scathing Vanity Fair article in September 1998, and it became the launching pad for Ray’s screenplay.
It was a much-deserved dark time for Glass (played in the film by Hayden “Vader” Christensen), but also a watershed moment for online journalism, and a traumatic eye-opener for Glass’s superiors at the New Republic, including editor Chuck Lane and former editor Michael Kelly (played by Peter Sarsgaard and Hank Azaria, respectively).
For the first part of the film, I was a bit let down by Christensen’s performance… I thought it lacked much depth. As the film progressed, though, I realized that’s pretty much what the part required… this was a guy living on the surface, trying to skate by on flattery and falsehoods. He really comes into the role when his world comes crashing down.
As for Peter Sarsgaard, his was clearly the breakout performance… a near-perfect portrayal of a victim of workplace and personal betrayal. The film is an always interesting, occasionally dry, and fairly brainy affair… but when the emotional peaks hit, and they do hit hard, Sarsgaard is there in the center of them. He wears the conflict all over his face, shining even when there’s no dialogue to deliver. In particular, keep an eye out for a scene with him and the always-solid Chlo� Sevigny in an office building lobby. It’s a moment that wasn’t even in the screenplay, but helps take the film up a notch. Powerful stuff.
The supporting cast is also excellent, including Steve Zahn as Forbes reporter Adam Penenberg, and Melanie Lynskey (crushworthy since Beautiful Creatures) as New Republic reporter Amy Brand. While most of the characters are based on real people, apparantly the female New Republic staffers (including Lynsky and Sevigny) were composites of real reporters including Hanna Rosin, a very close now-former friend of Glass.
Billy Ray gave an enlightening Q&A after the screening in which he addressed the source material (many interviews with every person involved in the story, except for Glass, who has still refused to speak with him), the cult of personality that is now created around journalists, and the pressure to set yourself apart as a reporter. He spoke of the relevance of the story given the recent outing of New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, and also of struggling with the decision to indirectly promote Glass’s recent “fictional” novel, The Fabulist, which tells the story of a reporter who cooks his stories. In the end, Ray decided to mention the book in the “where are they now?” text that preceeds the end credits, only because he couldn’t resist the insane irony of referencing a novel that tells a true story disguised as a work of fiction at the end of a film that tells the mildly embellished story of the same writer who wrote fake stories. Whew.
Ray also made it very clear that this film never intends to tell the ‘why?’, never pretends to explain Glass’s motivations or the mental makeup that allowed him to justify his fairly elaborate deceptions. Mostly, it explains the ‘how?’, and the impact his actions had on those around him.
The director talked very, very highly of New Republic editor Michael Kelly, a former Boston Globe reporter (and one-time left-thinker turned conservative bulldog) who went on to edit the Atlantic Monthly and write for the Washington Post. He called him “one of the most principled men I’ve ever met”, and one of the most helpful in sharing the details of the story. Kelly was deeply affected by the betrayal, mainly becaused he wasn’t the one to help catch Glass, as he had moved on by the time the truth came out. Azaria’s part in the film is a smaller one, not a lot of screen time, but he brings forth Kelly’s journalistic integrity and editorial skill.
If Kelly’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he was the first American journalist killed in the war in Iraq, when the vehicle he was riding in flipped on a rough desert road. In the audience at the screening was Kelly’s widow, Madelyn, and one of his sons, six year old Tom. It was a heartwrenching moment, when the lights came up and Ray introduced the two of them… to imagine what they’d been through and that they’d just seen… for the first time, part of Michael’s life portrayed on the screen in front of them. It was pretty emotional to have been in the room with them.
On the way out of the theater, I saw Mrs. Kelly and Mr. Ray hug warmly, thanking each other, and heard her mention a couple small details from the film that she remembered a bit differently. Billy Ray responded with a sincere “I’ll call you…” as she left with well-wishers and her extended family around her.
Shattered Glass opens October 31st in New York and L.A., and November 13th nationwide.
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