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Shattered Glass · The Next Reel Film Podcast

• 0:07
  Pete Wright: I'm Pete Wright.
• 0:08
  Andy Nelson: And I'm Andy Nelson.
• 0:10
  Pete Wright: Welcome to the next reel. When the movie ends
• 0:12
  Andy Nelson: Our conversation begins.
• 0:15
  Pete Wright: Shattered glass is over. There does appear to be a state in the union named Nevada. Alright, Andy. We have been digging into movies about people who find themselves stuck in their own fraudulence. This is only the second one.
• 0:45
  Can you forgive me? We did last week. Melissa McCarthy played the Israel making up letters. Today, it's Stephen Glass. And we're talking about Shattered Glass.
• 0:56
  He made up a whole lot of stuff when he was a reporter in the rarefied era of the New Republic. And I think I've been wanting to talk to you about this movie for a long time. It's really a disgusting disgusting ex experience for me.
• 1:12
  Andy Nelson: And I want you to go into that a little bit because, obviously, your background was journalism. And I know you taught for a while, and this was a a film that you taught with. And so I'm just curious, like, what is it about this film that mean, if it's such a disgusting experience, especially, like, what draws you in to revisit this story?
• 1:33
  Pete Wright: Well, there are some interesting things. So first, just talking about the the story itself. Right? Steven Glass, this whole thing broke while I was still in the newsroom. And it's so personal when you're in there and you're watching this human being unravel.
• 1:49
  And the first story that comes out and says, this guy has betrayed the trust of the field of journalism. More than just the trust of the New Republic and the trust of the people who were reading it, but the trust of the other people who are trying to do the job well and to do the job right. To be so broken and to be in such the wrong place is a personal affront. It was I remember it being a a deeply personal affront. On the practical level, it actually showcased a number of, like, of giant holes in the process of collecting information for a piece that I think demonstrated how fundamentally broken many print reporting outfits were at the time and shone a light on what it might take if we were to commit to fixing it.
• 2:54
  And to what degree that has been successful, I think the market for fake news and mistrust in in the journalistic enterprise is an indicator of how well that worked. I think you can go back to this period, and it wasn't just Stephen Glass. There were others who ended up mired in their own fraudulence because of their desire to present a great story that broke trust in the industry. And I I think we can we could go back to this point. This is not a obviously, this is not a journalism podcast, but we could go back to this point and sorta chart the journey to today where we've lost trust.
• 3:36
  Many people don't know why. I think it started here.
• 3:40
  Andy Nelson: That's an interesting window into all of that, I think. And I think, you know, I I know that Billy Ray, who wrote and directed this, talked about all the president's men being a source of inspiration for him. He had been a huge fan of the reporters from that story and really wanted to tell this story. And it's interesting because from that period in the seventies when they were breaking that story through to the nineties, it's interesting to see how things were broken down. And I wonder where the starting point was, and I wonder if in many ways, it all still kind of in the in the news journalism as well falls to the shifts from the Reagan administration as far as the the way the media portrayed itself or, like, was was the responsibilities of what they were doing.
• 4:38
  Pete Wright: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. And I think we can well, I mean, I think we should talk about the movie because I think the movie presents a a really interesting picture. And what Billy Ray does and what Hayden Christensen does in this story are at once tragic and confusing and and deliberate, but also deeply unique. Like, I don't I don't remember seeing a movie that is paced quite like this in telling this kind of a story that that exists in this space.
• 5:12
  We'll see in some of the others that we talk about in this series, but this one this one stands out for me. And it was the first one that I thought of when I thought about the series True Lies, was I wanted to sneak to shatter glass on the show. Yeah. You had never seen it. Right?
• 5:26
  Is that true?
• 5:26
  Andy Nelson: Oh, I had seen it.
• 5:27
  Pete Wright: Yeah. Oh, you had seen it. Okay.
• 5:28
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. I saw it around the time it came out. In fact, I talked to Hayden Christensen at an after party Oh.
• 5:35
  Pete Wright: About it. So this was I introduced an opportunity not only for you to correct me,
• 5:38
  Andy Nelson: but to
• 5:38
  Pete Wright: flex madly.
• 5:40
  Andy Nelson: Yes. In fact, that's true.
• 5:42
  Pete Wright: Do tell.
• 5:43
  Andy Nelson: Hey, Chris. That was about it. That was about it.
• 5:45
  Pete Wright: It was it was Did you call him, hey, Chris? Hey, Chris. I've always wanted to do that.
• 5:50
  Andy Nelson: No. I did not. But, yeah, it was I've had better moments talking to people, and that probably wasn't one of them.
• 6:00
  Pete Wright: You mean, you didn't swap numbers.
• 6:03
  Andy Nelson: No. It's fair to say I don't think he was interested. But anyway, but I I enjoyed his performance in the well, I enjoy his performance in the film, but I also have issues with his performance in the film. Yes. Sarsgaard, Peter Sarsgaard, plays Chuck Lane, his, the editor at the time well, at the time that he ends up getting caught.
• 6:29
  Peter Sarsgaard is fantastic in the film, like, throughout. And I think Hayden Christensen works often. But I, you know, I have an a question for you about that because a few questions as it relates to kind of the protagonist of the film, but also the construction of the story. Because unlike our film that we discussed last week, Can You Ever Forgive Me, this film does not give us an entry into Stephen Glass's life before he's doing any of this. By the time we meet him, he's been doing this for a while already.
• 7:08
  And that was, an interesting way to kind of meet our protagonist. And it it made me question the structure of the story because ostensibly, Billy Ray is setting up this story as Stephen Glass being our protagonist. He's who we first meet. He's in this classroom setting. He's talking to students about the wonders of journalism, and why it's such a great field, and why the New Republic is such a wonderful place to work, and all of this sort of stuff.
• 7:38
  And so we kind of get this portrayal of this character, and and it's it's deceptive because he's really the antagonist of the film, and Chuck Lane is really the protagonist as far as Billy Ray actually ended up intending. And that's kind of how he went into the story. But he doesn't set up the script that way. He really sets it up where Steven's the protagonist. And so I feel like it does make it a harder film to enter because as an audience, I think that ends up being a little confusing for us as to how who are we connecting with?
• 8:12
  And how do we kind of how do we come at this film?
• 8:15
  Pete Wright: Yes. Because structurally, this movie, Shattered Glass, is the third act of a much bigger movie. Right? Like, really, it starts at the beginning of the fall of this guy who has created a world of fabulism. Right?
• 8:32
  And and we'll we'll say, ironically, Stephen Glass wrote a book called The Fabulist. I have not read it. I I've never I own it. I have not read it. I can't bring myself to to read it.
• 8:45
  But it it's about a journalist who makes up stuff for his stories. A little on the nose? Yeah. I think it may be generous to call it on the nose. The the thing about this movie structurally that I find so unnerving is that it starts with a character who and I think to Hayden Christensen Christensen's credit, we already know is a liar because of the performance.
• 9:07
  Like, I there is not a moment where Hayden Christensen starts speaking as Stephen Glass that I don't believe this guy is a fraud. He is disingenuous. Even if I don't know the story, there's something deeply wrong with him, and I don't trust him from jump. That is almost physically distressing as I'm watching this movie because of the world of trust that he has manipulated and manufactured around him. And so we're watching this movie that I think is unsettling because we have no gravity.
• 9:38
  We don't know who to love yet. We don't know who our audience avatar is yet. And we think because Christensen is the first thing we see, it's him. And I think that is the bait and switch of this movie, and I think it's fascinating. I don't think it works all that well, right, in in some places, but it's damned fascinating choice.
• 9:59
  Andy Nelson: That's very true. It's it's an interesting choice. Billy Ray is a screenwriter. That's what he had been doing up until, like, this is his debut film as a director. And I I think it's fair to say his scripts weren't necessarily, you know, ones that that that you would call, like, award winning or anything.
• 10:23
  It was like Volcano and Color of Night and Heart's War.
• 10:26
  Pete Wright: And How dare you sully Volcano in that sense?
• 10:33
  Andy Nelson: Well, that year is Volcano or Dante's Peak. You got to pick one of them. I don't know if either of them ended up winning. But yeah. So it's interesting that that he pushed to also direct this.
• 10:45
  And I think it was just his connection to the journalistic side of the story. But at the same time, I I just still don't think that he like, I don't know. It's it's an interesting journey of a film, but I don't think he completely nailed the structure. You know? And I think that's that's one of my frustrations with the film.
• 11:03
  But I do find it interesting and and disturbing as a film.
• 11:08
  Pete Wright: Because the mechanics of what's going on, and I think we you know, when we talk about it, I think what the film does well is highlight the mechanics of what is broken in the field by way of examining the process of building a story. And we have a bit of a montage, a fact checking montage, where he's he's in this classroom, and he's he's telling the story to ostensibly to the the class that he you know, high school class that he used to sit in right there where that pretty girl sits. I was right there. And he talks about how a story comes to be and the number of editors and fact checkers that review it. What we uncover through the course of the movie is that there were some pretty gaping holes because the fact checking process, and this was not unique to the New Republic, but the fact checking process in print often had this whole where secondary documentation, right, the reporter's notes counted as, and I'm saying this in heavy air quotes, primary documentation because the reporter was there.
• 12:13
  And if you're a reporter, there's an there's an aura of trust around you, so we should trust secondary as primary investigation. That is broken because we discover that there's somebody who is, as the movie says, overtly trying to defraud the organization by printing lies. And we never expected that. We never expected the trust in the journalist itself himself to to be so fundamentally broken. As a result, I'll say, you know, outside the movie, I think fact checking has changed.
• 12:50
  And now we have a demand for primary access to sources in the fact checking process. You've gotta be able to see them, talk to them, hear them, get them on some sort of video so we have much more trust in that process. We did not have that here, especially because ideologically, the New Republic was wanted to be a certain kind of publication. And that drive to be that publication prevented it from putting some of these things in place.
• 13:17
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. Because they, like, they didn't have pictures and stuff. No pictures. Yeah. Yeah.
• 13:21
  And that was even like the secretary has that line. Like, I it's I always said we should have show if we just had the picture of each person, then we wouldn't run into this, which I thought was a little kind of a a dig at that perhaps, way that they viewed their their magazine.
• 13:38
  Pete Wright: Oh, a dig at their magazine, a dig at the Wall Street Journal, a dig at any of the publications that had the sort of classic rooted in British news publications of no pictures. And we were in an era where pictures were starting to crop up everywhere. I mean, the inflection point for this movie, the the fact that we're talking about the five years between when this happened and when the movie came out, where it was Forbes online, the least trusted platform in journalism, the online arm of any of the news publications, was the actual arm to break this story was extraordinary. Well, what can we not do without in an online publication is pictures right now. We have real time photographic evidence of our reporting, and that started, you know, arguably here.
• 14:34
  Oh, and so much of
• 14:35
  Andy Nelson: it speaks to all of this. And I think also it that allows for for Steven to become the the liar that he becomes. And and we see that a number of times as he's putting his plan we don't see him putting his plans in place, but we see him talking about it to Mike, his first, editor that he had before Mike, ended up, getting fired, and then subsequently with Chuck. And it's those conversations where you can tell something's off. And Mike certainly sensed it that when he was getting some pushback on this, on the article about the the CPAC party.
• 15:17
  And he goes he actually calls the hotel and does find out you can actually rent a fridge. And so he's like, okay, there there may be some truth to it, but he you can tell that he senses it being a little shaky. And then certainly, that's the case for Chuck. But it's interesting because like, all of this could have easily happened with Mike uncovering it just as as Chuck finally does. It's just that Chuck ends up in a situation where where those lies that Steven is telling end up not being able to hold water, you know, like figuring out the clue that his brother lives in Palo Alto and and, you know, that's the that's the the voicemail that he had left for this other person or for this company.
• 16:04
  And when they actually take the trip down to Bethesda to look at this place and realize that this isn't an actual place you're gonna have have this massive thing and the the restaurant across the street. Like, he's just making stuff up on the fly. You as as he gets more and more cornered, and you just get a sense as to how it could be easy to buy into this stuff because this person happens to be likable. But then as you kind of dig, nothing holds up.
• 16:31
  Pete Wright: Right. Right. Can we zero in a little bit on Hayden Christensen's performance? You said you had some problems with it. I have some problems with it.
• 16:40
  I'm curious if you can outline what challenges you had with it specifically.
• 16:46
  Andy Nelson: I think it's kind of a similar problem that I run into in with the Star Wars films is that I think that he does this kind of creepy, friendly character well, which I kind of like how you are like, you know, he seems charming. There's something about him that I'm drawn to, but I also don't know if I should trust him. I actually like the way that Glass defends himself. Like, it's it's like this he almost he's not putting himself down, but in some ways he is like, oh, I I I screwed up. What did I do wrong?
• 17:23
  Like, all of this sort of stuff. Are mad at me? Yeah. Are you mad at me? Like, all of that, I find a fascinating character trait.
• 17:31
  But I think when Hayden Christensen does that sort of stuff, he he comes across more whiny. And I I feel like that's a struggle that I have with him in here in the Star Wars films because that whininess, I don't think sells this charming character as well as as well as it should have. You know? Yeah.
• 17:51
  Pete Wright: Fred, let me ask. Did you watch the sixty minutes piece I sent you? I did. Okay. We should we'll link that in the show notes.
• 17:58
  It's sixty minutes piece that aired sort of contemporaneous to the to, I think, the film. I'm not I don't remember when they when they originally aired it, but it was two decades ago. And they interviewed Stephen Glass after he'd sort of come out of his hole where he was trying
• 18:12
  Andy Nelson: to get a after The Fabulist was written.
• 18:14
  Pete Wright: Yeah. Right. Right after The Fabulist was written. And and I think it's really interesting because I saw you watch Hayden Christensen in the movie, and you watch Stephen Glass in the sixty minutes piece, and I start to get what Christiansen and Billy Ray, I think, were going for. The truth is I don't like Stephen Glass's performance of Stephen Glass either.
• 18:36
  I find him insufferable. Right? Hearing the the earnestness and sincere insincerity with which he addresses the past and his, you know, his his efforts to make amends by doing it on sixty minutes is just so gloriously misguided to my eye that I I find him really insufferable. On that point, I actually think Hayden Christensen did well. Right?
• 19:07
  He captures the vibe of Steven Glass in a way that that I don't I don't know. I'm sure others could do it, but he does it in a very natural way that is off putting and makes me not like him. I wonder if some of my struggle that I've been that I could put easily on Hayden Christensen is just that this is a story about someone who is irredeemable.
• 19:33
  Andy Nelson: Right? That they're snaky, and from jump, we never trust them. We never like them. They're our antagonist in life. He's a hard character to like, and I definitely feel like Christensen is is working to to bring that across, and bring across kind of like the just kind of like the difficulty to buy what he's saying.
• 19:56
  But the the the challenge I have, and this is where I other area I struggle with connecting with him as a character is like, he's like the youngest one at the office. Right? He's 24 years old. And so it seems like a lot of other reporters have maybe, you could say, taken him under their wing as far as just like, they they want to make sure that he's taken care of. And he's charming with his storytelling and everything as he's pitching these stories in their meetings and everything, and everyone loves all his stories.
• 20:27
  And he's always belittling himself and his work. He's like, I probably won't even finish it. And everyone's like, oh, no. It's great. Do it.
• 20:34
  And so, like, he comes across so likable in those moments, but I still struggle to feel like, okay. But why were people actually trusting him ever? Because I just I never see that side of him where I see him as somebody who has the trustworthiness. And that's again perhaps a fault of the script, not giving us earlier glass at the New Republic when he was new and he before he started lying. You know?
• 21:03
  Well, and I
• 21:03
  Pete Wright: think that's exactly the point. I think you put your finger on it. I think by starting this as a third act of a movie that doesn't exist, we never get a sense of how he built reputational credibility with the rest of the staff. All we get is his beginning voice over where he says, most journalists are like x, which means when I come in like y, I stand out. And we get him complimenting lipstick, complimenting jewelry.
• 21:30
  We get him making those kinds of things. But because we never saw his origin story, they just look superficial from the start. I think that causes the movie to suffer. It certainly causes his performance to suffer. I don't think he's given enough to get into the character.
• 21:47
  And I think you're right. I think that's a structural challenge for the way they chose to start this movie.
• 21:53
  Andy Nelson: Absolutely. Absolutely. Alright. We're gonna take a quick break. But first, you can find the show on YouTube, and you can join us live when we record.
• 22:02
  We'll even take your questions in the post show chitchat live. Everyone's welcome. And members get the replay and the extended cut. Subscribe to the next reel on YouTube. The link to this episode is in the show notes.
• 22:13
  We'll be right back.
• 22:24
  Pete Wright: Any standout scenes for you that really demonstrate where the story started breaking down in a glorified experience of Schadenfreude? What was the most fun? Once we already know that the that Lane is stacking the deck against glass, I I mean, did you start having any fun at all at watching the the threads unravel?
• 22:46
  Andy Nelson: Well, I mean, yeah. And I think that's largely because, I mean, Sarsgaard is just such a compelling actor to watch in this film. And there are some great shots of his face as he's just processing everything. And he's trying to he's trying to figure out what's going on. And from from the early moments when he thinks, okay, Steve's just done something wrong.
• 23:09
  Like, is in those initial conversations with the team at Forbes, and you can see him watching Steve as Steve's just floundering and trying to figure out how to get out of this. And then when he calls back the editor at Forbes, and is just like, look, can we just talk off the record? Can we just like talk editor to editor? Like, human to human, really. Like, the way that he walks through that, I just think is really important for him as a character because we're seeing his growth in understanding all this.
• 23:39
  Because at this point, he pitches to the guy, look, this is just a young kid. He's trying to impress us and he just went too far. Please just be easy on him in your story. He hasn't, like, hit that point yet. And I think that's such an interesting scene to look at for his evolution.
• 23:57
  And I think it hurts him because he knows also the other issue is he knows everybody in the office loves Steve, and everyone kind of blames him for getting Mike kicked out, the other editor, who they all love so much, even though he had nothing to do with Mike's getting let go. And so that's a fascinating moment. And and then watching him kind of continue that evolution to the point where he finally fires him. I mean, it's just like fantastic that final confrontation between the two of them. And then to see Steve come, like, crawling back into I can't remember what just to say something, but he gets back in through security just to talk to him one last time, and that's where he finally gets the boot, you know, and it's just like
• 24:40
  Pete Wright: Will you take me to the airport, Chuck, please? I can't be alone right now.
• 24:44
  Andy Nelson: I don't know if I yeah. Like and Chuck's just like, yeah. Figure it out, man. Figure it out.
• 24:49
  Pete Wright: Yeah. I'm not going anywhere with you, Steve. Yeah. Such an incredible performance. This movie hangs on Sarsgard.
• 24:59
  Right? I mean, it really hangs on Sarsgard. I think Stephen Glass Hayden Christensen is it gets, you know, credit for portraying this problematic human being, but the movie hangs on Sarsgaard's performance. It is subtle. It is just perfectly paced angst that grows and grows and grows and grows and grows.
• 25:22
  Even if I sit here and I look at Hank Azaria, and I think I would have loved to have seen Hank Azaria's demeanor sort of watch him fall apart with the experience of dealing with Stephen Glass rather than than sort of bestow the challenge to fix on onto Sarsgard. I think this is this is one of the most natural performances I've ever seen of Ankus Aria. He's always such a character, and in this movie, he's a very much a human being. And it is it was neat to see him. I wish he'd had more in the movie knowing, of course, it's true story in this part of he was already gone.
• 26:01
  The moment when they're sitting when Steven Glass is sitting on the stairs with Hank Azaria, with Mike Keeley, and Mike says, did you ever cook a story for me? And there's just silence. There's just silence. Stephen doesn't answer. This actually becomes something they that is a a bit of a visual callback later in the film when he's actually in deposition, with his the attorney, and they're and they're saying, look.
• 26:31
  I'm you don't have to say anything. I'm gonna list your stories. If you tell me that this was a real story or something about this was real, I'll put it in this pile over here, and we'll go back and continue to fact check it. If you are silent, we will take that as confirmation that this was made up either in whole cloth or at least in part. The number he just starts listing stories, and we just get this close-up on Hayden Christensen and that face.
• 27:00
  And and I I think this may be the best Christensen performance in the movie of just watching him not speak as he is essentially confirming the number of stories that were false. 27, I think, out of 41 were deemed as as false, both under Mike and Chuck. Horrifying.
• 27:27
  Andy Nelson: Yes. It's shocking. And you're right. I think that the way that that scene is shot and the way that we hold on on glass as he's just kind of like looking silently at the list, I think that speaks volumes. And it's it's, it is a great moment.
• 27:43
  Very strong moment.
• 27:44
  Pete Wright: The unraveling, thanks to Forbes online and the team over there, is I also think quite beautiful. And I wish that we'd had a little bit more of them. The movie's short. Hour and a half. Right?
• 27:59
  And I honestly feel like I could have used some more research verification porn on behalf of Forbes online.
• 28:07
  Andy Nelson: Is that is that the next step of is like a subgenre of research porn? There's also the research verification.
• 28:13
  Pete Wright: Yeah. There's definitely verification porn in there. Yeah. That's new. That's new.
• 28:17
  I didn't I didn't see that one coming. I I just love that. I love their little team over there. I loved as they they started really peeling back all of the fabrication. And, you know, they spend a lot of time on that particular story, breaking that story, and I I would have liked to see more of it.
• 28:34
  But that again gets to a whole part of the movie that I'm interested in your take on.
• 28:38
  Andy Nelson: Well, yeah. I think it's a great part of the movie, and I I think it's fun to watch watch the the cast that we have over there. You know, I always enjoy Steve Zahn. He's just so much fun to watch. And it's fun to have Rosario Dawson in there.
• 28:51
  But that was one of my questions that I I had for you because in the sequence there, we have a moment as they are digging and, you know, Steve it's Steve Zahn's story, but other people are helping him do some of the research and digging and fact checking and all of this. And then we have Andy, Rosario Dawson's character, start pushing him to get a shared byline with him because she's she's helping so much in the work. Does that feel like an essential part of our story here that we're exploring with with, Stephen Glass? Or did that feel like a manufactured part of our story to get someone like Rosario Dawson to sign on to play a part?
• 29:37
  Pete Wright: I I bought it. I bought it because, you know, I I mean, in in the world of of reporting at these kinds of publications, it's not a solo endeavor. Right? Obviously, and we hear that in the montage. You know, there are dozens and dozens of people in hands and passes through an individual story, and not all of those people get credit for the byline.
• 29:59
  Right? It's only the the reporter. And if there is true Woodward and Bernstein style collaboration, the nature of that sort of collaboration is documented in the byline. In this case, Zahn is the lead journalist on the story and feels strongly about that. And this is the world of online publication, and they're trying to figure out how does journalism fit in to online publication.
• 30:25
  She's looking for a leg up. She's looking to to get her name in print. And where Zahn draws the line, I I think is important. Not giving her credit is important. It calls back to what's going on at the New Republic where there are they are we have several moments in the New Republic offices where there are other the reporters are helping each other.
• 30:46
  Right? They're doing research. They're writing, co writing. They're doing all kinds of things together, but there's only one byline. And had there been a shared byline on the New Republic stories that Stephen Glass wrote, we would have more opportunity to see where the problems were systemic that led to this fraudulence.
• 31:09
  And I think what Forbes is is demonstrating, what Zahn is demonstrating is there may be problems here too. This is not just about the New Republic and one guy. This is about an entire industry that is holding itself responsible to self check and not even taking advantage of the rudimentary opportunities for responsibility that come in the form of shared credit. That says we did this together. We share the responsibility of its of its truth.
• 31:45
  Interesting. Interesting. Well, that I
• 31:48
  Andy Nelson: mean, that does, you know, paint a a way to look at it, which I think is is interesting. Interesting. Because before, I was just like, I don't know really what the point of that was other than mean, you know, it's interesting. They're padding for time. I don't know.
• 32:03
  But it is an interesting glimpse into the world of journalism and and how these stories get created and why sometimes it's there's import in having a single byline or single person on the byline. You
• 32:17
  Pete Wright: know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I I think the the credit is should have been shared, and the the blame should have been shared.
• 32:25
  In the case of New Republic, it was such a big story that the blame was shared mostly by Stephen Glass and by the editorial team and the the publisher. But it should have been shared by all of the other reporters and the fact checkers who helped that process get through. It should have been more widely shared by those. I don't know the degree to which it was.
• 32:46
  Andy Nelson: Well, it's interesting because, you know, I, coincidentally just revisited Spotlight this this weekend.
• 32:54
  Pete Wright: I saw that review come through.
• 32:55
  Andy Nelson: And that was an element of the story there because Robbie, Michael Keaton's character, is just like, we should have, like, we had this information. We should have done something decades ago. And so he's kind of beating himself up, but their new, head of the paper, Liv Schreiber's character is like, sometimes it's easy to forget that we spend most of our time stumbling around the dark. Suddenly, a light gets turned on, and there's a fair share of blame to go around. I can't speak to what happened before I arrived, but all of you done have done some very good reporting here.
• 33:27
  Reporting that I believe is going to have an immediate and considerable impact on our readers. For me, this kind of story is what this kind of story is why we do this. And I think, like, that first part of the quote, you can connect here because it's like, I don't think people had a sense. Right? And it's only now that the lights have been turned on that, yeah, there's a fair share of blame to go around, but now they're they're actively working to fix it.
• 33:52
  And I think I don't know. Is is that good enough? Yeah. I mean, we
• 33:57
  Pete Wright: can I I I think there are there are massive challenges that they had to overcome, we'll say, in the case of the New Republic? And we can only really judge the publication and its leadership and the journalists who work there on the small steps that they take every day to ensure that it doesn't happen again. We cannot continue to litigate the same the same thing over and over and over again once we have accepted that this is a challenge and we're going to to work to fix it. Because that doesn't serve anybody to keep, you know, to keep thinking about, oh, remember that time twenty five years ago that Stephen Glass broke the New Republic? That's not any good.
• 34:38
  The New Republic was founded in 1914. Right? And guess what? They have an award winning photojournalism department now.
• 34:47
  Andy Nelson: So, I
• 34:48
  Pete Wright: I mean, I let's let's sort of of move that forward. I think the same thing stands for your your comment about spotlight. Right? We're working on it now. These are the steps we're taking now to move this forward.
• 35:00
  And in the case of, Shattered Glass, we're looking at a story that was an inflection point, one of many, in the field of journalism and allowed us to move forward. And we should we should look at it just as that moment in history and see what came next rather than continuing to to think to blame ourselves for the the problems of the past. I'm I'm I'm squarely on board, the quote, I guess.
• 35:27
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that the movie should have made it seem like this was a bigger problem as opposed to just like a a single moment with a bad apple. Like, to your point, it sounds like this was much bigger, but I mean, it doesn't seem that way according to the film. Like, I would I don't think I necessarily would have known that had you not been talking about it.
• 35:53
  Pete Wright: That's an interesting read. I I think it maybe that's a that's a background issue. I mean, The New Republic releases 10 issues a year. Right? The weight of reputation on each individual issue of that magazine, particularly at the time, was extraordinary.
• 36:15
  So that moment when he walks in to the wall of magazines and starts pulling them off the their their pride wall was to me the expression of how big a deal this was. This affected every issue over many years that this magazine had published. To your point, at no point do we get that statement from the film. All we get from the film is not many publications can post that they're the on in flight magazine of air flow Air Force One. If I had to hear that damn thing one more time, the magazine stood for much more than just being read by presidents.
• 37:01
  Right? The the magazine stood for something, stands for something, and that impact was I read it as palpable. But I I hear you. Like, your your point stands. I don't think having known having not known that, I don't I don't know that you would get that same read that I did.
• 37:20
  I do think that would have been a first act question to answer in the first act of the movie we never saw.
• 37:28
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. Or bring, like, even, like, some text at the end explaining how, you know, this is, you know, the first in a line of discoveries or who knows, but something that could have given us a hint as to just how much a problem this actually was. So yeah. It's it's interesting. An interesting element.
• 37:47
  Mean, Billy Ray, we already talked about him as a screenwriter coming into this as a first time director. I don't I mean, it's it ended up being a low budget project at Lionsgate. It initially was set up to be an HBO movie because I think he had already written an HBO movie that was well received, and so they brought him on to they they bought the rights to this article, and he was gonna write and direct this. It fell away from HBR. HBO had new management, and Tom Cruise and and Paula Wagner's company bought the rights and and made a deal with Lionsgate to get it made.
• 38:23
  And so and Billy Ray, at that time, pushed to direct this also. Are we seeing much in here that speaks to a a person who has a handle on cinematic storytelling? Or does it feel like, okay, it kinda feels like a TV movie?
• 38:41
  Pete Wright: Man, my so my gut response was, oh, TV movie. That's yeah. I I don't I don't think I I don't think I would have characterized the the question that way, but I do think you get it. Even when you look at the sixty minutes piece and the parallels between the way that news piece was shot for television and the way the movie appears on my as I'm watching it on my television, it feels small. It feels like a small screen experience.
• 39:08
  It feels like a small screen sort of melodrama. So is it a big movie story? If if I told you, Andy, this was shot for IMAX and D Box, you'd probably be surprised.
• 39:18
  Andy Nelson: I would be. Well, here's like but here's a note though. Billy Ray did think far enough in advance to plan how he shot the film. The first half of the film, he used handheld cameras in the scenes that took place in the offices of the New Republic. But when the Forbes editors begin questioning him and his work, the camera work becomes more stable throughout.
• 39:40
  Is that something that you noticed at all? Like, did it stand out?
• 39:43
  Pete Wright: No. I didn't notice that. Did you?
• 39:45
  Andy Nelson: I didn't notice it. I'd be interesting. That's one
• 39:47
  Pete Wright: of those rewatch points. I'd be interested to watch this again, again, short movie, and see when it becomes procedural. Right? When it becomes locked down as if we're we're now litigating. This is now a case, and we're using the representation of camera as a way to demonstrate that, you know, this is this is a case.
• 40:08
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. It would be interesting, you're right, to revisit it and really pay attention to that specifically, because it's not noticeable on first watch. And I just wonder if it ends up if it's effective because it's subtle and it's just something that you kind of are subconsciously tapping into, or if it's just something that's there but you still aren't really noticing, you know?
• 40:30
  Pete Wright: Well, it's it's gotta be pretty well disguised too because it's after that point that they they do leave the building. Right? The Lang takes him and makes him drive out to Bethesda to where this the the conference took place that doesn't exist, and they end up in this lobby. The camera is definitely moving, right, as they're going up an escalator, as they're walking down the street. Right?
• 40:53
  It's it's hard to I mean, I I guess there's there are two different things. Is it handheld versus is it on rails? Right? So I'd yeah. I think that that merits a a rewatch.
• 41:03
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. So certainly, for anyone who's gonna rewatch it after this conversation, pay attention to that and see if it's something that you're getting much out of.
• 41:11
  Pete Wright: Yeah. It's interesting. I I didn't think about doing this, but just in the scope of of the conversation about the journalists, I'd put together a little list of the other journalists of other big stories of journalist malfeasance journalistic malfeasance. So this one was in the late nineties. Jason Blair, New York Times in 2003.
• 41:33
  So that story comes out as this movie comes out, which I think amplified the impact of Jason Blair at the New York Times and the the fabrication over more stories than Stephen Glass. Right? Three dozen stories Jason Blair had fabricated. But we go back in time, Janet Cook in 1981 for the Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize for a story about an eight year old kid named Jimmy, who was a heroin addict. Jimmy did not exist.
• 42:07
  She returned the Pulitzer Prize. Jack Kelly, this was in 2004. He resigned in 2004, and, he was did the same thing that Stephen Glass did. He made up voice mailboxes and email boxes and things, and he made up stories and events, specifically about Kosovo and the nine eleven attacks that that really hung him. He was worked for USA Today.
• 42:31
  Jonah Lehrer, New York Time or the New Yorker and Wired magazine, fabricated quotes by Bob Dylan. Wow. Why would you do that? Man. That was 2012.
• 42:43
  Klaus Releutis for Der Spiegel, an award winning German journalist. You don't expect this from the German journalists. He was exposed in 2018 for fabricating stories on a a massive scale with invented people and scenes and quotes. Mike Barnacle, Boston Globe back in 1998. So this was happening at the same time as the Stephen Glass thing was coming out.
• 43:07
  Sabrina Erdley, Rolling Stone in 2,014 wrote a rape on campus, which was found to have major unverified fabrications regarding a gang rape at University of Virginia fraternity resulting in a massive reputation hit for Rolling Stone. I remember that story spread like wildfire. So when you look at these cases involving young, incredibly talented, energetic reporters under extraordinary pressure to produce these kinds of stories led to a breakdown that I think Stephen Glass represents just one of of you know, I don't wanna say many, but a good handful of stories that so does how I I say all that because I wonder how well the movie represents the journalistic endeavor writ large. Right? Do you see this as systemic?
• 44:01
  Does the movie make the case that it's systemic? I would argue Billy Ray wanted to. If he didn't want to, he should've. And does the movie give that to you as a viewer?
• 44:13
  Andy Nelson: That's kind of what I was asking earlier. It's like, I I feel like there's nothing in here that speaks like this is a problem that is is continuing outside of this single instance of this person, like this bad apple. Like, we're just not getting a sense that this is something that's happened elsewhere. And I I think it could have used some of that that, like, there's there's a sense that this is a bigger problem and Yeah. Something that people need
• 44:40
  Pete Wright: to be More of a commitment to that.
• 44:42
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. There's something that people need to be paying attention to. So Yeah. What did you think of few of the other people at the office who are are his friends, Chloe Sevigny, Melanie Linsky, as as two of them? And I I know there's that guy that he talks to quite a bit.
• 44:58
  I can't remember what his name was. But how did they play? Did you did you buy into their connections to him as this young writer who just needed their emotional support and but but all the other conversations are different
• 45:14
  Pete Wright: than what?
• 45:14
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. Like, you
• 45:16
  Pete Wright: get this one of them, they were both enablers. Right? In the subcategory, underneath enabler, one of them was deeply enmeshed in Stephen Glass, but also probably a better writer and was he was she was the one that that, you know, he was going to more for assistance in rewrites and making the stories better. And the other was another reporter who who was trying to change the way she she wrote and looked up to Steven. So I kinda get this en enmeshment sandwich where one was superior, one was inferior, and Steven was in the middle, and he was able to to maintain his orbit orbit or his orbital pull of these two women and allow them to completely gaslight themselves in spite of what they were seeing and hearing and develop the taste to know any different.
• 46:13
  I I love their performances. I really did. I I feel like they represented the young energy of this office. And had there not been grand journalistic malfeasance, it would have been fun to watch them just report on stuff.
• 46:27
  Andy Nelson: Well, it's an interesting vibe that we have here, you know, and I thought that was interesting because there are some there are some interesting conversations with them. Like, with Chloe Sevigny, he always like, those conversations fall largely to the fact that he's also trying to go to law school, and he's created all these lies about his law school needs from his family, etcetera. With Melanie Linsky, it's brought up often that he's talking to all these editors from other publications, and that he's working also kind of doing freelance work. And she's like seeing that and starting to feel like, well, I should be doing that too, which kind of pushes her into her feel like I need to get more comedy into my writing and everything. And and and then the other guy, and I can't remember which actor it was, but the the actor who or the character who, like, he does a review of his writing and really kind of tears it apart.
• 47:23
  And and and so it's interesting, especially as, you know, I mean, he's purportedly the youngest person at the office at 24 years old with an office where the average age is 26, I believe. So they're all young. Right? They're all in their in their mid twenties. And even though he's so young, it's interesting that that some of these people also look up to him as their their superior in some ways.
• 47:52
  Pete Wright: Well, think about it. I mean, we're picking up the story where Stephen Glass is a is a perpetrator of grand fraud. Out of the 41 stories, 27 of which ended up being fraudulent, the other stories weren't. Right? We have to remember that.
• 48:09
  Steve got himself a job at the New Republic. That's a huge get. Once he was at the New Republic, he then started making some bad choices. But we cannot forget that Stephen Glass was a talented guy to be able to get himself in this position. We don't know anything about his, you know, his journalistic work at UPenn.
• 48:34
  We don't we know that he graduated university scholar at UPenn. Like, was a serious academic performer. Was that based on lies? Does the movie make that case that Stephen Glass is so broken that we should have seen it coming before he even got to the New Republic? I don't know.
• 48:53
  But somehow, he got himself a job at a prestigious place with a lot of people trying to make a name for themselves. And I I feel like we can't forget that because he he is a skilled storyteller. If we learn nothing else about Stephen Glass, is he is a he's good with a tale. So I did I did look up where is he now. He did graduate law school.
• 49:16
  Magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center. That's not disrespectful or or unrespectable, in respectable. What's the word? Why do all the words sound foreign to me right now? It's
• 49:31
  Andy Nelson: anyway It's respectable, I think, we'll just say.
• 49:33
  Pete Wright: Yeah. He he was, according to his bio, the John m Olin student fellow in law and economics. Right? It's not as if he doesn't have a brain that can grasp complex topics without making stuff up. It doesn't seem like it.
• 49:49
  Am I gaslit by the rest of those credits? Maybe. But I will say, even though he graduated from law school, he has not been allowed to pass the bar. He works at Carpenter and Zuckerman as the director of special projects, parentheses, not an attorney, close parentheses, which is a fitting button on this the story of Stephen Glass. Right?
• 50:15
  Yeah. It's painful.
• 50:16
  Andy Nelson: Well, it's just the realities. And it's interesting because that sixty minutes clip that you have, it's interesting hearing him talk about how he started. Like, I think I can't remember initially. Was like, was it a quote that he needed? He just needed to have somebody saying the the right thing for the article that would really punch it up.
• 50:33
  And so, like, the first time, it was just like a quote or something like that. And then but then it progressed because he realized how easy it was. And and and each piece just suddenly to the point where he's just like fabricating entire articles. And again, like, I would have enjoyed seeing that part of the story. Like, again, we're only getting this third act here.
• 50:53
  Pete Wright: Yeah. I mean, I I think and I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but for me, I would love to see the rest of this movie. I think that's where the movie falls apart is that I finish it, and I kinda wanna see how the hell did this guy get there. That's a story that's interesting to me. We get the fall, but I think the rise might be an even more compelling might make for the fall even to be even more compelling.
• 51:19
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. That's entirely possible. And then you could you could say that then we have a film where Stephen Glass is the protagonist. Yes. You know, is that a cautionary tale that we want to sit through?
• 51:31
  I guess that's the question. And I think that was Billy Ray's struggle because he found Glass to be a very difficult character to have as a protagonist, which is why he kind of leaned on Chuck so much. But then again, that's why I feel this the structure of the script is isn't quite right. Look at
• 51:48
  Pete Wright: the parallels that that we have between Shattered Glass and Can You Forgive Me. Right? We have more of the story of Lee Israel, but they're kind of in conversation with one another, incredibly talented people in their own right, who were desperate for, right, attention, story, economic support, whatever it was. In the case of Stephen Glass, he was already making really good money. So he didn't need economic support like Lee Israel did, but their drive for that sort of attention, their drive for people loving them was enough to make them both do something in the first place and keep doing it because that spotlight was so warm in spite of, you know, arguably their better instincts.
• 52:36
  I I don't know. Maybe that's too gracious a way to look at Stephen Glass. But
• 52:40
  Andy Nelson: Well, it's it's definitely a a way to kind of try to understand the mindset a little bit.
• 52:47
  Pete Wright: Yeah. And the guy I mean, this was, again, thirty years ago. Alright? There's a lot of water under that bridge, and I I don't want it to seem like, oh, I would never shake hands with Steven Glass. Clearly, the guy has made changes in his life and built reputations and relationships and credibility in this new field, and good for him for doing that.
• 53:06
  I hope his special projects are enormously successful. Also, this is a fascinating story. Yeah. Very much it's. Those two things can both be true.
• 53:16
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. Alright. Well, it's about time for the back half, but first, let's take a quick break.
• 53:34
  Pete Wright: The next reel is a production of True Story FM, engineering by Andy Nelson, music by Tsabutan, Oriel Novella, and Eli Catlin. Andy usually finds all the stats for the awards and numbers at d-numbers.com, boxofficemojo.com, imdb.com, and wikipedia.org. Find the show and the full archive at truestory.fm. You can follow us from there too and learn about membership. Check out our merch store at thenextreal.com/merch.
• 54:00
  And if your app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that
• 54:04
  Andy Nelson: for our show.
• 54:19
  Pete Wright: Alright, Andy. How to do it award season?
• 54:21
  Andy Nelson: It, you know, it got noticed. 11 wins with 28 other nominations. At the Golden Globes, Peter Sarsgaard was nominated for best performance by an actor in a supporting role in a motion picture, but lost to Tim Robbins in mystic river. This was that mystic river year that really took a lot of awards. Or at the film independent spirit awards, it was nominated for best feature, but lost to lost in translation.
• 54:44
  Sarsgard, again, was nominated for best supporting actor, but lost to Jimon Hansu in in America. Lost best screenplay to Sofia Coppola for lost in translation, and lost best cinematography to Declan Quinn for in America. And then this was an interesting one. The Political Film Society USA has their own awards, and it actually was nominated for the category of democracy, but won that one. And it was nominated for the category of expose, but lost to Veronica Guerin.
• 55:15
  Pete Wright: Interesting. The category of democracy. It won democracy. It won democracy, this movie. Yeah.
• 55:23
  How did you at the box office? Did this little made for TV movie but shot and filmed and displayed in movie theaters for a little while make any money?
• 55:37
  Andy Nelson: Well, for his film, Billy Ray had a budget of $6,000,000, which is 10,300,000.0 in today's dollars. The movie opened limited 10/31/2003 opposite the Matrix Revolutions and The Human Stain, but never really caught on. In the end, the movie went on to earn 2,200,000.0 domestically and 1,200,000.0 internationally for a total gross of 5,900,000.0 in today's dollars. That means the film ended up with an adjusted loss per finished minute of forty six thousand. Not great for Ray's first outing in the director's chair, which is probably why we didn't see him direct again for four years.
• 56:11
  Pete Wright: Are you sad about that when you hear that number? Does that is that, like,
• 56:15
  Andy Nelson: is that sad? That four years that it took him to direct again?
• 56:19
  Pete Wright: No. That it didn't make that it didn't make back its its nut.
• 56:22
  Andy Nelson: You know, I mean, it's an interesting film. I I don't necessarily think it's a great film. You know, I I think that the story is fine, so it doesn't disappoint me. It doesn't surprise me.
• 56:34
  Pete Wright: Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't surprise me either. It's it's an interesting artifact of the era for me. And, you know, I as I said, I mean, I respect the the film enormously.
• 56:44
  I respect what it's trying to do and some of the the risks it takes and the choices it made. It captures successfully my own physical ick of watching it, right, of of knowing that the stories are too good to be true and watching people decide to fall in love with them anyway. That's a a rough thing to to watch, and this movie is kind of relentless with that sort of social angst. Because again, we don't get a first or second act, but it's it's doing it's trying some different things in the spirit of this this kind of movie, and I'm I'm glad we watched it.
• 57:17
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. I mean, it's definitely a film with a tough central character, which is, you know, I think Hayden Christensen sometimes makes it work for me and then sometimes doesn't. And then, if anything, I think what I really take away from this is I have now a lot more questions about how the field of the journalism changed after this, if at all, and where it has gone from there through to today. Yeah. Alright.
• 57:39
  Well, that is it for our conversation about Shattered Glass. Next week, we are looking at a film depicting the elaborate hoax Clifford Irving pulled in publishing, an autobiography of Howard Hughes that he purportedly helped write. It's Lossy Hulstrom's 2006 film, The Hoax, starring Richard Gere, Alfred Molina, Marsha Gay Hardin, Hope Davis, Julie Delpy, and Stanley Tucci.
• 58:00
  Pete Wright: Delpy and Tucci. Delpy and Tucci.
• 58:03
  Andy Nelson: Now let's do our ratings.letterbox.com/the
• 58:06
  Pete Wright: next reel. That's where you can find our HQ page, where we put all of our ratings and reviews and stars and hearts and all of that stuff. Andy, what are you gonna do for this movie?
• 58:14
  Andy Nelson: It's an interesting film. You know, I I think three stars is where I'll sit with it. Is it something that I like or would return to? I don't think so. I think three stars no heart is where I'll be.
• 58:24
  Pete Wright: I'm gonna I'm gonna flip the heart script on you, but I'll leave it at three stars. Three stars and a heart. I think maybe that heart is just coming from, oh my god. Look at what happened to my field, and why am I not really deeply in it anymore? Why did I want in 1991, why was I so desperate to make that choice and be in this field and be one of the young writers at one of these magazines or one of the young producers at Forbes online?
• 58:49
  Like, why was that something I was so so aspiring to? That's what this movie makes me think about. And so I have to give it a heart. It's nostalgia. It's a nostalgia heart.
• 58:59
  Andy Nelson: Sure. Oh, I get that. Yeah. Well, that averages out to three stars. And with your heart, it averages out to a heart.
• 59:07
  That's how hearts work when you average hearts. So hearts work. You can learn that from a surgeon. That's right. You can find the show on Letterboxd at the next reel.
• 59:17
  You can find me there at sotacreekfilm and Pete at pete wright. So what did you think about Shattered Glass? We would love to hear your thoughts. Hop into the Show Talk channel over in our Discord community where we will be talking about the movie this week. When the movie ends.
• 59:30
  Our conversation begins.
• 59:47
  Pete Wright: Letterbox giveth Andrew, as Letterbox always do it. Okay. What do you what do you got? In the love of Hayden Christensen, what do you got?
• 59:55
  Andy Nelson: I got a four and a half and a heart by Morgan who said, it's over Anakin. I have the moral high ground.
• 1:00:05
  Pete Wright: Okay. That's so good. I did not see that one in the list. Damn. I should've gone first.
• 1:00:10
  Yours is better. Oh, that's so good. Alright. Well, I got a three and a half from Jess who begins with a quote. Did I do something wrong?
• 1:00:20
  Are you mad at me? Hayden smiles. Hayden gyrates. Hayden eats. Hayden lies a lot.
• 1:00:28
  Hayden cries also a lot. Me, Academy Award. As you said, there are a lot of people who find this movie awesome because of sexy Hayden Christensen. Yes. Lots of them.
• 1:00:45
  I feel like we are not that audience. It's a whole group of people who grew up watching him in
• 1:00:49
  Andy Nelson: the Star Wars movies when they were young and are just absolutely in love with him. So
• 1:00:53
  Pete Wright: Do you know what? This just this one just caught my eye, and it's a note off of yours. Vader, no. I am your father. Luke, no.
• 1:00:59
  No. That's not true. That's impossible. Vader, It's in my notes. Okay.
• 1:01:09
  That's it. Thanks. Letterboxd.