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Preview by: Jack Foley
IN 1998, just months after being named editor of The New Republic,
Charles Lane fired Stephen Glass for making up a story that ran
in the magazine, under the headline ‘Hack Heaven’.
At once outrageously detailed and seductively just-ahead-of-the-curve
on the biggest business story of the day, ‘Hack Heaven’
was about a teenage computer hacker whose agent essentially extorts
a lucrative package from a software company that had been one
of the hacker’s victims.
‘Hack Heaven’ was the last article Glass ever wrote,
but, as it turned out, it was not the first time Glass had played
fast and loose with the truth.
In the end, Glass made up all or part of the facts behind 27
of the 41 articles that he wrote for The New Republic during his
career there. As a freelance writer, he also wrote tainted stories
for such publications as George, Harper’s and Rolling Stone.
Needless to say, these events form the basis for new movie, Shattered
Glass, which is earning rave reviews for its talented young cast,
including Hayden (Star Wars) Christensen, as the reporter in question.
Yet, according to director, Billy Ray, it was a story that was
simply too good not to tell…
In a statement issued as part of the film’s production notes,
he reveals: "It was with a mixture of dread and awe that
I first learned of the saga of Stephen Glass through Buzz Bissinger's
Vanity Fair piece, ‘Shattered Glass’. As soon as I'd
read it, I knew that this was a story I wanted to tell.
"Glass' rise and fall resonated with themes that matter
to me: the responsibility of the press, the dangers inherent to
a cult of personality, and the day-to-day ethical dilemmas that
define us as individuals.
"Glass quickly became, at least for me, the face of something
larger than himself, larger even than the magazine he so badly
damaged. He began to represent a wake-up call about the state
of journalism in this country, one made even louder by this spring's
developments of Jayson Blair at the New York Times.
"When people can no longer believe what they read, their
only choices will be to either turn to television for their daily
news, or to stop seeking out news entirely. Either path, I think,
is a very dangerous one for this country."
The film co-stars the likes of Peter Sarsgaard, Chloë Sevigny,
Steve Zahn, Rosario Dawson and Hank Azaria and is due for a UK
release in the New Year.
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US reaction
Critics in America have already warmed to the movie, however,
lavishing it with the type of headlines that Glass, himself, would
have been proud of.
Entertainment Weekly, for instance, awarded it the maximum
A grade and opined that, ‘right from the start, Hayden Christensen
is a revelation’.
The New York Observer, meanwhile, predicted that ‘even
if you don't care much about the responsibility of the press,
I think you will find this cautionary tale one terrific movie’.
Hollywood Reporter found it ‘a compellingly competent
telling of the scandalous fall from grace of New Republic staff
writer Stephen Glass’.
While the New York Times labelled it ‘an astute and
surprisingly gripping drama not only about the ethics of magazine
writing, but also, more generally, about the subtle political
and psychological dynamics of modern office culture’.
The Los Angeles Times wrote that ‘more than being
a smart and accurate look at magazine journalism - no small matter
- Shattered Glass is also a compelling portrait of a psychosis
at work’.
And USA Today felt that ‘Christensen is so good in
the role ... that you wonder anew what went wrong with his performance
as Anakin Skywalker in the last Star Wars’.
Reelviews, meanwhile, felt that while ‘Shattered
Glass may be light when it comes to psychological questions, but
its detailed accounting of Glass' actions makes for fascinating
viewing’.
And E! Online wrote that ‘while we never find out
why Glass did what he did, the tale of how it all fell apart is
a good one’.
The Los Angeles Daily News even suggested that it is ‘an
interesting study of high-stakes reporting that will probably
be shown at journalism schools for at least a generation or two’.
And Variety concluded that it is a ‘credibly and
absorbingly relates the tale of journalistic fraud perpetrated
by young writer Stephen Glass at the New Republic five years back’.
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