Lions Gate Films
Presents
“SHATTERED GLASS”
Written and directed by Billy Ray
Based on an article by Buzz Bissinger
Starring
Hayden Christensen
Peter Sarsgaard
Hank Azaria
Chloë Sevigny
Melanie Lynskey
Steve Zahn
Rosario Dawson
Cas Anvar
West Coast Agency ContactKelly Bush, Craig Bankey,Corey Scholibo
IDPR
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West Hollywood, CA 90069
T: 323-822-4800
F: 323-822-4880
/ Distribution Contact
James Ferrera-East Coast
Melissa Holloway-West Coast
Lions Gate Films
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Marina del Rey, CA 90292
T: 310-314-2000
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/
East Coast Agency Contact
Jeremy Walker, Mary LitkovichJeremy Walker + Associates
171 West 80th St
# 1
New York, NY 10024
T: 212-595-6161
F: 212-595-5875
Rated: PG-13 / Final Notes / Running Time: 94 minutes
A large selection of articles written by Stephen Glass are available by request
CAST
Stephen Glass Hayden Christensen
Charles “Chuck” Lane Peter Sarsgaard
Caitlin Avey Chloë Sevigny
Andy Fox Rosario Dawson
Amy Brand Melanie Lynskey
Michael Kelly Hank Azaria
Adam Penenberg Steve Zahn
Lewis Estridge Mark Blum
Catarina Bannier Simone-Elise Girard
David Bach Chad Donella
Aaron Bluth Jamie Elman
Rob Gruen Luke Kirby
Kambiz Foroohar Cas Anvar
Gloria Linda E. Smith
Marty Peretz Ted Kotcheff
Ian Restil Owen Rotharmel
George Sims Bill Rowat
Ian’s Mother Michele Scarabelli
Joe Hiert Terry Simpson
Suit #1 Howard Rosenstein
Michael Louis-Philippe Dandenault
Joe Morgan Kelly
Cade Christian Tessier
Jason James Berlingieri
Seth Brett Watson
Alec Shumpert Andrew Airlie
Emmit Rich Russell Yuen
Monica Merchant #1 Pierre Leblanc
Monica Merchant #2 Pauline Little
Stout Woman Kim Taschereau
Security Guard Phillip Cole
Glass’ Lawyer Mark Camocho
Chuck’s Son Ian Blouin
Kelly’s Colleague Lynne Adams
Mrs. Duke Caroline Goodall
Megan Brittany Drisdell
FILMMAKERS
Writer/Director Billy Ray
Producers Craig Baumgarten
Adam Merims
Gaye Hirsch
Tove Christensen
Executive Producers Tom Cruise
Paula Wagner
Michael Paseornek
Tom Ortenberg
Casting by Cassandra Kulukundis
Music by Mychael Danna
Editor Jeffrey Ford
Costume Designer Renée April
Production Designer François Séguin
Director of Photography Mandy Walker, A.C.S.
Based on the Article Written by H.G. Bissinger
Continued Credits on page 28
“Shattered Glass”
In “Shattered Glass,” Hayden Christensen stars as Stephen Glass, a staff writer for the respected current events and policy magazine The New Republic and a freelance feature writer for publications such as Rolling Stone, Harper’s and George. 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 – chronicled in Buzz Bissinger’s September 1998 Vanity Fair article on which “Shattered Glass” is based – suddenly stopped his career in its tracks. “Shattered Glass” is a study of a very talented – and at the same time very flawed – character. It is also a look inside our culture’s noblest profession, one that protects our most precious freedoms by revealing the truth, and what happens when our trust in that profession is called into question.
“Shattered Glass” is jointly produced by Cruise/Wagner Productions and Baumgarten Merims in association with Forest Park Pictures. The film’s executive producers are Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner of Cruise / Wagner as well as Lions Gate executives Michael Paseornek, Marc Butan and Tom Ortenberg. A Lions Gate production, “Shattered Glass” is produced by Craig Baumgarten, Adam Merims, Gaye Hirsch and Tove Christensen. The company plans to open the film in theatres beginning October 31st, 2003.
Director’s Statement
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.
That's why I wanted to make the film.
To do it, I needed and received a great deal of help from the very people Glass had wronged at The New Republic: Chuck Lane, the late Michael Kelly, and several sources who wished to remain nameless ... all of these people were extremely generous with me, sharing details of a period that had caused them nothing but pain, confusion, and embarrassment.
Particular mention should be made of Mike Kelly, who remains the most principled man it's ever been my good fortune to meet. Kelly remained haunted by his role in Glass' rise, and he was sick about the idea that a movie might forever immortalize him as the Editor who DIDN'T catch Glass. But Kelly's integrity was so great that he couldn't resist helping me and because Mike at his core was a reporter. And what mattered to him most was that I get the story right. He was truly a giant.
His efforts, and those of Chuck Lane and all my other sources, gave the script its authenticity. A cast of wonderful actors then did the rest. The only rule on our set was that every choice in every scene had to tell the truth.
The result, I think, was the cinematic equivalent of good reporting. "Shattered Glass" is not an attack on a fallen reporter, any more than it is an apology for his behavior. It's just an accurate account of a complicated mess. And when you're telling a story about reporting and truth, that's the only standard that matters.
Billy Ray
June 2003
About The Story
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.
From the hyper-reality of the stories Glass cooks up in his head to the intellectual boiler room of New Republic pitch sessions to encounters with Michael Kelly (Hank Azaria), the editor who mentored Glass, we learn that the magazine is an exhilarating yet exhausting place to work. Like those who served in the White House they covered, The New Republic staff in Glass’ day was made up of the best and the brightest, idealistic and mostly young people who knew that the work they were doing could make the world a better place.
Indeed, it was this very perspective on the world – shared by the editors, staff and readership of The New Republic – that may have helped Glass’ fabrications go undetected for so long. “The reason why people never questioned these stories is that they confirmed ideas that people of a particular political bent thought they already knew,” observes actor Peter Sarsgaard, who plays Lane in the film. “That’s what made his stories so seductive.”
Billy Ray’s screenplay also suggests that TNR editor and Glass’ mentor Michael Kelly may himself have been a victim of this liberal perspective, or at least of TNR Chairman Martin Peretz’ desire to protect his magazine’s liberal voice and by extension the wounded Presidency that also represented it. At the end of the first act, Peretz fires Kelly, offering that “the tone of the magazine … it’s gotten too nasty; it’s strayed from the traditions that made it great,” perhaps an allusion to the real-life fact that Kelly’s column in the magazine had grown increasingly critical of Bill Clinton.
Just as the scandals of the Clinton era brought about a change in the mood of the nation, the change of editors at The New Republic radically shifts the mood of the office. In the film, as Kelly cleans out his desk and hauls his boxes towards the lobby, he encounters his replacement, Charles Lane, sparking a scene of tense drama that has happened in many newsrooms as management makes a change. It is here that we learn that Charles Lane has inherited not only the mantle of one of the most influential journalistic institutions, but also a staff that deeply resents him for taking the job of their beloved mentor. It is also here that we begin to realize that the hero of “Shattered Glass” is the slightly stiff, do-it-by-the-book editor Charles Lane.
The great irony here is that the staff Lane now oversees, including writer-reporters Caitlin Avey (Chloë Sevigny) and Amy Finch (Melanie Lynskey), is one of which he was once a member. Their resentment of Lane is not only palpable; it is also perfumed with envy, a scent not uncommon to the cubicles and conference rooms of any news organization. The film carefully lays out the blueprints of internecine jealousy at The New Republic in the late 90s. The character of Amy Finch, for example, specializes in reporting on wonky policy debates, illuminating issues like ethanol subsidies for the magazine’s 81,000 readers. As Glass’ star is rising and lucrative freelance gigs start coming his way, Finch is compelled to emulate his style. She makes the mistake of showing her colleague Caitlin Avey one attempt. “But Amy, you don’t write funny,” is Avey’s response over a manuscript that bleeds red ink, made all the more devastating by Sevigny’s icy delivery.
This is not to say that the film’s view of the mood at TNR was entirely dark or that its staff was committed to mutual destruction to the exclusion of all else. Indeed, it’s clear that there existed a great friendship between Avey (who, for the record, is a composite of characters during the real-life Glass’ tenure at the magazine) and Glass. It is Avey who comes forcefully to Glass’ defense when Lane first discovers irregularities in “Hack Heaven.” And just as Michael Kelly served as a mentor to Glass, in the film Glass is shown taking a young intern under his wing. In fact, Glass was well-liked by everyone at The New Republic.
As “Shattered Glass” observes in its second act, Stephen Glass’ fabrications were not discovered by Lane, who ultimately fired him; they were discovered by writers and editors at the now-defunct on-line publication Forbes Digital Tool. Unhappy that the sharp reporters at his cutting edge new-media magazine had effectively been scooped by Glass’ “Hack Heaven” article (in a musty “old media” magazine at that), Tool editor Kambiz Foroohar (Cas Anvar) rubs the story in the face of his star reporter Adam Penenberg (Steve Zahn). The more Penenberg digs into Glass’ story, the more holes he finds, and Foroohar, Penenberg and a junior reporter (Rosario Dawson) first think that Glass has been royally set up by sources who were “pulling his chain.”
But upon being confronted with the inconsistencies, Glass feverishly constructs obstacle upon obstacle against inevitable discovery, creating one lie – a phony business card here, a fake website there – to substantiate another. In the meantime, Charles Lane begins an investigation of his own, working to track down Glass’ sources and looking back at his earlier articles with a jaundiced eye. While Glass’ motivation at this point seems to be purely self-preservation, Lane’s job is to protect his magazine and its reputation, and by extension the sanctity of journalism itself. By firing Glass, Lane not only saves the reputation of The New Republic, he also finally earns the respect of its staff.
About The Production
Billy Ray directs “Shattered Glass” from his own screenplay, which is based on an article by H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger of the same title that appeared in the September 1998 issue of Vanity Fair.
“This is a cautionary tale – a story about the difference between being a good reporter and being a hot one,” says Ray, who makes his directorial debut with the film. “That’s what Buzz Bissinger’s article was about, and that’s what we’ve tried to capture with the film.”
“My hope is that people who see ‘Shattered Glass’ will look at the craft of journalism from a different perspective,” Ray continues. “The New Republic, like The New York Times, is not an institution, it is a staff of people who are in charge of an institution, and those people can have good judgment or bad judgment. Stephen Glass took advantage of their bad judgment as well as their good nature.”
In turning a non-fiction article into a dramatic feature, Ray and his producers understood from the outset that their project would certainly come under scrutiny by those who lived the events they were to depict. For this reason, as Ray adapted Buzz Bissinger’s Vanity Fair article for the screen, he conducted interviews with many of the key players from the time, and referred constantly to the transcripts of those interviews. Before he included an event in the screenplay, he checked with two separate sources to make sure that it really occurred. Glass’ former editor, Charles Lane, who is now a reporter for the Washington Post, vetted the script before it went into production.