Every once in a while, a movie enters your orbit very unassumingly. It came out years ago, you had never heard of it, but someone suggests it to you in passing, so you decide to give it a shot at some point. In this case, I was listening to an episode of The Rewatchables, where they were discussing either Spotlight or All the President’s Men (I can’t remember which one). At one point during the episode, Bill Simmons (the host) made a passing comment about a movie called Shattered Glass and how he really enjoyed it, despite it’s complete lack of attention. I decided to add it to my watchlist with no immediate intention of watching it; that was almost a year ago. After constantly scrolling past it when looking for a movie to watch, I finally decided to give it a shot – and what the heck, it’s barely even an hour and a half long, so it won’t take too much of my time anyway! But boy howdy, was I glad that I finally decided to give it a chance – this movie absolutely rocks. I can’t think of a better way to put it; if someone came up to me and asked for my thoughts on the movie, I would for sure lead with, “oh man, that movie rocks.”
Coming off of Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones in 2002, Hayden Christensen wasn’t seen in the best of lights in Hollywood. He turned in what some deemed an atrocious job of playing a teenaged Anakin Skywalker, complaining about sand and how “it gets everywhere.” I disagreed then, and I disagree now – I guess you could call me a Hayden Christensen apologist of sorts. I was always of the belief that the reason the Star Wars prequel movies can be so hard to watch at times was due to the writing/directing of George Lucas, and not the acting of Hayden, Jake Lloyd, Samuel L. Jackson or the like. As I mentioned in my Letterboxd review of this film, I think we can officially add it to the list of evidence that proves it was Lucas’ fault and not the actors. Hayden was one of the best parts of Shattered Glass and it made me so happy to see him getting to work with a much higher quality script, especially in the midst of all the prequel drama – I only wish the same could have happened for Jake Lloyd. Playing the titular role of Stephen Glass, Christensen was able to convey the sometimes odd personality of a journalist/writer to a tee, similar to Mark Ruffalo’s work in Spotlight as Michael Rezendes. He can’t stop patronizing the receptionist, he throws a house party where the beer is alphabetized, he makes the same excuses for the daily calls he gets from other outlets, and we hear the infamous “are you mad at me?” quote more than a few times throughout the film. He’s a quirky, talented writer, who may not be as honest and innocent as his co-workers think him to be. Christensen practically forces you to not only root for his character, but possibly even feel bad for him – even though he is objectively in the wrong. It’s a stellar performance that I think anyone who has derided the prequels deserves to see, to at least give Christensen a fair chance of proving his talent.
The rest of the cast is filled in with some big hitters, and may even seem like more of an ensemble cast 21 years later – Peter Sarsgaard, Steve Zahn, Rosario Dawson and Chloë Sevigny, to name a few. Sarsgaard does an excellent job in his role of new lead editor and office pariah Chuck Lane, who was hand chosen by The New Republic publisher Marty Peretz, to replace editor Michael Kelly at the helm. He does a great job of portraying the discontent and distaste that the writers have for him, and how much it weighs on him – but he just wants to be a good editor and keep The New Republic going strong. As viewers, most of us probably ended up hating the guy by the end of the film, but not really with much credence; Lane was just doing his job, and was protecting the integrity (and shelf life) of The New Republic, which was severely threatened by Stephen Glass’ controversy. Steve Zahn and Rosario Dawson are charming in their little screen time, and Chloë Sevigny really envelops the heart of the viewer – at once protecting and defending Glass before realizing the err in his ways. Christensen is the star, but Sarsgaard really ends up playing the protagonist – something that writer/director Billy Ray realized was the right call to keep the movie interesting. “…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.”1
If I had to make one overarching critique, it would actually be to add ten or so minutes to the runtime. I’m never an ambassador for making movies longer, but in this case, I think we could have used just a bit more context to Stephen Glass’ career before writing the Hack Heaven article. Show me five to ten minutes of an earlier story that Glass wrote, with some holes being poked. I know we kinda got that with the Spring Breakdown piece in the beginning, but it is framed more like Glass was overly worried about a small detail being incorrect instead of having been a stroke of luck that his cover-up ended up being corroborated.2 Some people seemed to want more of Glass’ personal life, but I think that would have taken the film in the wrong direction and made it like any other Hollywood drama instead of focusing more on the objective work of journalism and writing. A.O. Scott of The New York Times put it really well: “A more showily ambitious film might have tried to delve into Glass’s personal history in search of an explanation for his behavior, or to draw provocative connections between that behavior and the cultural and political climate of the times. Such a movie would also have been conventional, facile and ultimately false. Mr Ray knows better than to sensationalize a story about the dangers of sensationalism. Shattered Glass is good enough to be true.”3
Let’s dig into some categories!
By the Numbers
- Release date: October 31, 2003
- Budget: $6 million
- Box office: $2.9 million
- Run time: 94 minutes (1 hour, 34 minutes)
- Letterboxd rating: 3.5 ★
- My Letterboxd rating: 4.0 ★
- Rotten Tomatoes: 92% (Certified Fresh ?)
- Accolades: 16 total nominations, 6 total wins
- 1 Golden Globe nomination, 0 wins (Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture [Peter Sarsgaard])
- One: This is Billy Ray’s directorial debut for a feature film
Best Scene
This is a shorter film, so there aren’t a ton of nominees, but let’s take a look:
- Stephen Glass pitches the Hack Heaven story to the other writers and editors. We’ve seen an earlier pitch meeting, but this one has more meat to it and builds on the earlier one. Glass entertains and awes his peers with the tale of a teenaged hacker getting a job offer from a big tech company, while gyrating on the table and demanding a Miata and a trip to Disney World. He follows it up, like he always does, by saying it’s silly and he probably won’t finish it.
- Adam Penenberg (Steve Zahn’s character) starts to discover that the story is false. Give me a scene with someone making a shrewd discovery, and I will eat it up ten times out of ten. Zahn plays this one well too, because he’s not initially sure if Glass was totally duped by a teenager, or if he just made the whole thing up. Either way, that look on his face when he first realizes something is off is just so good. It gets capped off with a perfect line delivery too while the Forbes Digital crew read aloud all of the falsehoods, “There does appear to be a state in the union named Nevada.”
- Stephen Glass throws a house party. This one is the winner, for many reasons. For one, we get to see the quirky and awkward side of Glass at play: he’s cleaning up while everyone is still there, he has a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke in the freezer for Amy, recalling a story from two years ago that she doesn’t like warm soda, and he has the beers alphabetized in multiple buckets. We also then get to see the loyalty of his coworkers, specifically Caitlin at play – she finds an acceptance letter from Georgetown Law School, and berates him for pursuing law only for the gratification and approval of his parents. Glass profusely apologizes to Caitlin for feeling like he has to attend and for disappointing her, before she berates him once more: “Stop apologizing for everything. I was looking through your mail, you should be pissed at me.”
- Stephen and Chuck take a drive down to Bethesda. This is arguably the climax of the film, where Chuck finally and fully figures out that Glass never went to the convention, he never had dinner with the family, and he never met the young hacker. Glass continues his lying and continues to dig himself deeper and deeper into his own grave, before Chuck finally snaps and tells him he just wants Glass to tell him the truth. It’s really good acting from both guys here, and is a nice culmination of Glass’ lying ways with Chuck’s disbelief and trepidation around the story.
What’s Aged the Best
Hayden Christensen’s performance – like I mentioned at the top, he was coming off of Attack of the Clones, where he was absolutely thrown to the wolves for his performance. Having this performance as a response is as good as you could have asked for; it wasn’t a huge, big budget blockbuster, but a smaller movie with a good supporting cast, an up-and-coming director, and a really good script. The fact that they had the script fact checked has aged quite nicely, and ironically, as well. Billy Ray made sure to get the approval from all of Glass’ co-workers, including his former editor Michael Kelly, who refused to even read the script for a number of months out of resentment for the original Vanity Fair article that the film is based off of. Outside of the Caitlin Avey character being an amalgamation of a few of his New Republic co-workers, everything else checks out – and it kinda had to. If the very subject matter of the film was it’s own downfall, this movie would have cratered immediately. Technology has aged quite well since this movie, as well. Most of the characters don’t know anything about computers or the internet, which allows Glass to dupe his own publication and it’s readers for two years. He sets up a fake voicemail, a janky website, and creates phony business cards to cover his tracks – which is a perfect segue to…
What’s Aged the Worst
1990s fact checking! This entire scandal wouldn’t be able to happen today – a few quick Google searches and emails would have debunked this entire story from the jump. It was so much easier before the explosion of the internet to create sources out of thin air, and be able to corroborate them to your fact checkers. Journalism has come a long way from the early internet days, and this story is great proof of why it has benefitted from such online growth. Also, Michael Kelly’s haircut. It’s really bad.4
The Jason Clarke Award (What’s Their Name Again?)
This was an easy one for me – it’s Caroline Goodall, who plays Stephen Glass’ high school journalism teacher, Mrs. Duke. You may her from her roles as Moira Banning in Hook, Emilie Schindler in Schindler’s List, or Helen Thermopolis in Princess Diaries. I immediately recognized her in this movie, but she will always be “the mom from Hook and Princess Diaries” to me.
The Jack Nicholson Award (Big Impact, Small Role)
We have a few options here: Caroline Goodall as Mrs. Duke, Rosario Dawson as Andy Fox, and the winner, Owen Roth, for his role as the teenage hacker Ian Restil. Caroline and Rosario do well in their limited screentime, but they don’t make too lasting of an impact on the story or the movie itself. Owen Roth comes in and plays 12 minutes and drops 15 points, 5 threes, 2 steals and a couple rebounds. It’s short, memorable, and is giving you good ideas for your next contract negotiation for a job (minus the Miata, those aren’t really in anymore).
The Roger Deakins Award (Best Cinematography)
There are a couple of cool moments in the movie, but my favorite goes to a scene at the end of the film, where Stephen and Chuck are talking in the New Republic breakroom. I don’t know if this is actually what their breakroom looked like, but having an entire wall dedicated to display all of their magazine issues provides for such a cool backdrop – especially once Chuck goes in there and takes down every issue that Glass was published in (to fact check them again) and you see how empty the wall is. Glass’ work was heavily featured in The New Republic from 1995-98, and it was such a big hit to their publication when it came to light just how much he fabricated throughout his short career. There is one shot in particular where we keep cutting back and forth between extreme closeups on Sarsgaard and Christensen, all the while one magazine cover is prominently seen in the background: Lie About It.
Best Quote
- “I didn’t do anything wrong, Chuck.” “I really wish you’d stop saying that!”
- “But there is one thing in his story that checks out…There does appear to be a state in the union named Nevada.”
- “If I were to throw a party where all we did was play ‘Monopoly,’ would you guys come?”
- “Are you mad at me?”5
- “The New Republic, snobbiest rag in the business, the in-flight magazine of Air Force One… and their star goes out and gets completely snowed by a bunch of hackers. I mean, God couldn’t have written this any better.”
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
- Hayden Christensen: 2 (Christensen appeared in Factory Girl with Colleen Camp, who appeared in Trapped with Kevin Bacon)
- Peter Sarsgaard: 1 (Sarsgaard appeared in Black Mass with Kevin Bacon)
- Chloë Sevigny: 2 (Sevigny appeared in The Snowman with Johnny Otto, who appeared in X-Men: First Class with Kevin Bacon)
- I went through the entire cast, and the highest number was two. The theory lives!
Concession Stand
Shattered Glass is a pretty dialogue-heavy film, so your best bet might actually be to avoid the concessions all together. Anything crunchy will distract from what you’re trying to listen to, so maybe go the soft/chewy route – some Sour Patch Kids potentially? A beer might pair well with it too (the movie, not the Sour Patch), which would help you feel like you are sitting in the office to the side and just witnessing everything happening and taking it all in.
Conclusion
Most of you reading this probably haven’t seen this movie, or possibly even heard of it – but I hope that after reading this, you might give it a try. Not only to help fulfill my prophecy of redeeming Hayden Christensen’s reputation, but to also learn more about a really interesting scandal that took place 25 years ago. The New Republic is still publishing ten issues a year to this day, but hasn’t been without controversy since Stephen Glass either.6 Shattered Glass is compelling, important, and it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome; it’s worth the watch.
- https://filmmakermagazine.com/archives/issues/fall2003/features/confirm_deny.php ↩︎
- I know this won’t make a ton of sense to people who haven’t seen the movie, but I’m trying to remain relatively spoiler-free so as to not just give away every plot point and detail of the movie. ↩︎
- https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/31/movies/film-review-a-young-writer-s-ambition-with-loyalty-and-betrayal.html ↩︎
↩︎- Director Billy Ray said that he built the entire character of Stephen Glass around this one quote from the Vanity Fair article that he based the screenplay on. ↩︎
- https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-collapse-new-republic ↩︎
