I have no sympathy for deliberate serial cheating reporters, like Janet Cook or Jason Blair, especially those who have enjoyed a career of privilege. I am appalled at the life after what should be professional death that is sometimes enjoyed by those who happen also to be of the right political hew. Like Mike Barnacle, now a fixture on Boston talk radio and soon to be a columnist again. For this reason, I had no interest in seeing Shattered Glass, the film about Stephen Glass, the disgraced serial liar whose fictional writings in the New Republic included a trashing of young conservative Republican males. I fully expected it to glamorize and implicitly excuse Glass’s transgressions by explaining their root causes, and that simply does not interest me. I think I am more personally irked by Glass than by Cook, Blair and Barnacle, as a subscriber to the New Republic who actually read him before his deceptions were exposed. And Glass is attempting a comeback with his novel, The Fabulist, about a lying reporter.
But as I now have a really wonderful 2.8 lb. notebook with a built in DVD player (the Panasonic CF-W2 which I highly recommend), I have recently taken to renting DVDs at the airport (from Inmotion) to watch on the plane during my book tour when I am too drained to read. The pickings of small-screen-worthy films are thin, so I broke down and rented Shattered Glass. To my great surprise, it is a helluva film.
First of all it is understated in its presentation, and the acting is superb. Hayden Christensen as Glass, Hank Azaria as editor Michael Kelly, and especially Peter Sarsgaard, as Chuck Lane are really wonderful in the subltety of their portrayals. So are all the more supporting actors. But, given my attitude towards the subject, I suppose the most impressive part of the film is how unforgiving it is of Stephen Glass. It is not as though the film dumps on him either. That is not required. Rather it seems almost documentary in its dispassion-though not in its presentation-leaving it to the viewer to judge. We are allowed to see Glass at his youthful seductive best before watching him (and the holy New Republic) crash and burn when exposed by the internet publication, Forbes On-line. Explanations for his behavior are only hinted at, and never asserted by the film to be either true or genuine excuses. There is only one self-congratulatory scene at the end concerning the New Republic that offended me, but just one scene in a film that could have offended me at any moment is pretty impressive.
I won’t say any more about the movie, except to say that if you refused to see Shattered Glass for anything like the reason I did, you should rent this film. Then, after viewing it, watch the 60 Minutes interview on the DVD. I also highly recommend rewatching the movie with the director’s commentary on. I rarely do this and intended to do so for a few minutes and proceeded to watch the whole thing. Significantly, it features not only commentary by director and script author Billy Ray on the techniques he used on this his first film, but he is joined by Chuck Lane who comments throughout on the authenticity of scenes and dialogue. You find out which were verbatim, which characters were composites, and which incidents were the result of dramatic licence. And you also get an even more negative impression of Glass than you do from the film itself. Lane has clearly not forgiven Glass, and neither need we.
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