Shattered Glass
Before Jayson Blair made headlines for his plagiarized New York Times reporting, Stephen Glass defamed the weekly current events magazine The New Republic with a series of eye-catching, entertaining, and completely fabricated stories. Now Glass' trail of lies gets the big-screen treatment in writer/director Billy Ray's Shattered Glass, featuring Hayden Christensen in the title role. The film chronicles Glass' time at the magazine in the late '90s, when his colorful coverage of a hedonistic Young Republican convention, superstar web hackers, and the circus surrounding the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal made him the toast of the publishing world, garnering attention from such national publications as George and Rolling Stone. Barely out of college, the eager Glass ingratiates himself with the office staff, including his mentor, managing editor Michael Kelly (Hank Azaria). But when Kelly is unceremoniously fired and replaced with editor Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard), Glass' pieces come under a greater degree of scrutiny, until one in particular threatens to expose his tall tales to the rest of the world. Based in part on a Vanity Fair article by journalist Buzz Bissinger, Shattered Glass premiered at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals before its limited fall theatrical release. more..
Director: Billy Ray
Starring: Hayden Christensen, Peter Sarsgaard, Chloe Sevigny, Rosario Dawson, Melanie Lynskey
Presents Glass as a masterfully corrupt fabulist who convinced himself of the ultimate seductive lie, which is that there can't be anything wrong with telling people what they want to hear.
All give heartfelt, unflashy performances that help make Shattered Glass one of the season's most thoughtful offerings.
You get the sense that there's probably more to the story than you get here. But the movie's moral will soon be indelible: You just can't fake it in the Internet age.
A smart, suspenseful drama, starring Hayden Christensen, that honors its own factual roots as no movie about journalists has done since "All the President's Men."
The film never digs deep enough into the pressures on Glass from his family, his peers and himself to achieve psychological depth. But as an inside look into the hothouse of journalism, it's dynamite.
Best Supporting Actor
Boston Society of Film Critics Awards (2003)
Best Supporting Actor
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards (2004)
Best Adapted Screenplay
Chlotrudis Awards (2004)
Best Supporting Actor
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards (2004)
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Golden Globes (2004)
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