Shattered Glass (2003) on Netflix
Stephen Glass, the youngest writer at The New Republic, is admired for his reporting. When Forbes cannot verify his piece on a teenage hacker, editor Charles Lane must respond.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb7.1/1040,396 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Trailer
Plot summary
In early 1998, Stephen Glass, twenty-five, is the youngest member of the writing staff at The New Republic, a political magazine in Washington. His colleagues enjoy his company and the stories he brings in, and he smooths over fact-checking corrections on his articles with an apologetic manner. Charles Lane becomes editor-in-chief after publisher Marty Peretz fires Michael Kelly, and a staff loyal to Kelly resents the promotion. Glass's article "Hack Heaven," about a teenage hacker hired by the software firm he infiltrated, draws the attention of Forbes Digital Tool, where reporter Adam Penenberg can verify none of it beyond the material Glass gave the magazine's fact-checkers. Glass defends the piece while Lane weighs how far to support him.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Shattered Glass (2003)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Ray attempted to contact Glass through his lawyers but was unsuccessful, and Lionsgate lawyers asked him for an annotated script in which he had to footnote every line of dialogue and every assertion and back them up with corresponding notes.
- The night before principal photography began in Montreal, Ray screened All the President's Men for the cast and crew, then shot the halves of the film differently: hand-held cameras in the offices of The New Republic, steadier camerawork once the Forbes editors begin to question Glass.
- The real Michael Kelly was so unhappy about how he was portrayed in Bissinger's article that he threatened to sue when Ray first contacted him about the film, and refused for two years to read Ray's script, which he eventually approved.
- Ray used the Bissinger article as a starting point, taking from it the line of dialogue on which he hooked the entire character of Glass, "Are you mad at me?", saying "you can build an entire character around that notion, and we did".
- On April 3, 2003, a little more than six months before the film was released, Michael Kelly was killed while reporting on the invasion of Iraq, and the film is dedicated to his memory.
