Announcing “Are You Mad At Me?,” a Brand-New Podcast About Our Favorite Movie, Shattered Glass

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By Erica C. Barnett

Exciting news: Josh and I have started a limited-run podcast, "Are You Mad At Me?," about the 2003 movie Shattered Glass. The title is a reference to something the disgraced journalist Stephen Glass says (in the film and, apparently, in real life) to disarm his bosses and colleagues.

Shattered Glass, which focuses on the rise and downfall of '90s wunderkind reporter Stephen Glass, is my favorite movie, full stop. It's the movie I used to use to suss out new guys I was dating, and it's still the movie I'm most eager to tell new friends about. Journalists love Shattered Glass—it's the movie that best captures what it's like to be a reporter uncovering a story—but non-journalists love it too, because it's a story about comeuppance, and who doesn't love seeing a cheater get what's coming to them?

Whether you're a journalist or not, whether you've never seen Shattered Glass or saw it on opening night in 2003, as we did, do yourself a favor: Take 95 minutes out of your day to watch this thrilling, unforgettable film about one of the biggest journalism scandals in recent history. And when you're done, listen to the first episode of "Are You Mad At Me?, where we'll be taking a monthly look at this iconic movie and telling you why we love it—and why you should, too.

In the late 1990s, Stephen Glass was hot shit inside and outside D.C.: A young, charismatic reporter with a gift for worming his way in to places reporters ordinarily couldn't access—like a weed-hazy hotel suite at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or a front-row seat at a hacker convention where a teenage black-hat hacker wins a security contract with a big-time software firm. Glass' reputation as a colorful teller of untold stories quickly won him accolades, along with a freelance roster that earned him an estimated $100,000 in 1998, the year he turned 26.

Glass, of course, was a fraud—fired from The New Republic in 1998 after fabricating dozens of stories for TNR and many other print magazines that published his work, including Harper's, George, Mother Jones, and Rolling Stone. Shattered Glass, which came out just five years later, tells the story of Glass's rise and demise.

Actually, it tells two parallel stories. The first is about how Glass tricked his coworkers at the hidebound, wonkish New Republic into buying pitches that were—as one character puts it in the movie—literally "unbelievable." And the second is about his downfall, facilitated by a team of digital journalists who combined phone-book, shoe-leather reporting with a basic understanding of the online universe—like the fact that a "big-time software company" wouldn't have a website that was only accessible to AOL members—to dismantle Glass' growing legend.

I was a very young reporter when Glass was on the rise, and subscribed to many of the magazines where his byline appeared. At the time, I was writing for an alt-weekly and amassing a growing pile of rejection letters from some of the same magazines that were publishing Glass' colorful copy, and I couldn't understand how a guy not much older than me was getting these kinds of scoops, while I was still calling in legislative updates from a pay phone at the state Capitol.

One obvious problem with Glass' stories, upon more than a cursory reading, is that many of them included details just a little too perfect to be plausible—like anti-drug activists from DARE jamming TV news transmissions to conceal unflattering information about their program, or CPAC sociopaths picking up "a real heifer" at a bar and bringing her back to their hotel for a ritual humiliation.

As someone who endured many an editorial meeting, though, I've witnessed plenty of pitchmen spin almost equally dazzling tales—the kind that make your own story about ethanol subsidies, or whatever, seem safe and uninspired—and I recognized the kind of guy he was trying to be. Editors—credulous ones, anyway—love that kind of guy.

Shattered Glass captures this side of the story beautifully, down to the combination of hero worship and envy that surrounds a star reporter. The film also reveals why it's so hard to capture a fabulist like Glass, even at a place with a rigorous fact-checking process like the New Republic. As Hayden Christianson, playing Glass, explains in a voiceover: On certain stories, "the only source material available are the notes provided by the reporter himself."

And then Shattered Glass goes back and tells the same story through a group of outsiders, led by Forbes Digital Tool reporter Adam Penenberg (Steve Zahn), who are not susceptible to Glass and his charms. Penenberg, who's initially motivated by irritation at being scooped by Glass, quickly realizes the story is "a fucking sieve." Cue the reporting montage!

It's hard to remember now, but throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, print publications often considered "digital" publications second-class, and journalists who published their work online often developed chips on their shoulders about print elitism. So there's an extra layer of satisfaction, for those who reflexively sympathize with underdogs, in watching Penenberg and the Forbes team work tediously and tirelessly to unmask Glass—doing the work his editors didn't bother doing because they trusted that anyone qualified to write for The New Republic wouldn't just make it up.

The Forbes team confronts Glass' boss, Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard), with the facts they've gathered, and Lane goes on his own fact-finding mission, reporting on his own reporter until the story is solid.

It was all lies, from start to finish, but unmasking Glass' fabrications took time, and the work—conducted in conference rooms, cubicles, and anonymous office buildings in Bethesda—was rarely glamorous. Shattered Glass manages something almost no movie about journalism ever has—it renders the processes of journalism thrilling and tactile, without misrepresenting any aspect of how journalism actually works. (Cue the montage of female journalists sleeping with their sources in a dozen other movies).

But the payoff this movie delivers isn't the publication of an apology letter in The New Republic (which actually happened), or Stephen's abashed return to his high school classroom (which, as far as I know, didn't). It's the aggregation of facts that leads to the foregone conclusion—from Zahn's stunned look, as Penenberg, when his search for "Jukt Micronics" on you.yahoo.com (!!) gets zero hits, to the climactic confrontation between Lane and reporter Caitlin Avey (Chloe Sevigny) in the lobby of the New Republic building. "Go back. Read them again."

In this first episode of Are You Mad At Me?, we attempt to ground our enthusiasm for Shattered Glass by discussing and dissecting some of our favorite scenes. One of my picks comes late in the movie, when Lane is pulling down every copy of The New Republic in which Glass' work appeared from a wall display.

The scene demonstrates Chuck's dawning awareness that Stephen has made up not one but dozens of stories, and his acceptance that the publication—which has taken public shots at other magazines that fail to meet its own rigorous editorial standards—is about to be humbled.

Lane thumbs through issue after issue and throws each one to the floor, as Christiansen reads snippets in voiceover, his fabrications interspersed with scenes of his laughing, applauding colleagues. It's a quiet, devastating solo scene—until Stephen walks in, hoping to manipulate Chuck one last time by begging a ride to the airport.

"I'm afraid of what I might do," Glass says, whimpering.

"Stop pitching, Steve," Lane responds. "It's over."

We really hope you'll join us on our 12-month journey to break down everything we love about Shattered Glass with each other as well as some special guests. And we hope that by the end, you'll appreciate this wonderful movie as much as we do.