Shattered Glass vs Catch Me If You Can

Stephen Glass is a big, fat liar. Whenever he hears his name, his instinct is to respond with “Are you mad at me?” or “I didn’t do anything.” His lies start small, but they’re significant enough to need supporting lies, and preliminary lies, and backup lies just to be safe. He makes Tommy Flanagan look like Buddy Epsen.*

*Are you gonna sit there and tell me Buddy Epsen was dishonest?

Stephen Glass, played by Hayden Christenson, is the main character of Shattered Glass, which is a true story I’d bet was fact-checked again and again. In the late 1990s, Glass was a writer for the highly-respected, no-photographs New Republic Magazine. Over the course of almost fifty articles, Glass made up about half. The bulk of the movie deals with the shit hitting the fan.**

**I just want to take this moment to say that at no time in Shattered Glass does any shit come in contact with any fans. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.

It seems impossible that one young writer could almost bring down a major magazine by himself, until you see Shattered Glass. Stephen Glass completely integrated himself with the entire New Republic staff. He makes a point to compliment the receptionist’s makeup or jewelry on a regular basis, and develops a mentor/protégé relationship with his editor, Michael Kelly (Hank Azaria). His closest allies in the office are two other reporters, played by Chloe Sevigny and Melanie Lynskey, who treat Stephen like a little brother, and sit rapt, like girls at TRL, while he pitches his ludicrous stories. In editorial meetings, Stephen grandstands and sets up his plans for stories as if they were future Hollywood blockbusters. Then, he immediately backtracks, with comments like “It’s silly. I’m probably not even going to finish it.” So, not only has the staff been wowed by Stephen’s stories, they’re also sympathetic to his insecurities. Stephen Glass is a big fat liar, but he’s not stupid. Unfortunately, neither is his new editor.

After standing up to his bullying boss, Michael Kelly is fired and replaced as editor by Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard). Chuck has barely settled into his office when he receives a call from a Forbes.com writer named Adam (Steve Zahn). It seems they’d like to do a follow-up piece to a story Stephen Glass wrote about a hacker convention, but a few of the facts don’t add up. By a few, I mean none. Chuck isn’t as sentimental about Stephen as the other employees, so he begins digging.

Shattered Glass was written and directed by Billy Ray, and though the action rarely leaves the small offices and story room of The New Republic, it plays like a thriller. At one point, Adam, Stephen and Chuck share a fact-checking conference call, and Stephen’s race to lie his way around lost phone numbers and websites (he’s created fakes for both) is as tense as any “Blue wire or red wire? Which do I cut?” bomb scenes in countless other movies. The New Republic office seems genuine, as do its employees. Everyone is so well-cast that it wasn’t until after the movie that I remembered that Rosario Dawson, who plays a writer at Forbes.com, was in Kids with Sevigny, who was in Boys Don’t Cry with Sarsgaard.

The acting is good all-around in Shattered Glass, especially that of Peter Sarsgaard. By the end of the movie, Chuck really seems to be both the hero and the victim, and Sarsgaard maintains his integrity the entire time. There are moments in the film when Chuck seems somewhat bothered or nervous, when he has every right to be pissed beyond all belief. There’s a montage of him looking through back issues of New Republic and realizing how obvious Stephen’s lies seem in retrospect. Near the end of the movie, there’s a scene where Chuck receives a round of applause, and it’s fairly clichéd and possibly embellished for film, but if anyone deserves applause it’s this guy. Seriously, Stephen Glass was a colossal tool. Hayden Christensen plays him as charming and immature, like if you had a puppy that you thought was the most awesome puppy ever, then one day you came in and realized he’d been peeing behind the couch all along. Christensen has Stephen’s behavior down to a specific pattern of boasting, defending, whining and kissing up. I didn’t doubt for a second that the staff at the New Republic was crazy about Stephen Glass, or that in his last days on the job, when he was literally hiding in a corner sobbing, they felt he was the true victim, as opposed to themselves. Christensen doesn’t look much like the actual Steven Glass, but he has such a powerful way of suggesting him that even if you’re familiar with the original (I wasn’t), you’ll fall for the whole thing, just like the staff and readers of New Republic.

Okay, so I know you’ve seen Catch Me If You Can, and it might seem too obvious a choice. It’s the first young-pathological-liar-success story that popped into my head, and likely yours as well. Why should you watch it again? I’ll give you three reasons.

1. The acting. Tom Hanks is so good at portraying frustration on screen. As his manhunt continues, and Hanks’s character becomes more attached to Frank Abagnale, he never loses that tone of here we go again. He’s like that sheep dog, clocking in for work, day after day. Leonardo DiCaprio is good too. Like Stephen Glass, DiCaprio’s Frank seems to get pleasure from his lies, but not so much from their extravagant results. As Frank’s dad, Christopher Walken gives his least Christopher Walken performance in years, or maybe his most Christopher Walken performance. Anyway, it’s his best in a long while.
2. Steven Spielberg. There’s a scene late in Catch Me If You Can, where Franks has resumed his life on the run. The camera is still on a shot in an airport terminal, and as DiCaprio begins moving into the frame, the camera starts backing toward us, keeping the same distance the entire time, until Hanks enters behind DiCaprio, and he also maintains his distance, and the camera never stops moving. In roughly thirty seconds, the relationship between Hanks and DiCaprio is summed up perfectly, not to mention it’s just a beautiful shot. It’s probably incredibly complicated, but Spielberg breaks Catch Me If You Can into several moments like this that stay light, yet never become disposable, yet never stray too far from…
3. The bouncy, retro, animated opening sequence. My Three Sons crossed with James Bond. It’s fun, quick, and smart, like the whole movie, and that’s no lie.

Shattered Glass: B+
Catch Me If You Can: A-