FEED DROP: On this Month's "Are You Mad At Me?," We Interview Shattered Glass Director Billy Ray

[00:00:00] Hey Seattle Nice listeners, we're dropping another episode of Are You Mad At Me in your feed. That's the podcast I do once a month with my friend and colleague Josh Feit about the 2003 journalism movie Shattered Glass. It's our favorite movie for a lot of reasons, including the way it portrays the relationship between Stephen Glass, who made up dozens of stories for The New Republic, and Chuck Lane, the boss who investigated and ultimately fired him. This month, we interviewed Shattered Glass writer and director Billy Ray about the movie, which he calls the most personal project he ever did. He answered so many questions when he was a fan of the movie.

[00:00:29] We've been wondering about for years, including why the movie has persisted to the point where to quote him, it's got its own fucking podcast. We hope you'll enjoy this episode of Are You Mad At Me? As always, thanks for listening. Hi, and welcome to Are You Mad At Me? A Shattered Glass podcast. We are so excited to introduce you to our very special guest, Shattered Glass writer and director Billy Ray. Well, I couldn't be more flattered. Thank you for having this show.

[00:00:59] So I want to start out by asking, what interested you in the story of Stephen Glass, and what made you think it could be a compelling movie? Well, it started with the great article by Buzz Bissinger, such a brilliant journalist, and I had adapted him once before on Friday Night Lights.

[00:01:15] When I read Buzz's article, what I loved about it was everything, but specifically what I loved about it was it was a world I felt I could understand and then write. And he gave me Stephen Glass's character in literally one line, Are You Mad At Me? I knew I could hang an entire movie on just who would say that.

[00:01:43] But the other thing was that he also gave me Chuck Lane. And I felt very strongly that I had a lot of Chuck Lane in me, but also a lot of Stephen Glass in me. And that I could write these two guys going head to head because I understood them really well. I was all over this thing the second I read it.

[00:02:07] I'm curious what Stephen Glass you felt you had in you because the movie makes him a very unlikable guy, but maybe you don't agree. I don't know that the movie really judges him. I didn't mean to judge him in the movie. I grew up in Encino, California, which is just like Highland Park, Illinois. It's not a question of whether or not you're going to college. It's which college you're going to go to. And it's that there's a line in the movie, if your kid's not a doctor or a lawyer, you keep your curtains closed. I understood that pressure.

[00:02:37] I understood that feeling that you are not valued based on what you are. You are valued based on what you accomplish. And the pressure that that creates to keep achieving in a really public way. And what that can do to your integrity. I understood that. I really understood what had driven him.

[00:03:00] And I understood what it felt like to be given certain skills in terms of managing personalities around you and to use them the wrong way. I had seen a lot of that in my childhood and I understood it really well. And the other thing was that for me, as much as this movie is pretty heady, I mean, it's about ethics in journalism.

[00:03:24] On an emotional level, this movie is about what happens if the least popular kid in high school has to take down the most popular kid in high school. And that's every beat of the movie. That's the emotional pulse of that movie. And I knew I could tell that story. What did you relate to about Chuck Lane as a character? Was it having to take down the person who is the most popular at the New Republic? No.

[00:03:51] I understood the stiffness of Chuck. I understood that, you know, Chuck was not the guy who went out and had drinks with everybody after work. He wasn't the life of the party. He wasn't cool. He was a family man. He was married. He had a kid. He didn't have the most talent. He was just a grinder.

[00:04:21] And I understood that really, really well. I mean, I remember when I was 22, 23, working full time and writing at night. You know, all my friends were out chasing women and going to bars. And I was sitting there staring at a wall. And it was because I had realized in trying to become a screenwriter, I am not more talented than the people I'm competing with.

[00:04:46] So, my only remedy is to outwork them.

[00:04:51] I mean, just out hustled them.

[00:05:21] When I first saw this movie. And who else was in contention? And are you still in touch with any of the actors or the real life personages? I mean, it strikes me. Even like a small role like Mrs. Duke, like was a successful British actor. Like, how did you land this star-studded cast? Well, one of the things about the demise of Hollywood is that if you make a drama, you're not really in competition with anybody else.

[00:05:49] There are no other scripts out there where people are saying, oh, I'll either do Shattered Glass or Kramer versus Kramer or Ordinary People. Like, you don't have that competition anymore. Yeah, I'm going to do Shattered Glass or I'm going to do Avengers 6. Okay, well, great. If you want to do Avengers 6, that's available to you. But if you don't, in that moment, I was sort of the only shop in town. So, I think that helped. Even in 2003, that was the case back then as well. For sure. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

[00:06:19] Hayden was always going to be Steven Glass. Hayden was the reason Lionsgate was going to make that movie. He was coming off Attack of the Clones and that was their guy. Then to play opposite him, it was either going to be Greg Kinnear or Peter Sarsgaard. And the studio wanted Greg. So, I cast Greg and we went up to Montreal together and we were doing page turns.

[00:06:47] Greg and Hayden and I, we were four weeks from shooting. And then Greg's agent called and said, Greg can't do the movie. I said, what are you talking about? And his wife wanted him to come home. So, he had to go home. So, you know, we're dead. So, I pick up the phone and I call Sarsgaard. And I said, hi, this is the asshole who didn't cast you. And I need you to come save my life. And it's that simple.

[00:07:16] And he did. And he's the reason I have a directing career. His performance in that movie is the reason I got hired a second time. There's no question about it. Chloe was the only person we went out to for the part of Caitlin. Melanie Linsky came in and read and just blew everyone away. I went out to my dear friend, the director, Ted Kacheff, to play Marty Peretz. And he said yes.

[00:07:42] And then I begged Hank Azaria and begged Steve Zahn. And they said yes. And everyone else read for it. Mrs. Duke was Caroline Goodall. She was not in the original cut of the movie. She was in the reshoots that we did seven months later. And I happened to know her because our kids went to school together. Our kids were in first grade together.

[00:08:09] And so, you know, yeah, she was in Schindler's List. I'm going to beg her. So I did. And she came up and just crushed. That's awesome. Yeah. And I agree with you. Peter Sarsgaard is just incredible. Erica, should I? I want to jump and ask the Sarsgaard question. Yeah. Yeah. I think Chuck Lane's quiet stoicism just provides the energy and the driving energy of this movie. Right. Which is this weird irony because he's so quiet and stoic.

[00:08:38] I'm wondering whose choice was that for that character? Was that Peter bringing it? Was that your choice? And why that such specific kind of character direction? Well, here's the thing. When I say that I was extremely lucky on that movie, I was in a million different ways. But one of the ways in which I was lucky was that Hayden is so well suited to that part. Because he was sort of uncomfortable in his own skin in the way that Glass is.

[00:09:08] Similarly, Peter was perfect for that part. Because the relationship between Chuck and Steve is the same relationship between Peter and Hayden. In other words, Peter was never going to be a movie star. He was just a great actor. He had the goods. He had the goods. And here's Hayden, who's the movie star, but was far less proven as an actor.

[00:09:38] And that's the dynamic between Chuck and Steven. So it just kept playing out in exactly the right way. One of the things about directing is you find what your actors can do and what they can't do. I still don't know if there's anything that Peter can't do. I mean, he's really extraordinary. But he has one acting default that we had to work on. He gets jazz hands.

[00:10:09] He talks like this sometimes. Which was not right for the character. It's very natural to him. But he was doing this. And there's this one scene. You'll know it because you know the movie so well. It's a long shot across the office where Hayden comes out of having spoken to his friends. And Peter comes up to him and says, okay, we got to go to Bethesda. And it's all in one shot.

[00:10:37] And I said to Peter, you have to do the entire scene with your arms crossed. You cannot move your hands. You cannot. He said, what are you talking about? I said, your arms are going to be folded like this the entire scene. And so what happened was because the energy couldn't come out through his hands, it just sort of coming out through his voice. And he's so intense with Hayden in that scene. He's so good.

[00:11:03] And then at the very end, as a little bit of a fuck you to me, he goes like that to Hayden. At the very end, it's sort of a punctuation, an exclamation point. But Peter's awesome. He's so contained. And there's just like, I mean, as a viewer, I think that your fury is like building and building and building. And you can see it just kind of quietly building and building behind his eyes.

[00:11:26] But it's clear that he feels like he has to be completely stoic and not show any sign of emotion or that he's leaning one way or another. I mean, you can make the argument that the second half of the movie is him saying, Steve, Steve, just like that. Okay. So the trick of the movie is I felt very strongly that if we made this movie about Steve and Glass, people would want to kill themselves at the end.

[00:11:53] So it was the first time I've ever seen this, much less done it. It required a little bit of sleight of hand. But the first half of the movie, the protagonist is Steven Glass. And the second half of the movie, the protagonist is Chuck Lee. And there's a very specific moment when it transfers, which is the call from Forbes Digital where you realize, okay, this guy is toast, to quote Steve Zahn.

[00:12:18] And so I was sitting down with my DP, Mandy Walker, who's gone on to fame and fortune, and she's remarkable. I was so lucky to have her. But I said to Mandy, how can we visually communicate to the audience that something has shifted? That halfway through the movie, truth, which was in under threat for the first half of the movie, truth is starting to take hold.

[00:12:45] And she suggested, why don't we shoot the first half of the movie handheld when we're in the office? And after that phone call, everything's on sticks or on dolly. So that subconsciously, you're communicating to the audience, oh, truth is starting to take root here. And so that's what we did. And no one's ever commented on it, which means that it worked. I don't want the audience thinking about it while they're watching it. I just want them feeling something and not knowing why.

[00:13:14] But the movie becomes Chuck's movie in the second half. And we were telling it that way specifically. Support for Seattle Nice comes from Hearth Protection, offering commercial protective services with trauma-informed, community-oriented, and evidence-based physical security practices,

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[00:14:10] I want to go back to the title of the movie. Sorry. Why do you hate the title? It was the title of Buzz Visinger's story. It was the title of the article. I always thought it was kind of a TV movie title. I thought it was a little snarky, like a little too clever by half. What would you have called it? Did you have a lot? Ideally, I would have called it A Million Little Pieces.

[00:14:39] But that got taken. Yeah. Or I would have called it Byline, which I thought was just sharper. But the studio loved the title Shattered Glass. I will never know why. I mean, it feels, you know, it's hard to sort of imagine an alternate, you know, history. As we call that to me. But I bet, you know, Are You Mad at Me was our title for this podcast. Because that would have been a great title.

[00:15:03] And then we had, on our first poster, the cell line of the movie was Read Between the Lies. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. Which I really liked. And then it became, he would do anything for a great story. Which... That sounds a little more salacious than... Yeah, it sounded vaguely gay. Like, here's Peter, here's Hayden, and he'd do anything to get a great story.

[00:15:33] Okay, fine. Whatever gets butts in seats. Like, I didn't particularly love that. You know, we've noted a few Watergate references in the movie. The last scene in particular, when Sarge Guard Chuck Lane is like, okay, here's what we're going to do. That seems a lot like Dustin Hoffman on the phone when he, count to ten and I'll hang up. Seems direct. I actually think that the guy at the Bethesda Hotel,

[00:16:01] who is kind of a Knight Wadishman, or he's kind of Frank Church, and like, just a kind of working class guy, is kind of one of the dominoes. I'm wondering if those were intentional homages, and was all the President's Men in your mind when you were making this movie? Not only was all the President's Men in my mind, the night before we started shooting, I rented a ballroom in the hotel we were all staying at in Montreal, and I screened all the President's Men. Oh, sweet.

[00:16:31] And I said to the cast and to the crew, I'm not as talented as Alan Pakula, and we don't have a canvas this big, but this is where I'm setting the bar in terms of how good I think we need to be. And it was absolutely on my mind. It was on my mind when I made Breach after this. I just have a reverence for that movie. If you're going to make a movie that examines an American institution,

[00:17:02] you're going to run headlong into all the President's Men. There was actually a moment five years ago during the first Trump administration, I made a mini-series for Showtime called The Comey Rule, which was about Trump's firing of Comey. And I had this idea. There was going to be a call with Jeff Daniels playing Comey where he had to take notes really fast. And I said, how well do you know all the President's Men?

[00:17:33] He said, you mean the moment where Dustin Hoffman is writing so fast that he goes like that and just lets the phone fall? I said, yes. He said, let's go, let's go. Everybody knows that movie. Everybody reveres that movie, and I'll never stop paying homage to that movie. I think it's top 10 all time. One of the things, I mean, I think that we're both in awe of about this movie is just that there's all these little details. And I almost feel like talking about all the President's Men, in some ways, I mean,

[00:18:01] it's almost easier to make a movie with a fairly big budget about a huge world historical event. And you had a much smaller budget and you were writing about the New Republic and Forbes Digital, which barely existed at the time. Can you just talk a little bit about some of the tricks you use to make journalism seem interesting and not just guys going through phone books and staring at reporter notebooks? Well, look, I think everything in writing

[00:18:31] is just making people care. Right? I mean, screenwriting is an intellectual exercise that's designed to elicit an emotional response. If I write a script and I give it to a friend and that friend says, this is the smartest script I've ever read, I have failed a thousand percent because I'm hitting them here and not in their gut. When you write a script that works, people react emotionally. They say, I love this. I was so scared. I was so sad. I can't believe you killed that guy. Like they, that's how they respond.

[00:19:01] And so the goal here was again, to shoot that emotional story about the most popular kid in high school getting taken down by the least popular kid in high school. And if you think of it that way, everybody has a rooting interest from the start. And once they care, I don't just mean once they're curious, I mean, once they're invested, like, God, I hope Dorothy gets home. God, I hope Chief Brody catches that shark. God,

[00:19:31] I hope Rocky wins that fight. Once they're on, in that, right? Then, you can't possibly bore them because they want to know what happens. And I, I have always believed people are really interested in process. I was a huge fan of The Wire. And when you watch The Wire, there's this weird feeling of, I've never been in those projects before. But I totally believe

[00:20:00] that's exactly how people behave. Like, that just feels true. I don't know why. I've never been there. But it feels so authentic that I believe it's true. And most people have not been inside the newsroom of The New Republic. But I knew I could get that rhythm right. I knew I could make it look and sound and feel and smell like it actually does. And that if people feel like they are getting a peek

[00:20:30] at actual process, they tend to find it really interesting. Yeah, I'll say real quickly, I lived in D.C. at that time and wasn't journalism. But the thing that really has such veracity is that Doritos party in the D.C. apartment. That is a Washington, D.C. 20-something party. It was 100% on point. Yes. Yeah, I mean, that's, I got to know everyone who worked with Stephen Glass.

[00:20:59] I saw how they behaved. I mean, look, when I talk about process, there's so much about the movie Apollo 13 that I love. But my favorite scene in Apollo 13 is when they dump all that crap on the table and say, we got to make, we got to fit all these things together to create the oxygen scrubber. And how are we going to do it? And then you just watch a bunch of guys with their sleeves rolled up like trying to make a sock fit into a roll of tape, right? And that's process.

[00:21:29] Now, if I were to tell you that that would be a completely compelling scene, you'd say, how? Well, but it's a process and people are really interested. I'm just like, so thrilled to hear you say that because I'm a, you know, in my non-shattered glass life, I'm a process-based journalist. Are you? And like, and yeah, and there's always that debate about like, is it the outcome or is it the process? And I'm very, I'm very interested in process myself, which is maybe, you know, I don't know if that's, I mean, this is a movie about journalism,

[00:21:59] so I'm naturally, you know, attracted to it. But, but maybe that's why, you know, I find every little moment so compelling. And particularly when they're in the Forbes office when we shift over there and they're like looking through the phone books, they're rolling across the floor. I mean, it's just, it just feels, you know, I've never been in that kind of a newsroom specifically, but it feels so true to life. Erica always points to the scene where Chuck goes and takes down all the, looks at all the pictures of all the covers and takes them down and needs to go process through every story Steve ever did.

[00:22:29] Yeah. That was a really important one to me. And for that, I thank Marty Peretz because what I wanted in that scene, there were two things that were really important to me. First was the obvious that he's doing the work of looking through all these articles. And I knew there'd be a moment where we would hear 16 tracks of Steven Glass's voice and Chuck would just lose his mind. But the most important thing about that for me is that he doesn't leave them on the floor. He puts the magazine

[00:22:58] back together. He puts those covers back and it's okay. Now I know what the monster is and now we're going to rebuild. And I couldn't have done it without the real magazines and I could only get the real magazines because Marty gave me permission to use them. Same thing with the giant recreations of the magazines on the walls. If we didn't have that, we would have had to create it. We didn't have the money. We were close to having the money.

[00:23:27] So my debt to him is massive. You know, we know that the interviews, the big scene where they're on the phones and everybody hits the recorder at the same time as I said, and we talked to Penenberg. It seems like a lot of that was taken, the script was taken directly from that. But this movie does have such veracity in terms of how journalists work, think, in the newsroom. How did you get that? Were you like in deep and interviewing Michael Kelly and Chuck Lane? Sure. How did you get that stuff?

[00:23:57] It's just so real. Well, here's the thing. We are what we do. In other words, our actions define us. And, you know, if you look at the way Michael Kelly or Chuck Lane behaved, that tells you who they are as human beings. So hang out around them long enough and you get a sense of what they would do in a given circumstance. And, you know, there was nothing in there in that movie that I hadn't double sourced. Nothing.

[00:24:27] I interviewed everybody except Stephen because he wouldn't talk to me at that moment. But there was, I actually interviewed Tucker Carlson who had worked there and Tucker gave me the greatest line ever that he said Stephen had said about Chuck. And I thought, okay, that's going in the movie. But I couldn't get it double sourced. So I couldn't put it in. I couldn't say I know this was said.

[00:24:58] Because only Tucker Carlson had said it. And I can't say the line because I don't know that it happened. Okay. Sorry. But I also was able to I contacted the editor of Los Angeles Magazine and just asked if I could sit in on some staff meetings. And they let me. It was a guy named Kit Rackless. Great guy. And so I sat in and I listened to how they talk and I listened to how they get

[00:25:27] each other's shit. And I listened to what they're snobby about and what they're not. And then I just remembered what it was like to be 25. But 25 and writing articles that the president of the United States is going to read. That's just too much responsibility for a 25-year-old kid ready for it. And this person clearly was not.

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[00:26:33] Download the Ikes app today or head on over to Ikes.com. That's Ikes.com. Yeah, I assume you sat in on pitch meetings too because man, that pitch meeting scene is 100%. Oh, so infuriating. I mean, it's, you know, as journalists, I think we tend to think that Stephen Glass is just like a pure villain because we know what happens at the end and we've known people like that. And so it's hard for me to see

[00:27:02] the humanity in him in this movie. And so it's really interesting to hear you talk about like why he did the things that he did. But yeah, man, this is what the other just on a person he gave. I need to get a new car and the other day I test drove a Miata. And I thought, oh my God, can I really do this? I want to meet. Great cars. They're great cars. Are they great cars? They're very fun. And they're pretty reliable. So I hear, I'm not being paid by them. I just, you know,

[00:27:32] stick Miata's are fun little cars. Kids are gone. Go for it. Wait. I feel like we always end up talking about cars. You always end up talking. I know, I know. This is my fault. I'm the one who brought it. I think our favorite scene is the big confrontation between Caitlin and Chuck in the lobby of the building that the New Republic is in. And it's just, you see Peter Sarsgaard finally, you know, all that tension. He lets it out,

[00:28:02] kind of. And she defends Stephen and then you can kind of see her change her mind. Then Chuck leaves and she's standing there and her hair flies up, which is Josh's favorite moment. That is my favorite moment when that wind sweeps up under the door and blah, ah! It just, Chloe, Chloe, yay. Like it just, she ignores it. It kind of, her hair pops up, pops. Anyway, sorry. I just love that. I'm wondering, and so then, and then the next scene after that is, you know, the apology letter has been written. Chuck shows up at his office and, you know,

[00:28:32] and everybody applauds. What do you think, because I had a debate actually with my partner about this last night. What do you think happens between those two scenes? What is, what is she doing? Okay. So let me give you the history of that scene first. Okay. Because that scene was not in the original script or in the original cut of the movie. Scene didn't exist. We, I'll tell you the whole story of the reshoots of that movie. None of the high school stuff

[00:29:01] was in the original script. None of it. We had a different narrative device, which was, it was the aftermath of the correspondence dinner and 10 people who worked with Stephen Glass were talking direct address to camera and sort of narrating us through the movie. And that's what I shot. We shot all that narration stuff in one day. We did 56 setups in one day.

[00:29:30] Still a personal best. Of course, they didn't wind up in the movie, so I shouldn't be patted on the back for it. But that's what we cut together and the studio always hated the narrative device. Hated and wanted me to take it out. So I asked for a meeting with the studio and I had all the biggies at Lionsgate at this one long table. And I said, okay, I think we have a good movie. I don't think we have a great movie. I don't think we're going to blow anybody's doors off. That's on me. I tried to get it there. I didn't. I apologize.

[00:30:00] But I believe that if you will let me go shoot two and a half more days, I can get us there. And I took them through this idea of Stephen Glass going back to his old high school and being our narrator so that the entire movie turns into a Stephen Glass pitch. That you get sucked in by Stephen and then you find out it was all imagination. And that's what happened to everybody who we ever worked with. So I pitched

[00:30:30] like Stephen Glass, I pitched my ass off. And they could have told me to go jump in the light but they didn't. They said, go ahead. I said, well, as long as we're going up to Montreal, what I'd really like to do is get Chuck and Caitlin into a scene because you see him walking in to read to have that apology letter scene and she's applauding for him and you don't know why.

[00:30:59] And so I wrote that scene which is my favorite scene too because it's the one I hate to say it it's the one where my voice is the most clear in the entire movie where he says it's indefensible don't you know that? Like that's very me. I mean, it's very me too. I tear up every time. We cry every time we see that scene. Every year. We had shot in September and now we're back there in March and there's Chloe and there's Peter

[00:31:29] and they just killed it. They were amazing and I didn't give Peter a lot of direction in that scene. What I did say to him was that one moment where you say he's fired okay I want to sense that you've never raised your voice before and just a moment where you just sort of look around like oh that's what it sounds like when you yell and and he did it and Chloe

[00:31:59] is just Chloe and that wind that you referred to it's March in in Montreal and we're playing it as August in DC it was 20 below zero out there and so Peter goes out in you know just a jacket and the wind came blowing in and she's just wearing like a little hoodie it was freezing and she just hung in there she was just amazing

[00:32:29] okay so long winded setup he says go up there and read every article including the ones that were written when Mike was here and I think she did I think she went up there and read every article which by the way they all did all of Stephen's co-workers they had to go back and revisit every one of those brilliant articles and say oh my god what if none of this was true and that's what she did and I think that's why she's spearheading

[00:32:59] the applause the other trick about the applause scene is Peter had to look at the thing and smile right he had to look at the letter and and he said will you write something down that will make me smile so I said okay Peter had dated Chloe and right after Peter dated Chloe he dated this woman named Mallory

[00:33:30] and so when he sits down to look at the the apology letter I had just written on a piece of paper Mallory's in the next group and he just kind of smiled and then played the scene and it was just a private joke between him and me where was the opening night I kind of want to know about opening night you know the first viewing and when people the public saw for the first time you know what do you remember about that night and how did it did you know you were sitting on this kind of gem of a movie

[00:34:00] and yeah what was that night like so we decided to open at the Telluride Film Festival and I had never been at a film festival before much less have a movie in one and it's my first you know movie as a director so I'm pretty excited and Chloe was there I think Peter was there I don't think Hayden was there Chuck Lane was there and the producers were there and my

[00:34:29] editor was there and my editor's assistant was there so you know you're walking around Telluride and there's Ken Burns and there's Stephen Sondheim it's incredible like what am I doing here and we sit down to watch the movie and Gus Van Dance over there and Leonard Maltin is two seats away from me and the first reel comes up and we've got them we've got them I can just feel it

[00:34:59] they totally get it they're laughing where they're supposed to they're leaning in then it cuts over to the second reel and all of a sudden in the center of the screen there's this 10 foot wide swath where the focus is soft and I go and it's just not getting better like it's just soft I send my editorial assistant back up there then we cut to the third reel everything's fine again fourth reel

[00:35:29] there's the 10 foot wide soft middle what had happened was you know there were two projectors and there was something wrong with the lens of the second projector so on reels two and four the middle of the screen was just muddy and I was so devastated I was I was I was speechless and I went up to Leonard Maltin I said

[00:35:59] I need to talk to you about what just happened he said yeah I thought you just shot it in soft focus for some reason I said no no we didn't like Gus Van Zand didn't know what the hell was going on nobody knew what the hell was going on and I thought we're done we're dead it's over the head of the festival was so mortified he accompanied me to our next two screenings he previewed the

[00:36:28] movie at our next two theaters sat there and watched the movie before the screening to guarantee me that it wouldn't happen again because it had just been this one projector and of course it didn't happen again and we were we were loved in Telluride and I felt I felt confident that we were we were gonna get the response we wanted what I didn't anticipate was that

[00:36:57] journalists would be so flattered that someone had made this movie that they would take it to heart and just be grateful I didn't see that come and that was what a gift that was that was an extraordinary thing and to this day everywhere I go if there's a journalist there they want to talk about that movie and and and so many kids in journalism school have been taught the movie and

[00:37:27] I've spoken at a bunch of journalism schools and I've spoken you know to high schoolers who see that movie in their journalism class I didn't think that was coming but but what a blessing to make a movie that matters to people yeah I have to say Eric and I were deep deep working journalists when we saw this movie we independently saw the coming attraction and we were just sucked in immediately saw the movie together and could not believe this movie had been made

[00:37:56] and were overjoyed I mean it's just a famous night between in our friendship of Erica sitting there and scrolling her hand saying roll it again like yeah we were gleeful you know I I wanted to ask you know if you have a personal theory of Stephen Glass you know the whole time you know we're just you know especially as journalists we're just wanting this guy to get caught wanting this guy to get caught wanting the truth to prevail and we both remember Stephen Glass as a you know

[00:38:25] as a writer and I remember reading him and I guess I didn't notice that these stories seem too good to be true as a reader but it seems like an editor would catch it I mean just curious you know if you have a theory of why he lied so much and do you have a theory about why he wasn't caught for so long the second one is much easier he wasn't caught because he was benefiting everybody around him if you're the

[00:38:54] new republic and you think about who the audience of the new republic is who's who's your readership they'd love to hear stories like this they'd love to hear stories about how you put a bunch of young conservatives together for their spring breakdown at a conference and they're going to behave abominably which by the way turned out to be true not in the way that Stephen Glass described it but he what it's confirmation bias he was saying

[00:39:24] something that validated what they wanted to be true and so why would you look deeper why if you're a magazine would you say no I'm gonna I need to regard this with suspicion it confirms your political worldview and if you're a reader you know people used to fight to get the new republic magazine when it would come into the office everyone would like elbow each other to be the first one to read it because

[00:39:53] it articles like that made you think yeah I'm on the right side of history so that's why he didn't get caught I mean he also completely inoculated himself by being so much tougher on other people's articles that he became the guy they were all afraid of like it would never occur to you that that guy would be making shit up because if you get a fact wrong he jumps down your throat and I think you know on the well-worn commentary track on my DVD of

[00:40:23] this movie which I don't know if people can still get a copy of that you know I don't know if it's on the internet or not but one thing Chuck Lane mentions is that you know this guy was everybody's friend and he ingratiated himself and you show that so well in the movie like with the scene with the Diet Coke that he puts in the freezer for the character Amy why would you think that your friend and you know your comrade would lie to you of course doesn't everything come down to those relationships and what's your theory of why

[00:40:53] he did it do you have one yeah like I said I think it's I blame it on Island Park and and the pressure he felt he was under and and my my guess I don't know this but my guess is he was probably doing okay as a journalist and then had a deadline coming and put a fact in that he couldn't verify and not only did he get away with it but people lauded him for it and so now he felt

[00:41:22] pressure to come up with something great for the next article and so he invented a whole person and didn't get caught and in fact people said oh my god how do you find these people and then pretty soon he couldn't write a normal article because how could he compete with himself you answered this a little bit with talking about how this is taught now in journalism classes but you know in addition to that I think this movie you know was not a huge hit when it came out but it's had like comeback

[00:41:52] moment after comeback moment and I think it is quite well known now I mean certainly among journalists but you know in general I it's been around for more than 20 years and it's a really long tale and I wonder if you have thoughts about why that is well I think the performances are excellent and I think the story is really good I mean I we just got out of its way it's a it's a great story I think everybody knows a Stephen

[00:42:22] Glass and everybody knows a Chuck Lee and everybody understands the dynamic between the more popular and the less popular and the goal was always that even in a movie as talky as this if you turned off the sound could you still follow it emotionally and and I think we achieved that so I think it's I think it satisfies people because because justice is done

[00:42:51] in the end not in a cheesy way but in in sort of a in a more meaningful way and I think you know it's like watching the History Channel like you sit there for an hour you know the Nazis are gonna lose right they lose at the end of every fucking show on the History Channel they win we got to hold on to that thought right now by the way we do we do but my point is there's something satisfying like if you're watching History Channel and it's got something to do

[00:43:21] with the Nazis I'm in because by the end of the hour everything good's gonna happen yeah and and I think not to compare anyone in Shattered Glass to Nazis but in in Shattered Glass truth wins in the end and it does it in a quiet way you've been involved in some super successful projects Hunger Games Captain Phillips where does Shattered Glass rate for you as a project after all these years like in in your in your

[00:43:50] work where do you kind of hold this one my favorite by far by far if if if if aliens came to earth and said okay Billy give us one piece of work that you feel defines you I'd give them this movie for sure I'm really proud of a lot of the movies I've worked on and I'm really grateful to the cast and crew of all of them and they there certainly were bigger hits than this but this is

[00:44:20] this is by far the most personal thing that I ever got to make you know when you make a movie it's a little bit like raising a kid it takes about 20 years to know if you did your job well or enough and and we're now past that 20 year mark and and the way people still respond to that movie I mean it's it's got its own fucking podcast like damn I said then it must have hit a chord with somebody and yeah this is the one for me

[00:44:51] Billy Ray thank you so much for being on our podcast we're so honored to have you and we love this movie thank you look when you tell stories for a living you fail in public when when you have a movie that people don't go see or the reviews are bad you cannot run through it's it's rough but when you make something that people actually respond to and I don't always measure that in box office

[00:45:20] when a movie is a success in the way that this movie is a success it's so humbling it's so gratifying it's it's deeply meaningful I'm not saying that making movies is as hard as coal mining it's not but you do have to work and you do have to put in a lot of hours and you do have to pour yourself in and and to see people respond to it it's it's

[00:45:50] really touching for me so I can't express how much it means to me that you guys are doing this show and although I cannot understand why I wasn't your first fucking guest like who the hell is you before me that's a please turn to Penenberg okay whatever you got to me eventually you interviewed you know the three grips okay we needed some practice you know yeah we did it again yeah yeah I'm like when I heard there was this podcast

[00:46:20] I literally I said to Penenberg who the hell are they interviewing if not me we were intimidated really this is like our this is like we think this movie is you know ordinary people like we think this is the movie so let's it is not as good as ordinary people but but Alvin Sargent was always a goal for me and and and by the way Alvin Sargent worked uncredited on all the presidents men but anyway my point is I'm deeply grateful and and it's very meaningful that you're

[00:46:50] doing this and if ever I can be of any help to you in any way please let me know