{image1}We've all heard about the controversy recently at the New York Times, where a young journalist was caught faking the details. But that was nothing compared to what Stephen Glass pulled off at The New Republic a couple years ago.
The story is told pitch perfectly in Billy Ray's directorial debut, "Shattered Glass."
Told by Glass himself -- played by Hayden Christensen -- who is addressing students in the high school journalism class we he had sat just a few years earlier, "Shattered Glass" is a lesson in trust and ethics.
Glass is a journalism phenom and by the time he's 24, he's not only written for a long list of magazines, including Rolling Stone, he's an editor at the prestigious New Republic, often called the in-flight magazine on Air Force One.
Glass' insightful investigative stories are fun, exciting and interesting and he's the envy of the entire staff, including of his colleague Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard), who becomes editor when Michael Kelly (Hank Azaria) is fired in a controversial move by meddling publisher Marty Peretz (Ted Kotcheff).
Like Michael Jackson, Glass is handicapped by skyrocketing success arriving at an early age and his personality encourages him to want to be the center of attention and fuels his desire to please his colleagues, his editor, his readers.
This is a dangerous cocktail, especially when one of his stories looks pretty suspicious to a crew of Internet journalists, who begin to dig deeper and find that there are more than a few holes in Glass' riotous tale of a hackers convention where one young computer whiz has inked a top-dollar deal to do computer security for a company whose computers were hacked by the whiz.
Soon, Glass unwittingly pits The New Republic staff against its editor as investigations into Glass' previous stories begin.
Based on a true story - and an article by Buzz Bissinger -- this engaging film interweaves questions of truth, journalistic ethics, trust, lies and character assassination.
It's also a fascinating film to watch and the entire cast - which also includes Chloe Sevigny, Luke Kirby, Rosario Dawson and Melanie Lynskey -- is great, partially because even in the end, we're never really sure what to think about a guy like Chuck Lane or indeed about Glass himself.
"Shattered Glass" opens Fri., Nov. 14 at Landmark's Oriental Theatre.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
