Billy Ray and Peter Sarsgaard

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It chronicles the fall of The New Republic's specious, wildly imaginative fabler Stephen Glass, and its implications on both the ethics of journalism and the power of the pen.  </div> <bR> <div> I recently caught up with writer/director Billy Ray and actor Peter Sarsgaard, in Chicago to present the film.  Sarsgaard memorably and meticulously plays Chuck Lane, suspicious editor to Hayden Christiansen's illusory wordsmith, Stephen Glass. We quickly got down to brass tacks on deconstructing the real and reel worlds of Glass himself, The New Republic and what the hell is actually wrong with commercial movies today.  We also took a moment to posit a very relevant contemporary dilemma-why don't people today believe anything they read?</div> <bR> <div> <B>Lee Shoquist, ReelMovieCritic.com:</B>  Before any of the trouble with Stephen Glass went down, were you guys familiar with his writing and had you read any of it? </div> <bR> <div> <B>Peter Sarsgaard:</B>  I had not.  </div> <bR> <div> <B>Billy Ray:</B>  No. Initially there was an article in Vanity Fair about his work. And then HBO optioned that and hired me. This was initially supposed to be an HBO movie. While I was writing it, there was an administration turnover there….</div> <bR> <div> LS:  I'm interested to find out as to what role, if any, the real-life counterparts had in shaping your screenplay.  Did you have associations with any of them?  </div> <bR> <div> BR: Yes. When you sit down and meet the real people, including the late Michael Kelley, the thing that's so striking about them is that they're so smart. That fascinates me. It fascinated me then and it continues to fascinate me.  It's amazing that an atmosphere existed in which this sort of thing was possible.  </div> <bR> <div> PS:  I talked to Chuck Lane on the telephone.  Not extensively, just enough to sort of gain a perspective on things.</div> <bR> <div> LS:  More for perspective than for building any kind of likeness.</div> <bR> <div> PS:  I was not going to build a likeness around him.  If he were sitting next to me, I don't think there'd be any mistaking the two.  We don't resemble each other.  </div> <bR> <div> BR: Peter wasn't doing an imitation.  </div> <bR> <div> PS:  Yeah. It's not important when somebody is not in the public eye. In talking to him, he told me when Glass first came up to him, he thought almost immediately that there was a possibility that he had cooked the whole thing, because Forbes had such a preponderance of evidence against him.   Obviously we couldn't do that for the movie.  </div> <bR> <div> BR:  Several of the people who lived this story served as consultants on the movie. We had detailed comments from all of them when it was in script form. And we just showed the movie to the New Republic two weeks ago, and of course I was sweating that one out, because if they had come back and said we got it wrong, then you really feel like a fraud. But as it happens, they're now co-hosting our DC premiere. They initially were very much in crash position for about a year knowing this movie was being made.  But they've decided to rally behind it.  </div> <bR> <div> PS:  The level of authenticity is really beyond- like the part where (Glass) talks about this guy, `and he's got his tongue down my throat,' and I was like `what?'  That sounds like Billy writing, and I remember that it was one of the first things I said to you - that was my favorite part of the script.  And I remember you said, `I wish I could claim it, but it was actually from the mouth of Stephen Glass,' who wrote it and it just never got published in the magazine because Michael Kelly thought it would be bad for his reputation.  </div> <bR> <div> BR:  Michael Kelly would have been thrilled to see this project go away.  But he made the movie possible. His desire to see the story told right outweighed the desire to refuse cooperation on the movie, and he was enormously cooperative.  Except I don't think he ever would have seen it.  It was such a painful time in his life. Such a black mark on his record as a journalist. As a matter of fact, when I wrote the script it took him two years to read it.  </div> <div>   </div> <div> The (New Republic staff) were initially- they were not openly hostile, but none of them were enthusiastic to talk about it.  But once they saw that I was trying to approach it like a journalist and I really just wanted to get the facts, there was this enormous reservoir of pain and anger that they felt against Stephen, and I guess disillusionment is a better word.  They couldn't stop talking about it.  It was just story after story. They made my job very easy in that regard. They had a lot to say about it.  </div> <bR> <div> LS:  Dealing with this subject matter, there must have been a large amount of pressure in the writing stage to make things letter-perfect and not "cook" any of the details. </div> <div>  </div> <div> R:  Yes. There's always that pressure, and I think that's true particularly with a place like HBO, which was initially developing the material, because they're so known for their docudramas. But I put that pressure on myself as well, because when you're writing a story about people who are still alive, and fraudulence in journalism, you can't be fraudulent in the way you tell it. So I think we always thought that we had to apply the standards of journalism and live up to them.</div> <bR> <div> LS:  The first half of the film we're convinced that Stephen is the protagonist, and then things cleverly switch and we're identifying really with Lane, and it becomes his story. Talk about that shift in focus and perspective, and your approach to having Lane emerge and really drive the second half of the film.  </div> <bR> <div> BR:  That was just a screenwriting choice, and I've never done that before in any script I've ever worked on, where the point of view of the movie shifts halfway through. Clearly, if you make a movie about Stephen Glass, by the end of the movie everybody's going to want to kill…  So you have to pick a point in the movie at which it becomes Chuck Lane's film. For me it was the moment that conference call takes place between Forbes, Glass, Lane and the New Republic.</div> <bR> <div> We started to shoot the movie differently after that point.  Up to that point, every scene shot in the New Republic office was with a hand-held camera.  And from that point on, the camera was always on sticks, because Chuck has sort of taken control, to the extent that you can take control of a story that's about such a renegade like Stephen Glass.  It was for the audience to understand that they were now stepping into the story through a different window and they were going to be seeing the movie from that point on from that point of view.  </div> <bR> <div> PS:  I remember when we first talked about that and we discussed how you were going to shoot the movie.  And you always were interested in the basic tools of cinema language; that you were going to never gild the lily aesthetically.  It was like using old-fashioned tools to get an audience engaged in a way that was not conscious.  </div> <bR> <div> LS:  The film becomes all the more fascinating because it avoids offering any overt psychological explanations for Glass' psychological motivations and exactly why he did what he did.  </div> <bR> <div> BR:  The most consistent criticism that I get about this movie is that we don't tell the "why?"  That people come away from the movie and they haven't been taught why Stephen Glass did what he did. When I was writing the script, people would ask me if I was going to put something in there that would explain why he did what he did.  And my feeling was always, and Peter and I talked about this endlessly, that if you're really applying standards of journalism to the movie, then you can't put anything in the movie that you can't verify.  I don't know why Stephen Glass did what he did.  I can't throw some half-assed pop-psychology explanation at it.  How can I do that?  And I'm not even sure.  </div> <bR> <div> PS:  That's confirmed even more so because you took out scenes- you took out the scene with (Lane) and (his) wife.  I think you have the movie you intend to make and you have the movie you actually made. And when you looked at the movie that you'd actually made, it confirmed something even more so.  It was like, `The little bits that I do have in there, have to go.'</div> <bR> <div> R:  Yeah. I don't know if it's even rational why he did what he did.  So how on earth could I possibly explain why?  We all have theories, and the movie hints at certain pressures to which he was clearly exposed.  And to be honest, that wasn't what interested me.  What interested me more was, how did he do it?  How did he get away with it?  What kind of work atmosphere could have possibly allowed him to do it, but be defended for having done it?  That seemed to me to be much more interesting.  </div> <bR> <div> The experience of watching this film is like a thriller, though it's clearly not shot like a thriller at all.  In a thriller you're wondering, `Is a body going to hit the ground?' When you watch this movie, the thing that you're rooting for is truth.  Is the truth going to triumph or get strangled?  And that to me is so much more interesting than why Stephen Glass decided to cook the pieces that he cooked.  </div> <bR> <div> LS: You've got several actors on board in this film that are rather non-traditional casting for a drama like <B>Shattered Glass</B>, especially Steve Zahn and Hank Azaria, are known for their comic abilities.  How did you get them attached?</div> <bR> <div> BR:  In both cases, Hank and Steve initially wanted to play the part of Chuck Lane.  That's what they were pursuing when they read the script.  But I had Peter, and I knew he was going to knock it out of the park.  So the question was how to take these two tremendously talented actors and hold on to them without them playing that one part.  In both cases, it was just a question of begging, really.  I turned to Steve Zahn and said, `Please, I desperately need you in the movie.' And Zahn graciously said yes.  </div> <bR> <div> And then with Hank, it was a slightly different tact.  It was, `Let me be the one director who isn't going to turn to you and ask you to be the comic relief in a movie. Let me invite you to come and do something that you don't get to do very often, where you don't have to play an accent or carry the comic load of the movie, because I know you can do this. And I'll be in your debt eternally.' They both said okay.  </div> <bR> <div> There are so many things about responses we get to the movie that are gratifying.  But one of the things that has been most gratifying is that people re-evaluate what Hank and Steve can do.</div> <bR> <div> LS:  And Rosario Dawson as well.</div> <bR> <div> BR:  Well, Rosario actually came in to read for the part that Chloe (Sevigny) got, and then I definitely wanted Rosario in the movie for a million reasons, and asked her to play the part of what was, at that point, written for a man.  And I said, "If I change this part to a woman, will you come out and work with Steve Zahn for four days?"  And she said yes.  She's just so smart, and a total team player and she just wanted to be in a movie that she thought was going to be good.  </div> <bR> <div> LS:  You said somewhere that you wanted this film to look like it was a film of the early `70s-a period in American cinema that was a watershed in terms of intelligence and integrity. As a screenwriter today, when you reflect back on that time, what was it about that particular era in American film that captured you?     </div> <bR> <div> BR:  Peter can tell you that I could go on for an hour about that one.  I believe that studios then were run more by people than by corporations. And so there was more humanity involved in the process. They let a guy like Coppola, who had not produced hits, go off and handle material as complicated as <B>The Godfather</B>. They had a respect for maverick filmmakers. And it's very hard to do that when your movie is going to cost a hundred million dollars.  </div> <bR> <div> <B>Shattered Glass</B> is very consciously an attempt to mimic the style of those early seventies studio films.  I think those movies had things going for them that today's movies do not. One, they didn't cost a hundred million dollars each, so those movies didn't have to be such broad based in their appeal. They didn't have to be such crowd pleasers that they watered themselves down, which movies today do. I think they had more respect for their audience in those days.  I believe that filmmakers were making movies for people that they assumed read, and were interested in the world around them and didn't want to be lobotomized by action and flash and violence. </div> <bR> <div> LS:  Looking around at the majority of box office hits today, I sometimes wonder how much of that audience base actually exists today, if it even does.  </div> <bR> <div> BR:  I'm sure they do. Every time this movie screens, that audience emerges and comes out. There's this sort of nostalgic fondness for that other era.  People definitely want movies that they can go have coffee and talk about for two hours. And I don't want to flatter myself about being at that level.  I'm not Sydney Pollack or (Francis Ford) Coppola.  I don't have their abilities.  But this is clearly a tip of the cap to those movies.  People respond to this movie on that level.  </div> <bR> <div> S:  Weren't they the ones- like with Michael Cimino- some people would say that the egos ended it all.  But if <B>Heaven's Gate </B>actually came out now, it would be like, `Thank God!  Something interesting!'</div> <div> It's not that (movies) haven't been good.  It's about paying attention. They truly stopped paying attention due to the broad appeal stuff.  </div> <bR> <div> BR:  I think back then there were a group of people who were thinking about the legacy that they were leaving behind as studio heads. And now if you talk to most studio heads, what they're really thinking about is building up titles for their library, and, `It's just a franchise that I can make three sequels out of.' And is this going to mean something when you go to sell the DVD?  If you walk in there with a little movie like this, that's a story driven, character driven, style free exercise, to sell them on the huge commercial upside of a movie like this…   </div> <bR> <div> In every movie, the audience has to be vested in something. There has to be something that they're afraid of; something that they're waiting for. In a movie like this, what's on the table is integrity. It's the integrity of the magazine; the truth itself. That's what's at stake, and it's tough to make that movie make a hundred million dollars.  </div> <bR> <div> LS:  Peter, what's your take as an actor in this "system" today? You've gone back and forth between sort of making a strong mark in the independent films and yet testing the waters in commercial films that have had mixed results.  </div> <bR> <div> PS:  You approach different movies differently.  I do think I have the ability to do an $80 million movie that has a broad appeal and be able to do a decent job - you literally just have to approach it differently, like Johnny Depp just did in <B>Pirates of the Caribbean</B>.  I get handed that material and people say, `Oh, Peter, do this.' And I have to say that actors like Johnny Depp, when you see them get into movies like <B>Pirates</B> and find a way that they don't give up as actors, and rather say, `Okay. I can do broad appeal. I can get creative,' I think that's inspired when you see an actor do that, and I'm interested in doing that too.  Do you know what I mean?  That's really what he's doing.  </div> <bR> <div> I had a situation recently with a film where I felt like, `I totally have a take on this. I can have fun with this.'  And I got on the phone with my agent and I said, `I can kill at this. I know how to do it and have fun with it,' which is the key to big movies like that. I said, `It's a lot different than I'm sure they're expecting. And I don't want to waste my time going into a meeting. How about I just explain to them beforehand, on the phone, that it's going to be a lot different?' So I got on the phone with the casting director and the director, and I explained it to them. And I really tried to say it clearly. `Do you know what I'm talking about and what I plan on doing with this?' And they said, `Yes.' That's really the way I feel most comfortable. And I said, `Do you want it or don't want it?'  And they said, `That's not what we want.' </div> <bR> <div> So I decided that from now on, I can just be honest about what I agree to give them, and if they agree to buy it, then I can do it.  But if they're going to tell me, `We are going to handcuff and chain you, and squirt the glycerin in your eyes because we have to have you crying at that moment,' and all of that, then I know beforehand and I can just (refuse). I'm learning how to deal with it.</div> <bR> <div> LS:  Since the entertainment industry and press always love to pigeonhole actors or put them in clean, easy-to-read boxes, I recently saw such a descriptor attached to your name: "edgy young performer."  What exactly do you think that means?  </div> <bR> <div> PS: That just means that I care about what I do, I guess. I mean, "edgy" is one of those words- does that mean I have stubble?  </div> <bR> <div> BR:  It's one of those convenient buzzwords.  </div> <bR> <div> PS:  Edgy, edgy. I'm interested in doing movies that at least some percentage of which, and it doesn't have to be all of them, have some social meaning, and explore people that we never think about or that we care not to think about, or reveal something. Now I'm also willing to do the kind of movies where you just want to get in the air conditioning for a little while.  But I have to be able to do it with a sense of joy.</div> <bR> <div> I could really get behind what I was saying in <B>Shattered Glass</B>.  That's one of the reasons that it was such a pleasure to act in, because I believed in the things I was saying.  I very easily believed them too. Sometimes it's a much more difficult process to believe what you're saying. Parts of this movie, some of the things I was saying, it was me standing totally behind it.  </div> <bR> <div> LS:  How about with <B>Boys Don't Cry</B>?</div> <bR> <div> PS:  <B>Boys Don't Cry</B> was sort of like taking myself out of my life and getting dropped down in an industrial park in Dallas for a month and a half, losing track of myself, not talking to any of my friends or having anything around that reminded me of me.  You don't make a lot of calls to your parents to talk about your day; you go through a little isolation thing.  And then you get into all the positive things about a guy like that. You don't worry about the punk-rock killer shit.  You go, `I love Chloe (Sevigny, co-star). I love that girl. And I love my job. I rule this town. I'm sheriff of this town, and a benign one, a kindler, gentler one; one that dispenses justice in a way that is fair.  And I'm into having fun, and let's all have fun. And this person is not respecting the fact that I'm a sheriff in this town. And I don't want to have to do what you're making me do, and why are you making me do this?' You have to find a way in like that instead of going, `All right. I'm going to scream at them and wave this gun.' </div> <bR> <div> It's different acting in a movie like <B>K-19</B>. The interesting thing about (that film) is that if you really watch that thing over, people die, a guy vomits, nearly the whole ship goes down, they get saved, Harrison loses all of his hair and the movie is over. That is an independent film. The reason that film did not make the money that everyone wanted it to make is that it was released as a summer movie, there were no women in it, there was barely a scene - all the scenes that had positive energy, you knew the hammer was about to fall. So it had this sense of doom around it the whole time.  </div> <bR> <div> I'm really convinced that there are interesting things in that movie, but it just was not put out there right, in a way. They thought, `Big submarine movie for the summer, like <B>Crimson Tide</B>,' and it was not that. It was a movie about these real people, and this ship nearly went down, they almost died horribly. Some of them did.  It's a blunt film. The story itself I was really interested in. The character I played was really convenient, because I felt out of my element in that movie. I felt a ton of pressure. I'm playing a guy who has never been on a submarine before, acting like he knew what he was doing and was reporting. In a way, it was the easiest role I've ever played, because all I had to do was just acknowledge what was going on.  </div> <bR> <div> LS:  Billy, when you read press that you've done on the film, how accurate would you say it is?  In other words, when you read something about yourself or your film, do you generally find it to be correctly researched and fairly written?</div> <bR> <div> BR:  I want to be careful about the film because I think that journalists care a lot, and I think they want to get it right. I think there's a tremendous amount of integrity out there. Having said that, even in this little miniature experience that I'm having going city to city, I get misquoted all the time and I see fact-checking errors in articles about me. They are little things that don't necessarily affect content. But when you start to chip away at the standards of journalism, and make any piece slightly incredible, you hurt the article itself, you hurt the paper, you hurt the notion of the printed word.  </div> <bR> <div> We've been talking a lot in the last couple days about whether people believe what they read anymore, and clearly they don't.  What does that mean?  What happens to us as a society, as a democracy, if people don't believe what they read anymore?  I'm not talking about an article about a first-time director. People don't believe political articles anymore. People don't believe what they read about the Iraq war anymore. What happened?  How did we get from Woodward and Bernstein in the history of journalism, to this place?  It used to be that the power of the printed word was so great that you could literally take on the president and win as long as you had truth on your side. And now there's a total disregard for the major newspapers of the country. How did that happen? You can't blame it all on Stephen Glass or Jayson Blair, which didn't help.  </div> <bR> <div> LS:  When the media became entertainment. </div> <bR> <div> BR:  Right. It lost its credibility.  </div> <bR> <div> LS:  People viewed it as entertainment. It's not that people stopped watching it, people started watching it more. They just started thinking of it as something different.  </div> <div> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="1" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="591" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 19 WIDTH="587"><div> Lee Shoquist © 2003</div> </tD> </tR> <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 19 WIDTH="587"><div> <A HREF="mailto:info@reelmoviecritic.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="mailto:info@reelmoviecritic.com"><U><U>lee@reelmoviecritic.com</U></U></A></div> </tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>