Shattered Glass

As of this point we’ve watched a little more than half of the movie in class. The main character, Stephen Glass, really comes off fake. He tries to always appear humble to the point where it looks almost pathetic and weak. He acts awkwardly with co-workers almost seemingly on purpose to be more approachable. One part of the movie he shares a story with a co-worker about getting slipped the tongue by some congressman’s representative which obviously seemed out of place. In the movie Stephen Glass submits a fake article to be published in The National Republic. He made up some unbelievable story about a hacker convention and some fantastical teenage hacker who signed a deal for millions to work as a security advisor for an unknown mega corporation. What I don’t understand is that in the movie they discuss the process of how a paper gets reviewed numerous times before it hits print. Supposedly the article goes through numerous legal fact checkers before ever hitting national print so I don’t understand how Stephen Glass’s paper made it through all the proper channels without ever being questioned in it’s authenticity. I also don’t understand the main character’s thought process. When cornered by his editor about certain discrepancies in his story he just makes up more and more lies expecting not to get called on this new information. When the editor asked about where they ate he didn’t make up a decent lie like “I don’t remember, I was busy writing my notes while they drove”. Instead he just says the place is right down the street as if that would be the end of the investigation even though that fact could so easily be checked. The last thing that got my attention was how much Hayden Christianson looked exactly like Anakin Skywalker because of how the pale makeup was used to make his character looked distressed.