Q&A
Former New Republic Editor Charles Lane
Charles Lane was the editor of The New Republic from 1997 to 1999. It was during his tenure that Stephen Glass, an associate editor, was fired for wildly fabricating stories in the magazine. A new movie, Shattered Glass, which will be released October 19, tells the story of Glass's downfall and Lane's role in uncovering the young reporter's deceptions. He was interviewed by Gal Beckerman, an assistant editor at CJR, whose review of the movie appears in the September/October issue.
Gal Beckerman: What was your involvement in the making of the film? I understand that you were a consultant.
Charles Lane: It was a very modest role. This goes back several years when the movie started as an HBO project, in late 1998 or early 1999. I didn't have very much to do with it at all until the spring of 1999 when Billy Ray [the writer director] came to Washington and at that point I talked to him for hours about what happened and I showed him around the New Republic offices while nobody was there. And then nothing happened until the spring of 2002 and Billy called me and said they were going to make the film as a theatre release movie. And we worked out an arrangement. I offered them my views on whether the verisimilitude of various parts of the screen play was sufficient. It got down to very small things. What the offices looked like at The New Republic. What I wore. What Steve Glass wore. And you know all the narrative, detailed narrative of the encounter over that weekend. And, you know, I offered them my thoughts about the script generally, which, wisely, they rejected for the most part. I basically advised them on the accuracy of the film and verisimilitude issues, kibitzed with them. But it was useful for Billy to have someone he could just call, and ask what was the median age of the staff and I would go back and calculate that.
Were you paid as a consultant?
Yes.
I am still kind of curious why you decided to get involved with it. It seems like there might be a temptation to detach your name from Stephen Glass's. There are other characters in the film that are given different names. I'm sure you could have done that if you wanted.
Yeah, I don't know. I guess that's right. I mean at a certain point it was clear they were going ahead and doing it. It wasn't like I had the ability to say, 'Hold on there, fellas.' It was to the best interest of all concerned that they have as much input from as many people who are knowledgeable. So that's why I felt I should do it.
And your first impressions after seeing the film?
I thought it was a good movie. At the end of the day the most important thing is that it be a good movie. It was not an inherently easy subject to turn into an entertaining movie and I think they pulled it off.
Was it strange to see something that you lived up there on the screen? I imagine it would be a surreal feeling of seeing something that you went through being reenacted.
You're right. It was almost like having somebody tickle you. There was almost a physical weird feeling to watch it for the first time. But in a way it wasn't the first time because I did go up to Montreal and watch them shoot some scenes, which was really even more like an out-of-body experience than the film itself.
And the accuracy, as far as the details of the story — you felt that was all pretty well done?
Well, yes, in the following sense. I mean, there is no such person as Caitlin Avery. And there's no such person as Lewis Eskridge [characters in the film]. Steve Glass and I never sat in the lunchroom together and had idle conversation — I mean that particular conversation. As far as the overall truth of the situation, I think it's a fair representation. There are some situations that are word-for-word what happened, because they were able to reconstruct some scenes verbatim. So, it ranges from pure flight of fantasy to literal, verbatim reconstruction. And the latter, they were able to do because they had so much input. And I don't think I was the only one. I think they had input from other New Republic people. I wouldn't venture to name who they were. I guess what I am trying to get across here is that in a situation like this in a movie that isn't a documentary but is a dramatic portrayal, the most you can hope for is that they give it a good-faith effort to represent the truth of the situation and I think they passed the test, recognizing that this is their take on what happened. This is not what happened, in the documentary sense, but it is a filmmaker and various actors, it's their interpretation. And as far as that goes, I think it's a reasonable interpretation.
Do you think there is something about the film that makes Glass comes out a bit sympathetic?
Well, I honestly don't feel the film portrays him as admirable. I don't think it portrays Steve in a positive light. But it does make him the focus of the story. And I guess some people will take that as some kind of a glorification of him. I don't see it that way. On the other had, maybe you can understand that I watched the movie for the first time in some kind of a daze. Like you said, somebody is actually up on the movie screen being me. And so I haven't reached a kind of fine grained critique that maybe I will after seeing it ten or twenty times.
You've been depicted now twice in the last couple months, in the film and in the book, Glass's book. Have you taken a look at that?
Yeah. I read the book.
How do you explain the disparity between his version and the film?
You have to characterize the disparity before I answer that question.
Well, it seems like two different people. The editor in the book and the editor in the film.
Well, how are they different, Gal?
In the film there definitely is an impression that you had his best interest in mind throughout. There's that moment when your character calls the Forbes people and says, this is a young guy, this is really going to destroy him. And in the book, you're just this heartless monster, it's almost a gross stereotype.
Well, here's how I account for that. Steve wrote the book. I mean it's that simple. Slightly more seriously, it so happens, because Kambiz Farhoor [of Forbes Digital Tool, which first discovered the fabrications] taped all these conversations, that particular one that you referred to in which I was talking to him editor to editor, that is verbatim, that really happened that way. That's absolutely true.
Look, I read the book. I think the book speaks for itself. I'm not surprised that Steve is unhappy that he got caught. He's therefore not favorably inclined towards the person who caught him. And so what do I expect. He is who he is. He is very aggrieved for some reason, and some of that is focused on me, so what?
What did you think about the portrayal of Mike Kelly in the film? The film is dedicated to him. There is even a moment in the film where it seems like they were conscious that he was already dead. And it seems to lighten the circumstances that got Kelly fired. It didn't bring up the specific problems he was having with Peretz. It made it seem that he was fired because he was defending the staff too strongly.
The movie is focused on Steve Glass and the events surrounding Steve Glass. Probably the movie was written the way it was to somehow make everything that happened at the New Republic connect up with Steve. And to open up other explanations and other channels might have just made it too complicated. I think that's all they're doing. I don't think they are trying in a documentary fashion to lay out what happened between Mike Kelly and Marty Peretz.
It's interesting because I think journalists who go see it with an insider's mentality are going to be looking for all those things. How do you think journalists will perceive the film?
An interesting take on journalism that develops out of this movie is the sort of conflict between doing a good, professional job and getting your name out. I mean, the fact that it's even perceived as a conflict is interesting. And Steve is the person who breaks all the rules just to get famous, I guess. But various other people as the movie goes along are presented with this dilemma or tension between ambition and other values. I mean, me, for example, there is that moment that Marty is handing me the job and at the same time is decapitating Mike Kelly. And there is even that moment when the Rosario Dawson character starts nudging the Adam Penenberg character, Steve Zahn, for a byline on the story. And all of a sudden he gets all chilly and says forget it. So there's that kind of a notion going on in there. Maybe, maybe, some people may say 'Well, gee, there isn't much in this movie about the substance of journalism.' In fact, a comment my mother made [who saw the film as well], that I think was a good comment, was that they don't give you any sense that of the fact that at the New Republic you guys were always talking about politics. Politics and public policy were such a big part of what we do. And I think that is not very salient in the movie. And in fairness, the point would be that Steve wrote frothy stuff. Steve wrote about Monicondoms. He wrote about the wacky and the bizarre. It was just sort of tangentially related to politics. And so in a movie that's focused on him, you may get the impression that the New Republic, for some reason, was kind of running frothy stuff and that's it. I don't know, it will be very interesting to hear what journalists think and particularly whether they feel that this movie has an overall positive view of journalism or not, or whether it portrays it as a business where people are easily suckered by frauds or not. I think there's evidence of both views in the film.
There are certainly people who debate whether or not the Glass story and the more recent Blair case have anything to say about journalism at all. Whether these are just people with sick minds. They would say that these characters are anomalies who don't really reflect the health of journalism.
It's interesting. I think one explanation for the Glass thing, which was very current when it happened, was that there was this premium on young writers writing glib and perky copy without a whole lot of basic training, who were put under a lot of pressure to deliver a huge amount of material and weren't able to sustain it, and so for that reason people start faking things. I don't think the movie buys that view of it. I guess the movie goes for a more individual psychology view of Steve. That was my read on it, that there was something sort of flawed in him. But that said, my own personal view, is that journalism has a lot problems, but being a magnet for frauds in a way that no other profession is I don't think is one of them. There are frauds and con men all over the place, we just don't tend to hear about them. But when it happens in Washington and it happens in the middle of the media, the media get interested in it and so you hear about it. I think that's kind of what's going on. The Jayson Blair thing illustrates that anyone is vulnerable to this. It is really a paradox that journalism is a business that prides itself on skepticism but also functions based on instinctual trust, and every so often you get nailed for that, it's happened to so many people.
Did the New Republic change a lot after what happened?
Yeah. We put in a lot of new procedures and practices. I think a lot of people who worked there changed individually. There were a lot of young people who really liked Steve and admired him and were his friends, and I think for them it was a very chastening and searing personal experience. I don't think any of them will ever be the same again. They just realized that the person you trust, who lives in your house, could turn out to be robbing you blind and that's a sobering thing to go through. And in a way maybe that was a good thing. We should all be taught that lesson at some point.
I'm not going to take up anymore of your time.
Let me ask you what you think of the movie. You own me that. You're one of the few people who has seen it.
My first impression was is this really a story worth putting on film. I was interested in it because I know the story and I was curious to see how they did it. So there was a real curiosity factor. But I have a really negative view of Glass and what he did and I wanted that to come through a little more. I kind of wanted him to be a little more despicable. In the end I realized that a story that tells what happened in real time can't really do that, because you guys were deceived so, to some extent, we have to be deceived also. Also, I have to say, I wanted a little bit more complexity from the Glass character, and maybe there wasn't any complexity, maybe that's the problem, maybe the actor playing Glass didn't have much to work with. But if it was about his psychosis, I just wanted to see that a little more. And by entering his fantasies, his point of view is privileged too much.
In the real story there was so much going on, so many moving parts, number one, and so much indeterminacy, number two. Because the precise explanation for somebody who would do something like this is really elusive. And I don't think Steve has offered a convincing one now that he has gone public. Given all those things, I think they did a fair job, they did a fair take on it. I would feel really bad if people left this movie thinking, 'Gee that Steve Glass, what a creative wit. It's too bad that humorless asshole brought him down.' I would feel really bad.
I don't think that's it. I think the reason my first impression was to wonder whether this was a story you could put on film was because of what you just said. Anybody who is going to go to this film is going to want to get out of it a sense of why he did it. It's the reason anyone reads his book. It's the reason he's been on Sixty Minutes. You know, everyone wants to understand why he did what he did. The answer seems to be, there is no clear reason. Was it a sick mind? Was it somebody who wanted to succeed? You can't really get that out of a film. It might make a different novel, a better novel, to delve into the complexities of his psychology. I think it's difficult to achieve that in that medium. But I agree with you that it tells a good story, because it is a good story, as a story.
It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. At the end of the movie, you feel like…
Good has triumphed over evil.
Good has triumphed over evil. The scales have fallen from everyone's eyes. And yeah, you're left with a lot of loose threads. But that's what you talk about while you're having pizza. That's what movies are for.
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