Shattered Glass Director Billy Ray!

We're so excited to release our interview with Shattered Glass director Billy Ray, who was kind enough to indulge all our questions about our favorite movie, like:

What happened between the scene where Chloe Sevigny confronts Peter Sarsgaard for firing Stephen and the next day, when she leads the team in applauding him for his brave decision? 

Where does Shattered Glass rank in the pantheon of movies Ray's written over the course of his career, which include blockbusters like The Hunger Games and Captain Phillips? 

And why does Ray think Stephen Glass kept digging himself deeper and deeper, inventing new lies right up until he was fired for fabricating dozens of stories?

Billy Ray was a great sport, although he did give us shit for interviewing Adam Penenberg, the reporter who first busted Glass in a story for Forbes Digital Tool, before him. "I cannot understand why I wasn't your first fucking guest," he told us—"Who the hell did you interview before me? The three grips?" 

We hope you'll enjoy listening to our conversation with director Billy Ray as much as we enjoyed recording it. 

Hosts: Josh Feit and Erica C. Barnett

Edited by: Erica C. Barnett

Transcript

Erica Barnett: 0:17

You. Hi and welcome to are you mad at me a shatter glass podcast? We are so excited to introduce you to our very special guest, shattered glass writer and director, Billy Ray,

Unknown: 0:26

well, I couldn't be more flattered Thank you for having this show. So

Erica Barnett: 0:30

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

Unknown: 0:39

by buzz Bissinger, such a brilliant journalist, and I had, I had adapted him once before, on on Friday Night Lights, when I read buzzes article, what I loved about it was everything, but specifically what I loved about it was it was a world I felt I could, I could understand and then write. And he gave me Stephen glasses character in literally one line, are you mad at me? I knew I could hang an entire movie on just who would say that. 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

Erica Barnett: 1:38

it. I'm curious what Stephen glass you felt you had in you, because I the movie makes him a very unlikable guy. But maybe you don't agree. I don't

Unknown: 1:46

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, you know, 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. I understood that, 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, 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 and the other thing was that for me, as much as this movie is pretty heady, I mean, it's about ethics in journalism 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

Erica Barnett: 3:12

did you relate to about Chuck lane as a character? Was it having to take down the person who was the most popular at the New Republic?

Unknown: 3:21

No, 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 he was a family man. He was married, he had a kid, he he didn't have the most talent. He was just a grinder. And I understood that really, really well. I mean, I remember when I was 2223 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, so my only remedy is to outwork them, just out hustle them. And I've been doing it ever since. I mean, I I work harder at 61 than I did when I was 23 and I worked hard when I was 23 and I think that's who Chuck is. Chuck is just a grinder. And, you know, would he like to be the life of the party once or twice? I'm sure he would, but that's not who he is, and I understood that too.

Josh Feit: 4:45

How did you round up this cast? I mean, the first thing that really strikes me, I think, when we saw it, When Erica and 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 success, like, it's, you know, successful British actor. Like, how did you land this star studded cast?

Unknown: 5:11

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 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, right? Like you don't have that competition anymore, yeah, I'm going to do shattered glass, or I'm going to do Avenger six. Okay, well, great if you want to do Avenger six, 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,

Josh Feit: 5:45

even in 2003 that was the case back then as well, for sure. Yeah, yeah,

Unknown: 5:49

okay. Hayden was always going to be Stephen 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, Greg and Hayden and I, we were four weeks from shooting, and then Greg 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 stars guard, 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, and he did, and he's the reason I have a director in 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 kotcheff, to play Marty Peretz, and he said, Yes. And then I begged Hank Azaria and begged Steve Zhang, 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, 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.

Josh Feit: 7:48

That's awesome, yeah, and I agree with you. Peter Sarsgaard is just incredible. Erica, should I want to jump and ask the SARS guard question? Yeah? Yeah. I think Chuck lanes. Quiet stoicism just provides the energy and the driving energy of this movie, right, which is this weird irony, and because he's so quiet and stoic, I'm wondering whose choice was that for that character? Was that Peter bringing it? Was that your choice? And why that such such specific kind of character direction?

Unknown: 8:20

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 similarly, Peter was perfect for that part, because the relationship between Chuck and Steve is the same relationship between Peter and hate. 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, and that's the dynamic between Chuck and Steven. So it just kept playing out in exactly the right way. You know, 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 he's really extraordinary, but he has one acting default that we had to work on. He gets jazz hands. 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. 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? 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 started coming out through his voice. And he's so intense with Hayden in that scene, he's so good. And then at the very end, as a little bit of a fuck you to me, he goes like that. Hate it. At the very end as sort of a punctuation, an exclamation point. Look, Peter's Peter's awesome.

Erica Barnett: 10:46

I mean, he's so contained. And there's just like, I mean, as a viewer, I think that you know your fury is like building and building and building, and you can see it just kind of quietly building and building behind his eyes. But it's, it's clear that he feels like he has to be completely stoic and not not show any sign of emotion or that he's leaning one way or another.

Unknown: 11:05

I mean, you could make the argument the second half of the movie is him saying, Steve, Steve, just like that. Yeah. Okay. So the trick of the movie is, I felt very strongly that if we made this movie about Steven glass, people would want to kill themselves at the end. 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 Stephen glass, and the second half of the movie, the protagonist is chuckling, 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 and 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. 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 volley, 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, but the movie becomes Chuck's movie in the second half, and we were telling it that way. Specifically,

Erica Barnett: 12:53

I want to go back to the title of movie. Sorry. Why do you make that? Why do you, why do you make the title? It was the title of Buzz visitors. It

Unknown: 13:03

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.

Erica Barnett: 13:13

What would you have called it if you had, did you ideally,

Unknown: 13:17

I would have called it a million little pieces. But that got taken, yeah, or I would have, 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.

Erica Barnett: 13:34

I mean, it feels, you know, it's hard to sort of imagine an alternate, you know, history called that to me, but I bet you know, are you mad at me? Was Was our title for this podcast? Because that

Unknown: 13:45

would have been a great title. And then we had on our first poster are the cell line of the movie was read between the lies, yeah, I remember that, yeah, liked and then it became he would do anything for a great story,

Erica Barnett: 14:02

which that sounds a little more salacious. Yeah, it sounded

Unknown: 14:06

vaguely gay, like, Oh, here's Peter, here's here's Hayden, and he'd do anything to get a great story. And, okay, fine, whatever gets butts in seats. But I didn't, I didn't particularly love that.

Josh Feit: 14:24

You know, we've noted a few Watergate references in the movie. The last scene in particular when when stars guard Chuck lane, is like, Okay, here's what we're gonna do. That seems a lot like the Dustin Hoffman on the phone when he count to 10 and I'll hang up. Seems direct. I actually think that the the guy at the bethesda hotel who is kind of the night watchman is 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

Unknown: 14:59

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, 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 you're going to run headlong into All the President's Men. There's 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 you had to take notes really fast. And I said, How well do you know All the President's Men? 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.

Erica Barnett: 16:31

One of the things, I mean, I think that we're both in awe of about this movie and is just that there's all these little details. And, you know, I mean, and I almost, I feel like talking about All the President's Men in some ways. I mean, there's, it's, it's almost easier to make a movie, you know, with a with a fairly big budget, about a huge, you know, world historical event. And, you know, you had a much smaller budget, and you're 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, you know, make journalism seem interesting, and not just guys going through phone books and staring at reporter notebooks. Well,

Unknown: 17:11

look, I think everything in writing 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 1,000% 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. 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, 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 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 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 at actual process, they tend to find it really interesting. Yeah,

Josh Feit: 19:18

I'll say real quickly. I lived in DC at that time, and wasn't journalism. But the thing that really is so has such veracity is that Doritos party in the DC apartment, that is a Washington, DC 20 something party. It was in 100% on on point. Yes, yeah. I mean,

Unknown: 19:38

that's I got to know everyone who worked with Stephen glass. I saw how they behaved. I mean, look, when I 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 they say, We got to make, we got to fit all these things together to create the oxygen scrubber. Mm. And how we're 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. Now, if I would tell you that that would be a completely compelling scene, you'd say, how? But it's process. And really interested.

Erica Barnett: 20:20

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 and like, and, yeah, and there's always that debate about, like, is 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, 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 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. Yeah, that was

Unknown: 21:12

a really important one to me. And for that, I thank Marty parrots, 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 Stephen glasses, 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 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. So my debt to him is massive.

Josh Feit: 22:13

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, we talked to pennenberg. 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? And how did you get that stuff. It's just so real. Well,

Unknown: 22:42

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 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 there was nothing in there, in that movie that I hadn't double sourced, nothing. 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 Steven 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, 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 they let me. It was guy named kit rockless, great guy. And so I sat in and I listened to how they talk, and I listened to how they give each other shit, and I listened to what they're snobby about and what they're not and 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 not ready for it. And and this, this person clearly was not,

Josh Feit: 24:39

yeah, I assume you sat in on pitch meetings too, because, man, that pitch meeting scene is 100%

Erica Barnett: 24:44

Oh, so infuriating. I mean, it's but 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, it's hard for me to see the humanity in him in this movie. And so it's, it's really interesting to hear you talk about, like, why? He did the things that he did, but yeah,

Unknown: 25:02

the other day I need to get a new car, and the other day, I test drove a Miata. Oh, my God, can I really do this?

Erica Barnett: 25:17

Great cars. They're 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 they're fun, little cars. Kids are gone. Go for it. I feel like we always end up talking about cars. You always end up talking I

Unknown: 25:37

know. I know this is my fault. I'm the one who brought

Erica Barnett: 25:42

it. I think our favorite scene is the big confrontation between Caitlin and chuck in the 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, kind of and and she defends Steven. 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.

Josh Feit: 26:05

That is my favorite moment when that, when that wind sweeps up under the door and it just close, close, seven, yay. Like it just cut, she ignores it. It kind of hair pops up, pops anyway. Sorry. I just

Erica Barnett: 26:16

love that. I'm wondering. And so then in the next scene after that is, you know, the the apology letter, letter has been written. Chuck shows up at his at his office, and, you know, and then 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?

Unknown: 26:35

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 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 Steven 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. 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 Lions Gate, 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, 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 Steven, and then you find out it was all imagination, and that's what happened to everybody who we ever worked with? So I pitched like Steven 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 Caitlyn 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. And so I wrote that scene, which is my favorite scene, too, and 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

Erica Barnett: 29:08

me. It's very me too. I tear up every time. So we

Unknown: 29:11

cry every time I see that scene, every time shot. We had shot in September, and now we're back there in March, and there's Chloe and there's Peter, 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 a sense that you've never raised your voice before, and just a moment where you was sort of look around like, oh, that's what it sounds like when you yell and and he did it, and Chloe is just Chloe, and that wind that you refer to, it's March in a. Um, in Montreal, and we're playing it as August in DC. It was 20 below zero out there, and so Peter goes out and, 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. 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 Steven's coworkers, 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 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, and so when he sits down to look at the the apology letter I had just written on a piece of paper, Mallory is in the next room, and he just kind of smiled and then played the scene, and it was just a private joke between him and me. Where was

Josh Feit: 31:40

the opening night? I kind of want to know about opening night. About opening night, the, you know, the first the first viewing, and when people, the public, saw for the first time. And 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? And, yeah, what was that night like?

Unknown: 31:55

So we decided to open at the Telluride Film Festival. And I had never been in 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 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 malt, and this two 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. 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 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, there's the 10 foot wide Swat, soft middle. What had happened was, you know, there are 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 malt, and I said, 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 Sant, 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 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 loves in Telluride, and I felt, I felt confident that we were, we were going to get the response we wanted. What I didn't anticipate was that journalists would be so flattered that someone had made this movie, that they would take it to heart and just be grateful. Yeah. I didn't see that coming, 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 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.

Josh Feit: 35:34

Yeah, I have to say, Erica 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, and were overjoyed. I mean, it's just a famous night between in our friendship of Erica sitting there and scrolling her hands saying, roll it again, like roll it again.

Erica Barnett: 36:00

Yeah, we are gleeful. You know, 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, as a writer and 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 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

Unknown: 36:37

second one is much easier. He wasn't caught because he was benefiting everybody around him. If you're the 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 was it's confirmation bias. He was saying 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 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.

Erica Barnett: 38:10

And I think, you know, on the on the well worn commentary track on my DVD of 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,

Unknown: 38:40

doesn't everything come down to those relationships.

Erica Barnett: 38:44

And what's your theory of why he did it? Do you have one?

Unknown: 38:47

Yeah, like I said, I think it's I blame it on Highland Park and the pressure he felt he was under. And 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 pressured 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?

Erica Barnett: 39:35

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 moment after comeback moment. And I think it is quite well known now, I mean, certainly among journalists. But you know, in general, I mean, it's been around for more than 20 years and has a really long tail. And I wonder if you have thoughts about why that is,

Unknown: 39:59

well. Well, I think the performances are excellent, and I think the story is really good. I mean, we just got out of its way. It's a great story. I think everybody knows a Stephen glass and everybody knows a chuckling, 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 I think we achieved that. So I think it's, I think it satisfies people because, because justice is done 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 going to lose. They lose at the end of every fucking show on the History Channel. They we got a whole win. We got to hold on to that thought right now, by the way, there's something satisfying, like, if you're watching History Channel, and it's got something to do with the Nazis, I'm in because by the end of the hour, Everything good is going to happen. Yeah, and, and I think not to compare anyone in shatter glass to Nazis, but in in shatter glass truth wins in the end, and it does it in a quiet way.

Josh Feit: 41:33

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 your in your work, where do you kind of hold this one my

Unknown: 41:46

favorite by far, by far. 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, 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 it takes about 20 years to know if you did your job well or not. 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 his own fucking podcast. It must have hit a chord with somebody. And yeah, this is the one for me.

Erica Barnett: 42:44

Billy Ray, thank you so much for being on our podcast. We're so honored to have you, and we love this movie.

Unknown: 42:52

Thank you. Look, when you tell stories for a living, you fail in public. When you have a movie that people don't go see or the reviews are bad. You cannot run from it. 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, 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 to see people respond to it, it's it's 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, who the hell did you interview before me?

Erica Barnett: 43:58

That's a pennberg,

Unknown: 44:00

whatever you got to be, eventually, you interviewed, you know, the three grips,

Erica Barnett: 44:05

okay, we needed, we needed some practice, you know, yeah, we did it again,

Unknown: 44:10

yeah? Like, when I heard there was this podcast, I literally, I said to Pentagon, who the hell they interviewing? If not me,

Josh Feit: 44:17

we were intimidated. Billy. This is like, our this is like, we think this movie is, you know, ordinary people like, we think this is the movie

Unknown: 44:28

is not as good as ordinary people. But Alvin Sargent was always a goal for me. And by the way, Alvin Sargent worked uncredited on All the President's Men. But anyway, my point is, I'm deeply grateful, and it's very meaningful that you're doing this, and if ever I can be of any help to you in any way, please let me know you.