Directed by Billy Ray—Produced by Lions Gate Films
This is the true story of a young journalist caught in a big, fat lie for the whole world to see. Hayden Christensen portrays Stephen Glass, a journalist for The New Republic, a big publication. At some point he realized he was an attention-whore and needed to make his boring stories more fun. So he made them up.
Chuck Lane does his due diligence and catches on to what Stephen Glass is smoking. In high school I gave a speech on how to lie. Rule #1: keep it simple! If your are going to lie make it something you can easily remember. For example, Stephen lies about a conference being held in a building on a Sunday. Problem? The building is closed on Sundays! Idiot. When you catch someone in one lie then you know they lied about other things.
When Stephen Glass goes crawling back to Michael Kelly, his former editor, he becomes aware that Michael doesn’t want anything to do with him. Chuck Lane catches Stephen in a lie and shows him the door. At the end there is a scene where Stephen asks Chuck to give him a ride to the airport. Every time I see this scene I can’t help but think that if Chuck Lane did give him a ride he would have never been seen again. Think about it: Stephen is absolutely desperate to continue spinning his web of lies. All he would have had to do was get rid of Chuck to make it keep going. Just sayin’.
I knew people like this from school growing up. I have this annoying habit of wondering if the male actors were played by women, the white guys were Korean, things like that.
Erica's Films 