Long before Jayson Blair made everyone hate journalists, there was this other freak named Stephen Glass. Glass was a burgeoning young journalist working for The New Republic, the magazine known as the in-flight magazine for Air Force One. Like his evil spawn, Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass botched a number of his stories and was brought down by an outside team of real heroic, awesome journalists.
Much to the delight of my journalism-loving soul, Lions Gate Films has just released a film that depicts the life of Stephen Glass and lives of all of those people unfortunate enough to work with him. Shattered Glass shows how he made up sources and described places where had never even stepped foot.
In the spirit of Mr. Glass I will now review Shattered Glass, (which, while I am still in Sincere Mode, I encourage you to see if you have any interest in the media because it really does provide an inside look at the fast-paced cut-throat world of print news) and say whatever the heck I want to in order to make it sound good:
So, I pull up to Scottsdale Fashion Square in my H2 and the valet was like, "I'm sorry ma'am I don't know if we can park that here. The car is just too big and awesome."
I just slipped him a $500 bill and told him to figure it out. I made it to the theater and I was totally on time. The ushers barely had enough time to put down the red carpet leading to my seat, which happened to be right next to Hayden Christensen and Chloe Sevigny, the stars of the movie.
I wasn't even going to talk to them but Chloe turned to me and said, "You're outfit is soo fashionable; red is totally the new black." And then Hayden just had to chime in, "You are so hot, too bad you are a journalist and if I slept with you, you would be giving an un-objective review."
So I turned to both of them and said, "Could you two please pipe down a little, can't you see I'm working?"
The movie started and I was immediately blown away by all of the explosions and state-of-the-art special effects. Not since T-3 have I seen so much edge-of-your-seat action. It was so exciting that I didn't even have to go buy a large coffee and splash water on my face to stay awake.
Right about the time the space aliens landed in The New Republic newsroom, Hayden tried to rub my leg. I was about to walk right out of there but the movie was just to enthralling. I turned to Hayden and said, "Do I look like Queen Amidala to you? Knock it off Anakin." I think that helped because he didn't bother me for the rest of the movie. Which was fortunate because there was a lot to take in.
The Glass character is a perfectly respectable young journalist until those aforementioned aliens storm his newsroom. One of them sucks out the section of his brain responsible for telling the truth. From that point on, poor defenseless Glass is forced to ruin his career. The whole audience, including Chloe Hayden and myself, simultaneously burst out into tears the moment he tells his first lie.
I'm not going to go into specifics, but my favorite part of the movie was the scene with the ever-popular movie clap. You know, the one where one character stands up and begins to clap very slowly and little by little the whole room joins in and eventually crescendos into roaring applause. The scene was not cheesy at all and the clapping was beautifully directed by Billy Ray.
When the movie ended and I was finally able to stop weeping, I stood up and gave a speech in front of the entire theater.
"My fellow citizens," I said. "It is movies like this that make me want to be a journalist. I don't care if aliens drop down and try to suck out my pituitary gland. I will hold strong to my duty to serve my country with the truth and nothing but the truth so help me God."
With that, someone started the movie clap and I left the theater before I could say goodbye to Chloe and Hayden. I drove away in my H2 so that I could finish this extremely thought out and heart-felt review. Please love me.
The End.
Editor's Note - SPM would like to reiterate that everything past the colon is fiction generated by the reviewer. She does not own an H2, nor has she ever been hit on by Hayden Christensen.
Reach the reporter at joy.hepp@asu.edu.
