Former Editor of 'The New Republic' Charles Lane

DATE November 17, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Journalist Charles Lane talks about Stephen Glass and
his career at The New Republic which has been made into a movie
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

The new movie "Shattered Glass" is based on the story of Stephen Glass, a
staff writer for The New Republic, who was considered one of journalisms
rising young stars. He reported on light and serious stories that no one else
was getting, including bad behavior at a conference of young conservatives and
a clandestine meeting of anti-Clinton activists. It turned out there was a
reason why no one else had these stories. Some were partially fabricated.
Others were completely made up. Twenty-seven of his 41 stories for The New
Republic contained fabrications.

"Shattered Glass" tells the story of how Glass was uncovered in 1998 by a
journalist at the online magazine Forbes Digital Tool and by Glass' editor
at The New Republic, Charles Lane. A little later, we'll hear from Peter
Sarsgaard who portrays Lane in the movie. First we'll talk with Lane himself.
He now covers the Supreme Court for The Washington Post.

Let's start with a scene from early in the film when Lane was still a reporter
at The New Republic and the editor was Michael Kelly, played in the movie by
Hank Azaria. The staff is at an editorial meeting, reporters are pitching
story ideas. Glass has a very amusing story.

(Soundbite of "Shattered Glass")

Mr. HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN: (As Stephen Glass) Every station on the radio is
talking about it, Mike Tyson biting Evander Holyfield and these are supposed
to be news stations. And so on Tuesday I started calling a few of them and I
finally got through to one, a Bible talk station in Kentucky and I managed to
convince the screener that I was a behavior psychologist who specializes in
human-on-human biting.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. CHRISTENSEN: (As Stephen Glass) I told the guy that I'd done all this
extensive research on people who chomp flesh under extreme stress.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Unidentified Actress: What did they say?

Mr. CHRISTENSEN: (As Stephen Glass) They put me on the air. I took calls
for 45 minutes.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Unidentified Actor: Oh, my God.

Mr. PETER SARSGAARD: (As Chuck Lane) Where does he find these people?

Mr. CHRISTENSEN: (As Stephen Glass) It's kind of stupid, I know. It's silly.
I'll probably just kill it.

(Soundbite of meeting chatter)

Mr. HANK AZARIA: (As Michael Kelly) OK. Moving right along. Chuck, what do
you have for us?

Mr. SARSGAARD: (As Chuck Lane) Lots of s--it's a bit of a hard act to follow.
Very hard act to follow. OK. I'm starting the piece on Haiti and I'll be
going--I'm going to be going down to Port-au-Prince for a few days.

Mr. AZARIA: (As Michael Kelly) Uh-huh.

GROSS: That's a scene from the new film "Shattered Glass."

Charles Lane, welcome to FRESH AIR. Was this an accurate representation of
editorial pitch meetings? Did Stephen Glass sound kind of like that when he
was making pitches and were they as fantastic?

Mr. CHARLES LANE (Former Editor, The New Republic; The Washington Post):
Yeah, I think so. I have to concede that this particular one that we just
heard didn't quite take place. It's kind of a compression of a couple of
different ones. But, yeah, he had this kind of really engaging way of
pitching these stories and everybody looked forward to hearing what he would
come up with next because they were always so colorful. It seemed like Steve
had some kind of a gift or blessing that put him in the middle of a life that
was much more interesting than everyone else's.

GROSS: And did you feel the way I think you're described as feeling in the
movie, that your story about Haiti seemed so drab by comparison?

Mr. LANE: Not really. Like I say, that kind of immediate contrast never
really occurred. In fact, that story about Haiti was assigned to me by
Michael Kelly when he was still the editor, so I actually thought the Haiti
story was kind of cool and involved a trip for two weeks to a Caribbean
country and a lot of reporting. But I do think that what they're trying to
get across in the movie is the sense that not just me but a lot of other
people on the staff were wondering, like, what's the value of our kind of
regular mundane reporting when it seems that, you know, all these zany and
colorful pieces that Steve Glass is coming up with are what really attract all
the attention.

GROSS: Did you ever think, `These stories are too good to be true'?

Mr. LANE: Well, that's--I've thought about that so much looking back 'cause
for a large part of Steve's really--his rise at The New Republic, I was
actually not physically present at The New Republic because sort of from about
September of '96 to about July of '97, I was away on a fellowship at Yale Law
School. So I was more or less reading the stuff from a distance, you know.
And a lot of them struck me--I remember us thinking like this is not really
the kind of story The New Republic does. You know, because they seemed sort
of--sometimes they were almost kind of crude. But I have to admit that, you
know, seeing them one after another and knowing that there were editors and
other people in The New Republic who were supposedly responsible for checking
these, I didn't think that they could be completely fake. In fact, I didn't
think they were even partially fake, you know?

It's sort of that mystique that the words printed on paper acquire. And I
took them like everyone else, pretty much at face value which now I have to
say I'm really embarrassed by that I wasn't the one really to find out right
away.

GROSS: Let me read one of the stories that Stephen Glass wrote that was
published in The New Republic in February of 1998. It's called Plotters.
`When Hillary Clinton started ranting last week about a vast, right-wing
conspiracy, Beltway pundits could barely suppress their snickers. The first
lady seemed to be implying that somewhere in America, there is a committee of
middle-aged white men who regularly get together, hunch around a long, oval
table and feverishly plot to undermine the Clinton administration. Does Mrs.
Clinton really believe this malarkey? Does anyone? Actually, I do. Last
Sunday, just such a meeting took place and I was there. It was the monthly
gathering of the Commission to Restore the Presidency to Greatness or CRPG and
the scene unfolded exactly as the first lady might have expected. The
clandestine rendezvous took place in north Virginia at the rural home of
software developer R. Theodore Curtis. The attendees were all middle-age,
white men dressed in sober ties and starched dress shirts. Most had receding
hairlines. Sitting on the table in front of each man was a name card listing
his title and area of responsibility: vice president for Vince Foster's death
affairs; special counsel to investigate Filegate; deputy inspector for
Arkansas issues and so on.'

Was this story completely fabricated, Chuck Lane?

Mr. LANE: I think so. I think it was and I'm trying to remember anything I
can about how we edited it and fact checked s--I'm just not really able to
recall the process at that time. But, yeah, that was a completely fabricated
story. I mean, one thing--as I listen to you read it--it reminds me of, are
some of the elements of Steve's con, you know, that enabled it to go on for so
long. One is the fact that The New Republic was an opinion magazine to begin
with. So any story that was done in the magazine was allowed to have a
certain voice and opinion. It's not a straight news publication. So that's
one thing you can sort of see he's taking advantage of there.

Secondly, he always seemed to be going to things that were happening in
secret, you know, in basements among the members of a peculiar subculture.
You know, so that it would be very hard for anyone to second-guess him, anyone
who assumed that he was a legitimate reporter because you wouldn't really know
yourself too much independently about this.

And thirdly, and I think crucially, he works with stereotypes. You can see it
in the middle-aged, white man. You know, that he--and this is present in so
many of his fake stories. And I think is really--to me, has been the really
sobering lesson of this whole episode was how the ability to put these stories
over, not only on editors but readers. Depended on the use of cliche and
stereotype knowing that in a way he was providing people with something--not
exactly what they wanted to hear but that they were well prepared to hear.
You know what I mean? And I think this story really illustrates that.

GROSS: Do you think the story actually did real damage because it made up
this, like, actual conspiracy, you know, actual conspiracy against Clinton?

Mr. LANE: Well, this is what's so amazing about Steve's career is that a lot
of these stories were fake, but maybe could have been real. I mean, there is
a group now, the Free Republic group. I think you've heard of them. Which
is, you know, sort of like the one Steve is talking about. Additionally, the
Hack Heaven story which was his last one was about teen-ager hackers who were
supposedly extorting money from the companies that they hacked in to. And it
turned out a couple of years later, my own newspaper now, The Washington Post,
did a story about Russian teen-ager hackers who had hacked into companies and
were extorting money from them. They were caught, you know, by the FBI and
the story is true and there are pictures and everything to prove it. But I'm
just saying that, in a way, Steve, in addition to all the other things I just
described, he had a knack for finding things that were just crazy enough to be
true.

GROSS: My guest is journalist Charles Lane. We'll talk more after a break.
This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Charles Lane. He was the editor at The New Republic who
uncovered the fabrications of reporter Stephen Glass. That story is told in a
new movie "Shattered Glass."

Let's talk about the story that you worked on that really uncovered Stephen
Glass and his fabrications. This was a story called Hack Heaven. What was
the story about?

Mr. LANE: Well, basically it wasn't a very long story. It was about 1,300
words and it described a young man of 15 years named Ian Restil, who was
supposed to be a Russian immigrant, who had learned how to hack into computers
of big software companies and he had hacked into one company's computer. The
company was supposedly called Jukt Micronics and posted all kinds of stuff
on their Web site and then shaken them down for money so that he would stop
and that he supposedly had an agent and that he was part of a group of people
who were doing this called the National Assembly of Hackers and that this was
becoming such a problem that states were considering a legislation to stop it
and etc., etc.

Again, you know, I have to--as I look back on it, it's the most perfectly
ridiculous thing I've ever heard. On the other hand, you know, once it came
across my desk after being across two other people's desks and in the rush of
that week's business, I looked at it and I thought, `OK. It's a pretty clever
story and let's get it in the magazine.' I'm really sorry about that. The
only thing I'm not sorry about, in a way, is that this one was so outrageous
that another news organization, Forbes Digital Tool, which was the Web site of
Forbes magazine, wanted to somehow try and match the story because they felt
they'd been scooped.

And they went and started to look at it and they called me when they couldn't
find anything to back it up. And at that point, I thought, `Gee, you know,
these guys really have made a good case that there's something wrong with this
story,' and I began to look into it myself.

GROSS: Now in the movie, when you get called by Forbes Digital Tool, your
first reaction is to defend your writer, Stephen Glass. Did you feel that as
an editor, that your job--your first job was to defend him?

Mr. LANE: I actually felt very conflicted because when Adam Penenberg of
Forbes called me and laid out in some detail what he had been unable to
document in Steve's story, I immediately thought it could be a fabrication, at
least I was open to that possibility. Whereas I think Adam and the people at
Forbes were actually thinking maybe Steve, himself, had been duped by
somebody. In any case, I called Martin Peretz, who was and still is the owner
of The New Republic, and I told him what had happened and I said, `I'm going
to look into this and I want you to know that if it turns out that it was
fabricated, I will have to fire him.'

GROSS: At what point did you call him into your office and start questioning
him about it? How much research did you want to do independently before
calling him in and how much did you want to just call him in first before you
did any research?

Mr. LANE: Oh, I brought him in right away. As I remember it, he wasn't at
The New Republic, you know, physically when this happened.

GROSS: Uh-huh.

Mr. LANE: But I called him in right away and I think he came in from home
and his reaction was very strange. Because the first thing he said was, `What
did I do?' You know, `Did I do something wrong?' And I said to him, `Well,
you need to get all the phone numbers'--I explained to him what Forbes was
doing. I said, `You need to bring me all the phone numbers and information
for how to contact these people in the story.'

And what he came back with was a bunch of phone numbers--he would kind of
gradually get one after another--that turned out to be voicemails for the
people who ostensibly existed--you know, these people in his story. And as
that evening went on and I called these voicemails and didn't get anyone
calling me back and the voicemails themselves had very strange voices on them
and that sort of thing, I began to realize this is very fishy. And it was my
wife who pointed out to me by going through the Yellow Pages that there are
these services that you can call that will allow you to set up a voicemail
anywhere in the country under almost any area code, you know. And it was
clear that he had just faked these voicemail boxes.

But I realized that this is the kind of charge--if you're going to be
suspecting somebody of fabricating, you have to prove it. You know, you can't
just level that charge without proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That was the
way I approached it, because it's such a serious charge. And there's a
presumption of innocence, right? So he then arranged to have his brother,
unbeknownst to me, call me and represent himself as one of the people in this
story. And when I heard an actual human voice purporting to be one of Steve's
sources, I thought, `Wow, you know, there's reasonable doubt. Because, hey,
here's sort of an actual person who seems to be real.' And it wasn't until I
discovered later that that person was his brother, that all my reasonable
doubt disappeared.

GROSS: How did you figure that out?

Mr. LANE: Serendipitously, because late at night on a Friday--this all
started on a Thursday afternoon--another editor of the magazine and I were
talking about the situation on the phone and she just kind of casually
mentioned that Steve had a brother who lived in Palo Alto. And this is
depicted in the movie. The phone number that he had given me for this
software company was a Palo Alto phone number. And the voice I had heard on
the phone had sounded oddly similar to Steve's. So I put two and two together
and the next morning, I went into The New Republic and Steve was there,
apparently trying to, you know, get rid of some evidence that was in his
computer, and I confronted him about it. And at first he denied that it was
his brother and then, again, as depicted in the movie, he fessed up. `Yes, I
had my brother pretend to be this person and I did it because--even though
that person is real, I couldn't find him and I needed to buy some time,' which
was obviously not true. And that was the end of his career.

GROSS: Did he try to play you? Did he try to manipulate you?

Mr. LANE: Absolutely, every step of the way. And he tried everything. You
know, that Thursday night--I repeat, it all began on a Thursday. He called me
at home late at night and he became kind of aggressive. He said, `You know,
Chuck, you're not backing me up. You're making me feel very attacked. You
know, an editor is supposed to back people up.' And he was trying to throw me
on the defensive. And what I remember saying to him was, `You know, Steve, I
want to back you up, but I don't have enough to work with right now. You have
to give me more to work with.'

And what that illustrates is that at every point I was trying to remain
even-handed with him, at least never tip my hand about where I was heading
with this and never become emotional because I think he would have tried--I
even somehow intuitively sensed then that he would try to exploit that. The
next day, when, you know, I took him out to that hotel and made him walk
around the site of this alleged event, which also helped prove that it hadn't
happened, then we got into the car on the way back and he broke down and he
said, `OK. I made up the conference. All the events in the story are real
but I made up the fact that I was there. I heard about it later and I made it
seem in the article like I was there.' And then he said, `But if you want me
to say that I made the whole article up, I'll do that if it'll help you.' And
I saw that as a trap, you know, that he was going to try and make--and do that
and then say later that I'd coerced him into saying something that wasn't
true.

So I responded to him, `No, Steve, I just want you to tell me what the truth
is,' you know. So he was at every moment, every step of the way, fighting to
preserve his position at the magazine or whatever, to preserve his whole
career. And he didn't hesitate to manipulate and lie.

GROSS: Once you figured out, OK, this piece was a total fabrication and a lot
of other pieces were completely or partially fabricated as well, how did you
figure out how to handle it? How to handle it with Glass was complicated, but
easy in a sense that you fire him. I mean, it's hard to do...

Mr. LANE: Right.

GROSS: ...it. You do it. You fire him. But how to discuss this to the
public, to your readers, to the rest of the press, that's really, really hard.
So what was your thought process like...

Mr. LANE: Yeah.

GROSS: ...about how to reveal this information to the public?

Mr. LANE: Well, one thing I had as like a bottom-line principle was there
would be no cover-up--Right? That we would never find out anything about this
case from anybody else through the press. I wanted us to break the whole
story before anyone else. And my first step in that regard was on Sunday, May
the 10th, I called up Howie Kurtz at The Washington Post who covers the media
and I just laid out to him what we knew at that point and that we were firing
Steve Glass, so that that would be out in the media before the Forbes story
came out. That was step one.

Then the follow-on step to that was, we have to find out everything he did.
You know, we have to completely investigate all of his stories and any other
conduct, you know, that we might have to answer for and get that into the
magazine as soon as possible. And furthermore, announce an apology for all of
this and announce that we're going to investigate. So we did all that on
Monday and Tuesday. And I thought one of the things that was good about that
was that I involved the whole staff in this investigation of Steve's material.
And I always felt that that gave people something to do with their emotions at
that time. You know, that everybody was feeling so lousy and so angry and
everything else. This gave people something to channel that into and we all
kind of worked together on it.

There is a part of all that, dealing with the media, though, that I sort of
regret in hindsight. You know, I was so kind of worried about how we would be
treated and didn't for a minute expect that people would actually appreciate
the fact that we were doing this full disclosure that I became initially
somewhat defensive with some reporters who approached me. And in a couple of
cases I kind of just turned them away and said, `I don't want to talk to you.'
And that was a real mistake, you know. And I think it was just a mistake I
made at the beginning that I--even now I sort of regret and that's one reason
ever since, when I realized how bad it was not to be fully open with some
people while being open with others, that I've always done interviews about
this because I just don't want--even now, I don't want anybody to say that,
you know, there's some reluctance to discuss this.

GROSS: Charles Lane is the editor at The New Republic who revealed the
fabrications of the magazine staff writer Stephen Glass. The movie "Shattered
Glass" is based on their story. Lane will be back in the second half of the
show.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Coming up, more with Charles Lane, the editor who discovered that
Stephen Glass had fabricated stories that were published in The New Republic.
We'll talk with Peter Sarsgaard, the actor who plays Lane in the new movie
"Shattered Glass." And jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a new CD featuring
Johnny Griffin and Horace Parlan.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Let's get back to our interview with Charles Lane, the editor at The New
Republic who investigated a story by the staff writer Stephen Glass and found
that Glass had fabricated the entire story. After Lane initiated a further
evaluation of Glass' writing, The New Republic discovered that 27 of Glass' 41
pieces for the magazine contained fabrications. The new movie "Shattered
Glass" tells the story of how Glass' lies were discovered. Charles Lane now
covers the Supreme Court for The Washington Post.

In June of 1998, The New Republic published a letter to its readers
apologizing for the Stephen Glass fabrications and trying to explain as best
as you could what happened. So I thought I'd read a short excerpt of that
letter.

Mr. LANE: OK.

GROSS: (Reading) `How could this happen? It's a perfectly fair question.
We've been asked it repeatedly since we informed the press of Glass' firing,
and we expect to be confronted with it again and again. We are asking it of
ourselves. The editors of The New Republic, like those of other magazines,
have devised fact-checking procedures to ensure the accuracy of our copy.
Generally, we believe our record in this regard has been a good one. Plainly,
however, the precautions we took were not adequate to prevent Glass'
fabrications from making it into print. We intend to find out why and to take
corrective action where necessary.

`We editors take responsibility for the failures of discernment that permitted
this false material to be published. But it is important to understand that
our editing and fact-checking systems are designed to defend against the
errors and mistakes even good professionals sometimes make, not against the
systematic and intentional deceptions of someone who actually has no business
practicing journalism.'

So that's an interesting distinction you make there, that fact checking is for
good journalists who kind of make a mistake, not for people who are
intentionally liars and who are trying to manipulate the system.

Mr. LANE: Yeah, it's not `fraud checking,' as some people have said. And
Steve really went to great lengths to deceive fact-checkers. As has been
noted before, you know, he made up false notes, he staged false voice mails.
I later found out he would occasionally invent documents. And so, you know,
it was a pretty wide-ranging effort at deception.

You know, I think one of the procedural things that was going on at The New
Republic that made Steve possible was that he just happened to come along at a
time when there was a lot of internal turmoil and transition among the editors
of The New Republic. It was not a good time organizationally for the
magazine. So he came on, I think, in late '95 and Andrew Sullivan was the
editor. Andrew left the magazine suddenly, you know, in the middle of 1996,
and Michael Kelly was hired to replace him. But Mike, because he was under
contract to The New Yorker, didn't come for about six months. So between
about the middle of '96 and the end of '96, there was no editor of The New
Republic; there was a series of sort of substitutes. And that was when Steve
started writing more pieces.

Then Mike Kelly came in. He only lasted for about nine months. And, of
course, Steve really began to really take off in that nine months, and then I
came in, you know. And with each new editor, there would be new fact-checkers
and new kind of subordinate editors, and there was a tremendous amount of
turnover and, therefore, hard for any one person to kind of track Steve Glass
through that, and I think he really exploited that kind of vacuum of
authority.

In addition, you know, The New Republic had had problems prior to this with
another journalist called Ruth Shalit, who had plagiarized some material and
had been suspended and, you know, really created kind of a black mark on the
magazine. And I think a lot of the editors were focused on making sure, you
know, that Ruth Shalit performing up to snuff and, you know, that kind of
distracted attention from what anybody else including Steve might be doing.

So it's very unfortunate, you know, that this--I think reflects also that it
was kind of just a rough-and-tumble and uncertain and disorganized time at The
New Republic, generally, which kind of--I think, you know, unbeknownst to
anyone, created a climate that Steve could exploit.

GROSS: Did you make any changes in the fact-checking system after the Stephen
Glass story?

Mr. LANE: Yes. And we developed a whole new written policy. We sort of
cracked down on the use of unnamed sources and a lot of other things.

But I have to say two things about that. Fact checking at The New Republic is
never going to be like fact checking at a place like The New Yorker or
Newsweek that are sort of, like, really big organizations with a lot of
resources and large staffs. I mean, The New Republic is a very small,
low-budget magazine that never, I think, has ever had more than three people
fact checking, say, 20 stories a week. That's just a reality, and so there
are going to be limits on it.

And even--I believe very firmly that even the most sophisticated fact-checking
system would be hard pressed to stop certain kinds of journalistic fraud. You
know, The New York Times Magazine, which is an outstanding magazine with great
fact checking, has recently had to disavow the reporting of one of its people
who had created a false composite character in a story. So there is no
procedural fix, Terry, to the problem of a fraudulent journalist, because if
somebody, for whatever purpose, is intent on doing it, they'll figure out the
fact-checking system and find where its holes are and then try to exploit the
holes.

GROSS: Well, Stephen Glass was a fact-checker for a brief time at The New
Yorker, so he knew the system.

Mr. LANE: Well, at The New Republic, yeah.

GROSS: I mean at The New Republic, yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah.

Mr. LANE: Yeah, Steve had been a fact-checker and was known as a very
thorough and rigorous one, which was all part of his scam, you know, because
another reason people didn't suspect his own work was that he ostensibly was
so concerned about facts. But yeah--I mean, he was entrusted with that
responsibility quite mistakenly, of course.

GROSS: If there were warning signs about Stephen Glass before he was actually
uncovered, what were those signs?

Mr. LANE: Well, a number of times, people wrote letters to the editor; not
while I was editor that I recall, but prior to that, a number of letters to
the editor were written where people said, `This just didn't happen. It's not
true.' And, you know, I think that was looked into and Steve, you know, came
up with a lie that seemed to account for it and, you know, people moved on.
So that's very unfortunate.

But again, I go back to this--it's very hard to make this charge, Terry. It's
very hard to go to somebody and say, `You know what? I think you might have
fabricated. Prove to me that you didn't,' because it's such a serious charge,
you know. It's like accusing a priest of, you know, violating his vows
of--whatever--poverty and obedience. It goes so to the heart of the
profession that unless you feel very strongly you have the evidence, you don't
initially make it.

GROSS: Are there specific examples of how the fact-checking process has been
changed?

Mr. LANE: Well, you have to remember I haven't been there since 1999, so I
don't know what they're doing right now.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. LANE: But I can comment on what happened when I was there.

GROSS: Sure.

Mr. LANE: And absolutely--you know, I can remember specific cases where, for
example, we got a report from a free-lancer in Kosovo, I think, and that
person was telling us that such-and-such a person didn't want her name used--A
person in Kosovo, right?--and, therefore, couldn't be quoted by name. But we
insisted that she give us a name and address, I believe, for that person in
Kosovo before we would use the unnamed quotes so that we would have some--even
though we wouldn't use the person's name, we would know what it was. And that
was pursuant to a policy we developed that whenever you use an unnamed quote,
you would have to supply the name to at least one editor so that there'd be
some other person who would know that the person was real. And we took a lot
of precautions like that and, frankly, we challenged a number of people who
weren't too happy to be challenged, but we felt we had to do it, you know.

GROSS: Have you seen Stephen Glass again since firing him?

Mr. LANE: The only time I saw Steve was a brief glimpse of him across a room
when I went for a visit to his lawyer when I was still editor of The New
Republic and I haven't seen him since.

GROSS: He's writing again. How do you feel about that?

Mr. LANE: Well, I didn't appreciate his book, his novel, which I felt really
kind of contradicted his expressions of remorse, because the book portrays not
only me but other people who were responsible for unmasking him in a very,
very negative light. Obviously, it's a roman a clef; we're not named, but
we're also not fools, and we know, you know, who these characters are based
on. And so I was troubled when I read it because he has been now going public
and saying how much remorse he feels and sending out letters of apology and
that sort of thing. But the book, I think once again, shows the kind of nasty
side of Stephen Glass and shows that he seems to have this need when he's
fictionalizing to create people who are to be made fun or are to be viewed in
a negative light.

GROSS: He's writing journalism again, too, isn't he? I think he's writing
for Rolling Stone again.

Mr. LANE: I think he wrote one article for them, yeah. And--well, you know,
caveat emptor.

GROSS: Charles Lane is the editor at The New Republic who revealed the
fabrications of the magazine's staff writer Stephen Glass. Lane now covers
the Supreme Court for The Washington Post.

The movie "Shattered Glass" is based on the story of Stephen Glass. Coming
up, we hear from the actor who portrays Charles Lane in the movie, Peter
Sarsgaard.

This is FRESH AIR.

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Interview: Peter Sarsgaard discusses his preparation for the role
of Charles Lane in the film "Shattered Glass"
TERRY GROSS, host:

In the new movie "Shattered Glass," my guest Peter Sarsgaard plays Charles
Lane, who we just heard from. Lane was the editor at The New Republic who
discovered that the magazine's reporter, Stephen Glass, had been fabricating
stories. Sarsgaard also starred in "Boys Don't Cry." Here's another scene
from "Shattered Glass." Lane suspects that Glass' latest story is filled with
fabrications and made-up sources. Lane confronts Glass at the office and
insists that they retrace some of the steps Glass took when he was allegedly
covering the story. Glass is played by Hayden Christenson.

(Soundbite of "Shattered Glass")

Mr. PETER SARSGAARD: (As Charles Lane) We need to take a drive to Bethesda.

Mr. HAYDEN CHRISTENSON: (As Stephen Glass) What for?

Mr. SARSGAARD: (As Lane) I want to meet Joe Hiert.

Mr. CHRISTENSON: (As Glass) I already told you nobody knows where he is.

Mr. SARSGAARD: (As Lane) Well, maybe if we go to the hotel where he met with
Russ Dolson(ph) and Sims somebody will remember him...

Mr. CHRISTENSON: (As Glass) Joe--there were hundreds of people there.

Mr. SARSGAARD: (As Lane) ...or have some clue as to how to find him.

Mr. CHRISTENSON: (As Glass) OK?

Mr. SARSGAARD: (As Lane) These Forbes guys want to come down on you.

Mr. CHRISTENSON: (As Glass) This is ridiculous. You know?

Mr. SARSGAARD: (As Lane) They're highly suspicious about some of the material
in that article. You know that.

Mr. CHRISTENSON: (As Glass) Yeah.

Mr. SARSGAARD: (As Lane) But they're going to go online with their piece
tomorrow.

Mr. CHRISTENSON: (As Glass) Oh.

Mr. SARSGAARD: (As Lane) OK?

Mr. CHRISTENSON: (As Glass) Yeah. Yeah.

Mr. SARSGAARD: (As Lane) Now, Steve--Steve?

Mr. CHRISTENSON: (As Glass) Yeah?

Mr. SARSGAARD: (As Lane) If we can find Hiert, I can back them off for a day
or two. OK?

Mr. CHRISTENSON: (As Glass) OK. I'll get my notes.

Mr. SARSGAARD: (As Lane) OK.

GROSS: Peter Sarsgaard, welcome to FRESH AIR.

Mr. SARSGAARD: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

GROSS: This is a good scene.

Mr. SARSGAARD: Yeah. I like that clip, actually.

GROSS: I do, too.

Mr. SARSGAARD: I like that clip because it's in a two-shot. You get to see
the two of us acting together, my favorite.

GROSS: Is that unusual?

Mr. SARSGAARD: It is unusual. You know, it's unusual--it's more unusual on a
bigger-budget film. In a smaller-budget film, they're trying to save time, so
a shot like that sort of saves having to shoot three other shots; you know,
two close-ups and maybe another tighter two. But I like them. It sort of
empowers the actor, 'cause we can act together; it can't be cut.

GROSS: That's one of the problems of movies--Isn't it?--that sometimes you're
not acting together.

Mr. SARSGAARD: Oh, so frequently. So frequently you're acting, looking at
the corner of a lens or something like that. But really, the bigger the
budget, it gets more technical, because people have more time to do fancy
shots. And I think that was, you know, what was compelling about doing this
movie.

GROSS: And one of the things that I like about the movie is that it's really
just about the journalistic story. There isn't, like--you know, love stories
brought in. There isn't, like, a murderer lurking in the background.

Mr. SARSGAARD: Right. Right. Right.

GROSS: The only mystery is, you know, what is true, what is false and what is
the motivation for the fabrication.

Mr. SARSGAARD: Yeah.

GROSS: Now you're playing a real person, Charles Lane. What is necessary for
you to do in terms of casting--I mean, when you're playing Charles Lane? Did
you have to look like Charles Lane? Did you have to talk like Charles Lane?

Mr. SARSGAARD: No, no, no. I mean, I've played, quote, unquote, "real
people" a number of times. I mean, "Boys Don't Cry" was a real person. And
actually, the character that I played in "K-19" was even a real person. I
mean, if they're not in the public eye, if you're not playing Nixon, there's
really no value in impersonating them because the audience has no expectation
about who they're seeing. But I did talk to him some beforehand.

GROSS: What did you talk about? What did you feel you should find out from
him?

Mr. SARSGAARD: His perspective on the actual events that happened; not so
much who Chuck Lane was, but what Chuck Lane thought happened. You know,
everyone's got a--everyone had--you know, Michael Kelly has his version of
events and Chuck Lane has his version of events and Stephen Glass has his
version of events. And, you know, the only difference between all three of
them is that Michael Kelly and Chuck Lane were--their intention was to
perceive what actually happened, you know. But even that said, you know,
objective truth is an impossible thing. So I wanted to find out what Chuck
Lane thought happened.

GROSS: Did you read back editions of The New Republic? Did you read any of
the Stephen Glass stories?

Mr. SARSGAARD: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Billy gave us all packets, you know.
And I did; I read a number of them. I also read a number of Chuck Lane's
pieces. The thing about Stephen Glass' pieces is once you know that he made
them up, once you have that in your mind, it's very easy to see that they are
fictitious, you know. I mean, they're absurd. They're really, really, really
absurd.

One thing that I think is interesting is--and this is sort of peripheral to
the movie--is that Stephen Glass wrote a piece for Rolling Stone also during
this time, you know, and he also wrote pieces for George. But the piece that
he wrote for Rolling Stone ended up getting Rolling Stone sued, and they won
the case. But Stephen Glass is now writing for Rolling Stone, like as of--I
don't know--six months ago or something like that. He wrote a piece about
marijuana laws in Canada. I just think it's interesting that--and not just
that this guy lied, but that everybody wants to believe him all the time, so
much so that we're willing to give him another job and try to believe him
again. You know, we're consumers of media, and this guy puts out an
interesting product I think is what the movie is basically about.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Peter Sarsgaard. He stars in
the new movie "Shattered Glass," which is based on the true story of
journalist Stephen Glass who, it turns out, fabricated a lot of the stories
that he wrote for The New Republic and other publications. Sarsgaard plays
Charles Lane, who at the time was the editor of The New Republic.

One of the things I like about the movie is that it's--you know, often in
movies about journalism, there's this, like, torrid romance and, you know, all
this kind of, like, extracurricular stuff that's very Hollywood. This movie
really sticks to the journalism story. And in a way, it doesn't give you a
lot to play in the sense that, you know, no one's coming at you with a gun...

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: ...you know, you're not getting into the bed with a leading lady. You
know, you're just a new editor in a difficult position who's unsure of
yourself and in a position of having to do something very distasteful, which
is, like, investigate one of your own writers and, in the end, try to unmask
him. Can you talk about the difficulties of playing somebody, you know, that
is in a situation like that which isn't necessarily the stuff of big Hollywood
films?

Mr. SARSGAARD: Yeah, I know what you mean. The difficulty in playing this
role was that the whole first half is silent, basically. You know, I'm
accumulating details and facts; I'm being a reporter, basically. Not that I
suspect he's made everything up at the beginning of the movie, but I suspect
something, and I suspect enough that I start paying attention to him.

And I have to arrive at a point later in the movie, where I've accumulated
enough facts and details and I'm willing to actually say something to him
because, you know, for most of the movie, I can't say anything to him because
if someone knows that they're being studied or, you know, watched, they're
going to start protecting what they say a little bit more. You know, it's
Forbes that's after him; it's not me that's after him. You know what I mean?

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. SARSGAARD: So the thing that Billy did that really helped me and that
I've never had a director do before is he got interested when I was not
talking in the first part of the movie. And, you know, I could have thought
the thoughts and--you know, a lot of what I do in the movie is think one thing
is true and then hear him say something and then decide that's not true and,
you know, formulate a new theory and, you know, a lot of it--it's kind of
complicated.

And so what Billy did was he just put the camera in a position for a lot of
those scenes where you'd be able to see my thoughts and where I wouldn't have
to kind of telegraph them to the audience, which you're asked to do quite a
bit as an actor. But Billy would just keep moving the camera around until he
could read my thoughts better.

GROSS: If, for example, you look kind of skeptical at an editorial meeting
where Stephen Glass is pitching this really elaborate story, there's times
when you just look troubled, you look reluctant, reluctant to take action.

Mr. SARSGAARD: Yeah.

GROSS: So how do you--what goes through your mind when you have to register
something, when something like that has to register on your face, but you're
not trying to, you know, quote, "telegraph" the emotion?

Mr. SARSGAARD: Yeah. Well, you know, luckily, there are many different sides
to Hayden Christenson in the movie, so I just deal with whatever he's doing,
you know. I mean--but it is complicated because it's not--with this role, a
lot of parts that I've played, I've played a lot of kind of chaotic people,
and whatever chaos happened was always good. In this movie, Billy really--it
was kind of a tightrope feeling. He--you know, I wanted to believe as an
actor, playing some of the scenes some of the time, that he had made
everything up, that, you know, what I was seeing was the complete fabrication
that it looked like it was. But that doesn't help your movie if I think that
for the entire movie.

So, you know, you start coming up with different theories about what's going
on. You think somebody might have duped this guy, you know, like, he got a
little bit of disinformation, put it in his piece and now he's beating himself
up about it because he seems like that kind of guy. Or you go, `No, no. It
seems like it might be bigger,' or it seems like it's nothing. I mean, I
tried to--and Billy really helped me with this--let each one of those theories
have its day in the movie and not necessarily in an ascending order to
believing that he had made everything up, you know, not like a clear
trajectory toward that.

GROSS: Peter Sarsgaard plays editor Charles Lane in the new film "Shattered
Glass." Sometime in the next few days, we'll hear more from Sarsgaard, who
also starred in "Boys Don't Cry" and "K-19," and got his start in the film
"Dead Man Walking."

Coming up, jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a new collaboration between
tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin and pianist Horace Parlan.

This is FRESH AIR.

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Review: New CD "Close Your Eyes" by Johnny Griffin and Horace
Parlan
TERRY GROSS, host:

Tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin and pianist Horace Parlan worked together in
New York in the 1960s. Griffin then moved to Europe, eventually setting in
France, but they renewed their acquaintance after Parlan moved to Denmark in
the 1970s. In 2000, they recorded a duo album which is now out in the States.
Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says it brings out a different side of Johnny
Griffin.

(Soundbite of music)

KEVIN WHITEHEAD reporting:

Johnny Griffin prides himself on fast thinking and fast fingers. He'll take
on any rival soloist at the quickest tempo a band can handle. Pianist Horace
Parlan is no jackrabbit; favoring slow, deliberate tempos and a self-effacing
solo style. These old friends make an odd couple, but the match is less a
problem than opportunity for Griffin, who accepts Parlan's terms. The hare
slows down to hang with the tortoise.

(Soundbite of music)

WHITEHEAD: Johnny Griffin and Horace Parlan, from their album "Close Your
Eyes" on Minor Music.

Griffin has recorded ballads before. Fast beboppers like to slow way down and
tough tenors to get tender. But this is almost Griffin for lovers; recalling
the peaceful ballads John Coltrane cut in the '60s. The duo play two tunes
associated with him: "My One and Only Love" and Billy Strayhorn's "My Little
Brown Book." Griffin never tries to sound like Coltrane, but there are some
twinges of Stan Getz.

(Soundbite of music)

WHITEHEAD: Griffin sounds great at that tempo, which lets us hear his warm,
round sound up close. He displays his usual taste and intelligence, but
changing the context can change the meaning of what he plays. In a fast solo,
his habit of quoting from lullabies, bugle calls, fiddle tunes, Broadway songs
and light classics comes off smart-alecky. Here he does it less, and there's
something wistful or melancholy about those snippets as they float by, like
doghouses in a flood.

(Soundbite of music)

WHITEHEAD: The CD "Close Your Eyes" is subtitled "Johnny Griffin Meets Horace
Parlan"; not for the first time, but the way you meet a friend on the street
and invite him over for a drink. It's no big event, but sometimes a quiet
evening beats a loud one.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Kevin Whitehead writes for the Chicago Sun-Times, The Absolute Sound
and Down Beat. He reviewed the CD "Close Your Eyes" by Johnny Griffin and
Horace Parlan.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
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