Did You Know?

After test screenings, an off-screen voice was added to clarify a plot point. The voice is that of the film's editor.

Writer/director Billy Ray initially had a great deal of difficulty convincing the real life Michael Kelly to assist in the production of the movie. Kelly felt a great deal of embarrassment over Stephen Glass's fraudulent articles, especially because he was editor of the New Republic when many of Glass's articles were published. Ray eventually persuaded Kelly to help him by telling him that he was approaching this story as a journalist who wanted the script to be as factually accurate as possible. This convinced Kelly to help with the project.

Melanie Lynskey replaced Maggie Gyllenhaal who was originally cast as Amy Brand but left the project because of scheduling conflicts.

Amy Brand (Melanie Lynskey) had no costume changes, and wore the same outfit the entire movie.

Hanna Rosin, a real life journalist who was a colleague of both Stephen Glass and Chuck Lane, worked as an adviser to writer/director Billy Ray. The character of Catlin Avery was based loosely on Hanna Rosin.

In the DVD commentary director Billy Ray says that when Stephen Glass is talking to the class, the text on the blackboard says: "Thought for the day: Experience is the toughest teacher, because she gives the test first and the lesson after".

In the DVD commentary, the real Charles Lane talks about confronting Stephen Glass in front of a restaurant in which Glass claims to have had dinner with people he featured in a dubious article. Lane's comments occur as this confrontation is dramatized in an exterior shot filmed at the actual location of the restaurant in Bethesda, Md. Lane's comments identify the restaurant as "the Original House of Pancakes." But in the shot, a sign inside the restaurant that is visible through the glass front door shows a logo (a chef flipping a very large pancake above a frying pan) and name which correctly identifies the restaurant as part of the national breakfast-and-lunch franchise, "The Original Pancake House".

Writer/Director Billy Ray first came to this project when HBO, which had optioned a Buzz Bissinger article about the Stephen Glass debacle, hired Ray to adapt the article into a screenplay. While he was writing it, certain HBO executives were fired. By the time he handed in the script, Ray says in an interview, there was a new administration at HBO who "hadn't ordered the script and didn't particularly care about it. So it sat for two years." As he continued writing scripts, he eventually decided "it was time to find out if I was grown up enough to be a director." And he thought that his adaptation of the Bissinger article would be "a good launching point for me because I knew there was nothing in there that was so craft-dependent that my lack of experience was going to hang me." Ray recounts these events in The Dialogue: An Interview with Screenwriter Billy Ray.

In the scene where David shows up late in the office to give Steve a coffee, if you look on Stephen's computer screen, you can see that he is building the website for Juct Micronics. It is said in the DVD commentary by Billy Ray and Chuck Lane that he was building the website in order to cover his tracks for the next day.