Somewhere among the beautiful people crowded into the courtyard of the Hugo Boss showroom for a party feting the movie Shattered Glass are two rather unlikely characters. Adam L. Penenberg and Chuck Lane aren't schmoozing the crowd as proficiently as the rest of the Hollywood players and movie industry wannabes, and the glittering parties of the Toronto International Film Festival are the clichéd million miles away from their real lives as tech writer and Washington Post staffer.

Nope, Penenberg and Lane aren't in Kansas anymore (nor are they in New York or Washington, where -- respectively -- they live and work, for that matter either). Five years ago, the pair became entwined in one of the most notorious scandals in modern journalistic history, the Stephen Glass story. And we all know how Hollywood loves to turn a scandal into a blockbuster.

In 1998, Glass -- then a 25-year-old writer at the Washington-based political magazine The New Republic -- was caught fabricating facts and entire storylines in dozens of articles. Penenberg was the writer at the online magazine Forbes.com who first realized there were cracks in one of Glass' stories, while Lane was Glass' editor at The New Republic.

Fast forward to 2003. Glass has long-since been busted for making up all or part of the facts in 27 of the 41 stories he wrote for The New Republic, as well as for fabricating details of articles he freelanced to magazines such as George, Harper's and Rolling Stone. And on the afternoon of the Canadian premiere of a movie telling his story (made without Glass' cooperation) Penenberg and Lane -- who are portrayed as Glass' nemeses -- find themselves on the opposite side of the interviewing process that they, as journalists, are used to.

"It's fine," says Lane, when asked if that feels strange to him. "Don't forget, this thing started five years ago, so I've been interviewed a few times about it. The movie is giving it a whole new kick, but when it happened, and ever since, there have been people calling me up to interview me about Steve Glass and the whole shebang."

Among those people was Billy Ray, director and co-writer of Shattered Glass and facilitator of Lane's transformation into hot subject on the 2003 Toronto film fest interview circuit. At Ray's request, Lane signed on as a "consultant" for the movie, filling in holes and lending authenticity to the subject.

"Basically what I did was I read the script," Lane tells CTV.ca. "I told them where things in the script were just inaccurate, either about The New Republic or me, or about Washington … and then later on, I was available for Billy to call me up and ask questions as he went through. It was mostly about very similitude kinds of things -- did you really do that, how did you feel? And I talked to Peter (Sarsgaard, who played Lane in the film) a couple of times on the phone and I also came up to see them shoot."

Though he didn't get that illustrious (and oh-so-ambiguous) consultant title himself, Penenberg also cooperated with Ray. "How could I turn down someone asking me questions?" he says. "It always bugs me with the New York Times -- they won't let reporters cooperate for books and if you want to interview a reporter for something, they won't let him. It's incredibly hypocritical -- we earn our living gaining access to people, getting them to talk. So I always talk."

The irony of working on a Hollywood project about a guy who made stuff up when the film industry is notorious for bending the truth is lost on neither Penenberg nor Lane. But both say the finished project is pretty true to life.

"I think the movie gets the big things right," says Lane. "But there's a lot of things that take place in the movie that weren't exactly that way, there's a lot of things that were compressed, there's a lot of people who are composites -- all those devices are employed to keep this thing going along as a movie.

"If they did all that and got the big picture wrong, I would think we would all have a right to be kind of upset. But the fact that I think they get the overall mood of The New Republic very right, they get the trajectory of this particular episode right, they get the individual personalities, I think in all of those ways, it's a very fair representation of the place. This is not a documentary, so all you can expect from these people is that they will give it a good-faith effort. … And I think they did. It's their interpretation, it's their take on what happened and I think it's a defensible one."

"As far as I know, people are pretty happy with the way they were portrayed," says Penenberg. "They think it was pretty accurate. (But) I can't tell you what Stephen Glass says about it." (The film's producers sent Glass a copy of the script, but he never responded to it).

Of course, with those true to life portrayals came the opportunity for both Penenberg and Lane to see larger-than-life versions of themselves onscreen. "It was thrilling," says Penenberg, who was played by Steve Zahn.

"When I first heard that he was cast to play me, I was really happy about it. He's quirky, he's irreverent, he's very smart, he's a good actor and I got to speak with him a few times and he asked really good questions -- and again, very funny, very informal. He really captured, I thought, who I was without even having met me in person, who I was at Forbes.com at that time in my life."

For Lane, it also meant confronting the nasty attitude staffers at The New Republic had towards him around the time of the Glass affair. In one scene -- which was coincidentally filmed the day Lane visited the set -- the writers all sat around, bitching and moaning about him.

"It was kind of funny," says Lane. "They did five takes too, so I didn't just see it once, I saw it five times. Nobody was worried about it -- I didn't care. I thought it was kind of funny that I happened to show up that day and when Chloe Sevigny came out … I said to her 'You didn't have to make that one so convincing.' I think it was just as well that I saw it. I mean, it was real."

Though ultimately Lane is made out to be the film's hero, he says he has no idea how being thrust into such a hot spotlight will affect him or his career. "I hope it'll be beneficial, but it's a whole new ballgame. I can't really predict that."

Penenberg, meanwhile, says he'll take it as it comes.

"I would be the smallest person in the world to complain," he says. "It's a dream to be a journalist and then to be portrayed in a movie by a guy you like and to be portrayed so accurately and sympathetically. So I can never complain. Would I prefer to be remembered for other things? You betcha. But … it's a good movie and I'm proud of the role I made in making it possible."