Color Me Kubrick
Directed by Brian Cook
While director Stanley Kubrick was filming Eyes Wide Shut in London during the late ’90s, a con man named Alan Conway dashed around town impersonating the director. According to Color Me Kubrick, the self-described “true...ish,” comic version of that outlandish grifting, Conway grazed free meals, scored copious booze and silver-tongued his way into the beds of a succession of star-struck gay Brits.
Color Me Kubrick evokes the con-cinema of Six Degrees of Separation and Catch Me If You Can, along with other dramas of common folk masquerading as their social betters (including Kubrick’s own Barry Lyndon). But its unenlightening insights into the celebrity worship that buoyed Conway are less interesting than the film’s evisceration (via Malkovich) of celebrity as a bizarre, affected performance of its own.
With his accent alternating between a lazy Dixie drawl, New York yammer and falteringly fancy-Britspeak, Color Me Kubrick finds its greatest source of snarky humor in Malkovich’s rubbery, cartoonish contortions. Dementedly funny at times and as self-indulgent as the spaz-schtick of a Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler at others, Color Me Kubrick nevertheless continues and enlarges Malkovich’s obvious interest in stardom as a self-referential plot device.
Malkovich plays this auteur impersonator as a kind of campy Jack Smith-meets-“Ab Fab” histrionic loon conning an assortment of rubes, including a memorable Richard E. Grant as a willow-spined restaurateur fawning at the temple of Kubrick’s notoriety. As if transfigured by the success of his own deception, Conway’s impersonation escalates preposterously as he morphs from a mildly effete booze hound into a John Galliano-worthy pirate, sporting eyeliner and rakish headscarf.
Written by Kubrick’s longtime personal assistant, Anthony Frewin, and helmed by Kubrick’s former assistant director, Brian Cook, the film tips its hat to not only Conway’s gaudy spotlight-hogging—an ironic contrast to the cerebral, intensely private Kubrick’s life—but Kubrick’s own visual style. Those winking homages include an opening scene of two London punks attempting A Clockwork Orange home invasion, an instantly recognizable Kubrickian musical wallpaper of Beethoven and Richard Strauss and familiar actors such as Marisa Berenson (Barry Lyndon).
Though Conway is outed on several occasions for having insufficient knowledge of Kubrick’s oeuvre (he reportedly never bothered to bone up on the auteur’s films), Color Me Kubrick’s occasional success comes from its expressions of the kind of fan’s devotion that also put Conway’s victims on the hook.
Directed by Brian Cook
While director Stanley Kubrick was filming Eyes Wide Shut in London during the late ’90s, a con man named Alan Conway dashed around town impersonating the director. According to Color Me Kubrick, the self-described “true...ish,” comic version of that outlandish grifting, Conway grazed free meals, scored copious booze and silver-tongued his way into the beds of a succession of star-struck gay Brits.
Color Me Kubrick evokes the con-cinema of Six Degrees of Separation and Catch Me If You Can, along with other dramas of common folk masquerading as their social betters (including Kubrick’s own Barry Lyndon). But its unenlightening insights into the celebrity worship that buoyed Conway are less interesting than the film’s evisceration (via Malkovich) of celebrity as a bizarre, affected performance of its own.
With his accent alternating between a lazy Dixie drawl, New York yammer and falteringly fancy-Britspeak, Color Me Kubrick finds its greatest source of snarky humor in Malkovich’s rubbery, cartoonish contortions. Dementedly funny at times and as self-indulgent as the spaz-schtick of a Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler at others, Color Me Kubrick nevertheless continues and enlarges Malkovich’s obvious interest in stardom as a self-referential plot device.
Malkovich plays this auteur impersonator as a kind of campy Jack Smith-meets-“Ab Fab” histrionic loon conning an assortment of rubes, including a memorable Richard E. Grant as a willow-spined restaurateur fawning at the temple of Kubrick’s notoriety. As if transfigured by the success of his own deception, Conway’s impersonation escalates preposterously as he morphs from a mildly effete booze hound into a John Galliano-worthy pirate, sporting eyeliner and rakish headscarf.
Written by Kubrick’s longtime personal assistant, Anthony Frewin, and helmed by Kubrick’s former assistant director, Brian Cook, the film tips its hat to not only Conway’s gaudy spotlight-hogging—an ironic contrast to the cerebral, intensely private Kubrick’s life—but Kubrick’s own visual style. Those winking homages include an opening scene of two London punks attempting A Clockwork Orange home invasion, an instantly recognizable Kubrickian musical wallpaper of Beethoven and Richard Strauss and familiar actors such as Marisa Berenson (Barry Lyndon).
Though Conway is outed on several occasions for having insufficient knowledge of Kubrick’s oeuvre (he reportedly never bothered to bone up on the auteur’s films), Color Me Kubrick’s occasional success comes from its expressions of the kind of fan’s devotion that also put Conway’s victims on the hook.
