John Malkovich is a terrible Stanley Kubrick.
In “Color Me Kubrick” he plays the director of “Dr. Strangelove,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “A Clockwork Orange,” “Spartacus” and “Judgment at Nuremberg” as a multiple-car collision of Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau, Miss Kirk Douglas, Quentin Crisp and Tony Soprano. Sometimes all in the same scene.
What, you say? Kubrick didn’t direct “Judgment at Nuremberg.” Well, right you are, and Malkovich isn’t playing Stanley Kubrick, the renowned film director. In “Color Me Kubrick,” billed as a “true-ish story,” Malkovich plays Alan Conway, the fittingly named con artist who improbably impersonated Kubrick – well, not so much impersonated him as simply claimed to be him – around London during the making of “Eyes Wide Shut.”
The movie is structured as an episodic farce and a showcase for bad acting. As the cons get increasingly outlandish, so does Malkovich’s Conway’s Kubrick, who tries on more accents than all the characters in all of Stanley Kubrick’s films put together, and gets them all wrong too. He name-drops incessantly, and insists on referring to the star of “Paths of Glory” and “Spartacus” as “Miss Kirk Douglas” and the star of “Eyes Wide Shut” as “Little Tommy Cruise.”
The idea that anyone could sashay around town with such flamboyant silliness, in outfits that would make Stevie Nicks blush (head scarves, fingerless black lace gloves, brown and orange-striped drawstring pants, green socks with white polka dots), while claiming to be Stanley Kubrick, is patently ridiculous. And yet, people did believe him. They wanted to believe him, and to feel that the great film director had taken a special interest in them: cab drivers, artists, investors, ambitious rockers, aging lounge singers.
“Color Me Kubrick” was directed by the real Stanley Kubrick’s longtime assistant director Brian Cook, and written by Kubrick’s researcher Anthony Frewin – based on the research Frewin did on Conway at the real Kubrick’s behest.
Though Conway was a lousy impersonator, he was a fairly savvy con man. His victims would feel privileged that he felt comfortable enough with them to be so openly gay (something unknown to the general public – mostly because Kubrick himself wasn’t).
And, of course, he would ultimately persuade them to offer to do him favors – a little money, a meal, a few drinks, a sexual liaison – by pretending to find them and their work fascinating, and envisioning a fantastic personal and professional partnership ahead.
“Color Me Kubrick” is a little bit like a coloring book – flip the pages and each is pretty much like the one before, escalating variations on the same scam, with Malkovich filling in the cartoonish shadings and occasionally going way outside the lines.
“Color Me Kubrick” will be released on DVD Tuesday. Jim Emerson, editor of the website rogerebert.com, is filling in for Roger Ebert as he recovers from surgery.
“Color Me Kubrick”
NOT RATED|1 hour, 26 minute|COMEDY|directed by Brian W. Cook; written by Anthony Frewin; photography by Howard Atherton; starring John Malkovich, Jim Davidson, Richard E. Grant|Opens today at the Starz FilmCenter.
