Colour Me Kubrick: A True...ish Story (U.S. title: Color Me Kubrick) is a 2005 comedy-drama film directed by Brian W. Cook and written by Anthony Frewin. It stars John Malkovich[2] as Alan Conway, a British con-man who impersonated director Stanley Kubrick for several years in the 1990s. The film follows a fictionalized version of Conway as he goes from person to person, convincing them to give out money, liquor, and sexual favours for the promise of a job on "Kubrick's" next film. In real life, Frewin was Kubrick's long-time personal assistant, and Cook was assistant director on three of Kubrick's films.
Plot
Two thugs come to collect a bar bill that conmanAlan Conway has generated while impersonating the reclusive film director Stanley Kubrick, but Conway is nowhere to be found, as he provided the address of a wealthy elderly couple as Kubrick's home address. The thugs cause a ruckus outside the house and are arrested.
Conway scams many people by saying he is Kubrick, including a young fashion designer, the managers of an aspiring heavy metal band, a cab driver, and the owner of a fashionable wine bar. The victims are deceived into giving "Kubrick" sums of money, free food and drinks, and even sexual favours. None of these people catch on to the fact that Conway actually knows relatively little about Kubrick or his films, and he puts on a different persona—ranging from reserved English gentleman to flamboyant Jewish-American stereotype—with each victim. The only person Conway fails to deceive is a rent boy who he attempts to pickup at a bar: when Conway begins an anecdote about directing Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) after the young man says it is his favourite of Kubrick's films, the rent boy informs him that Judgment at Nuremberg was directed by Stanley Kramer—not Kubrick—and Conway quietly leaves.
In a restaurant, a drunk Conway confronts Frank Rich, a journalist from The New York Times, about an article the Times ran about the real Kubrick. He acts personally offended that the paper called Kubrick a recluse, and wants Rich to know that he shaved off his beard. After this chance meeting, Rich investigates Kubrick and finds a picture of him, learning that the real Kubrick looks nothing like the man he met in the restaurant.
The nurse who cares for Conway after he passes out, drunk, on a beach, introduces him to the popular British singer and comedian Lee Pratt, and Conway is able to ingratiate himself with Pratt by promising to help establish the "low-rent Liberace with an Elvis gleam in his eye"[3] as a headlining act in Las Vegas. Conway travels around with Pratt, living a life of luxury at Pratt's expense in exchange for invented tips and false promises about helping the entertainer conquer America. Finally, in a high-class seaside hotel in Devon, a cleaning woman, possibly under the direction of Pratt's increasingly suspicious manager, discovers a passport with Conway's real name printed inside, and Conway is thrown out of Pratt's life and off of a pier into Lyme Bay.
Rich writes an article exposing Conway, and reporters gather outside Conway's apartment. In an attempt to avoid prosecution, Conway acts as though he really thinks he is Stanley Kubrick and is sent to a mental hospital, where his doctor publishes a case study of him in a medical journal. He convinces the doctor he has recovered from his mental breakdown, but she says he still needs treatment for his alcoholism and arranges for the National Health Service to pay for him to attend a four-week program at the luxurious Rimini Clinic, where many celebrities go for rehab.
Conway lives the good life at the clinic. Over a still frame of him relaxing in a giant, luxurious hot tub, onscreen text reveals that he "escaped prosecution. He returned to his flat in Harrow, where he died of a heart attack in December 1998. Stanley Kubrick died three months later."
The idea for Colour Me Kubrick was conceived during the filming of Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Alan Conway had already been impersonating Kubrick for many years by that point, but it was during the filming of Eyes Wide Shut that the director became aware of the situation. Kubrick's assistant, Anthony Frewin, received calls and complaints from various people who had met with Conway while he was impersonating Kubrick and were offered money, gifts, or even parts in upcoming films.[4] Frewin brought this information to Kubrick, who asked him to find those affected. Very little progress was made in reprimanding Conway, however, because none of the people who were conned would come forward. Frewin decided to write these accounts and stories into a screenplay, which went on to become Colour Me Kubrick.[4]
Brian Cook, an assistant director who worked with Kubrick on three films, including Eyes Wide Shut, read Frewin's script and enjoyed it. Cook also knew of Conway's actions, and how they affected Kubrick's work and personal life. He mentioned that one of the worst incidents was "when he signed Stanley's name on a bank loan for a gay club in Soho".[4] The film marked Cook's debut as a director.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 51% of 59 critics' reviews of the film are positive, with an average rating of 5.5/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "Colour Me Kubrick has a fascinating premise, but provides little insight into Kubrick and the man who impersonated him."[7] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 57 of 100 based on reviews from 21 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[8]
Tasha Robinson of The A.V. Club wrote that the film "literally only has one idea in its head, and when that idea runs dry, it's as lost as Conway is without his plethora of Kubrick masks."[9] More positively, Brian Tallerico of UGO said that "even if the film is essentially a one-man show, a one-man show starring John Malkovich is bound to be really damn good."[10]
