John Malkovich is Alan Conway, an impersonator of Stanley Kubrick, who is as powerful and creepy as they come: flamboyant, with faint lipstick, colorful neck scarves, and an array of accents tailored to his con victims.
In Color Me Kubrick, Malkovich is the desperate con man Alan Conway, who baits men with his assumed identity—that of directer Stanely Kubrick. With the young designer he is an oily Brit; with the heavy metal band Exterminating Angels he is deep-throated and boastfully masculine; and with another man he impersonates an eclectic oil-baron from Texas. Malkovich moves expertly from persona to persona, and even manages, several times, to look good writhing on his bed in tighty-whities, or even charismatic while squeezed into an argyle sweater. He is, as one woman puts it, “Mr. Kute-prick.”
We meet Conway first as Kubrick, as he saunters through a bar, glass in hand, and saunters up to a young, leather-clad artist deeply absorbed in design sketches. Kubrick slumps down on the bar stool, helps himself to the slightly-disturbed young man’s sketches and cuts a ridiculous figure: who is this man, bulging awkwardly out of his ‘70s-style suit and clutching his faux-Louis Vitton bag?
“I am Stanley,” Conway mumbles as he looks over the young man’s designs, “Kubrick.”
With those words Malkovich propels his befuddled character into a new dynamic: the two men are later seen tripping drunkenly over each other and then sitting in Kubrick’s trashy apartment. And Kubrick, in a small pink robe with fish-net knee highs and heels, begins to feel up and caution his new friend about the tendency of the fashion world to “handle” its rising stars.
The rough handling of rising stars is this Kubrick’s specialty.
Conway lives by “not what he knows” but whom he purports to know, and it works marvelously. He is treated to free drinks, food, hotels, sex, and expensive fountain pens (“Ah’m so teeched!” he exclaims as he receives this last in his Texan-mode.)As one ignorant young admirer says dejectedly: “They do say in Hollywood that the only way to the top is through the bottom.”
Conway’s flawless system of fake addresses and cultivated personas comes across a speed bump, however, in the form of Frank Rich, the New York Times movie critic. Rich, seeing through the scam, does his homework and Conway is caught. His mistakes rain down.
After one last fiasco with a Scottish casino performer and a brief attack of insanity, Conway is institutionalized, and ironically given the star-treatment at a luxurious rehab center. In the movie’s final shot he sits as happy as a clam in a hot tub and turban, and you are conscious of a profound dislike for him; all you want is for Conway to die.
And he does, ironically, as herald for the real Kubrick’s own death.
The movie is a marvelous tour through a pretentious and shallow world of prim homosexuals, cockney heavy-metal punks and desperate doctors. Malkovich has it completely wrapped around his finger. As the film’s moody theme song claims: “He is just what you’ve been looking for.”
