Alan Conway: the bizarre imposter who pretended to be Stanley Kubrick
In terms of cinema history, there’s only ever going to be one Stanley Kubrick, such was the monumental impact the director had on both the industry and the art form at large. However, for a period during the 1990s for those who lived in and around London, there were two of them.
During his lengthy sabbatical from filmmaking that stretched from 1987’s classic war drama Full Metal Jacket to what proved to be his final feature, Eyes Wide Shut, a dozen years later, Kubrick effectively withdrew from public life entirely and became something of a recluse.
He was hardly hiding away from the world to twiddle his thumbs, though, with Kubrick continuing to embark upon extensive research for a multitude of projects that didn’t end up being made. Sensing there was a gap in the market for someone to step into the limelight and enjoy all the benefits of being the mastermind behind 2001: A Space Odyssey and Barry Lyndon without having to do any of the heavy lifting, Alan Conway stepped in.
Conway didn’t bear much of a physical resemblance to Kubrick and was completely clean-shaven in stark opposition to the constantly-bearded look of the man he was pretending to be, but if anything, that made it easier to orchestrate the ruse. The con artist relied on the fact nobody had seen Kubrick for so long that he’d simply opted to shave off his beard, hit the town, and dangle entirely fabricated creative collaborations in front of his enthralled marks.
He was able to scam entry into some of London’s hottest nightspots, where he wouldn’t have to spend a penny because everyone in his company was enthralled by having one of cinema’s greatest-ever directors in their midst. He got so bold he even informed Julie Walters and Patricia Hayes that he was planning to cast them in his next feature when he ended up backstage at a theatre performance, with nobody any the wiser that he wasn’t actually Kubrick.
This carried on for an unreasonably long time before the deception was uncovered. When Kubrick’s lawyer informed him that a man was parading around London impersonating him and reaping the rewards, the Academy Award-winning director who repeatedly changed the very notion of celluloid was said to be highly amused by Conway’s antics.
One person who wasn’t so impressed was Kubrick’s wife Christiane, who told The Guardian in no uncertain terms she was nothing less than appalled by the scammer pulling the wool over so many eyes. “This strange doppelganger who was pretending to be Stanley, can you imagine the horror?” she asked rhetorically. “It took ages to find him, and then he pleaded insanity, which succeeded. They go and make a TV documentary parading him around. He seemed like such a disgusting person, and now there is a film about him and so on.”
Conway used his notoriety to appear in an episode of The Lying Game, was the subject of the BBC documentary The Man Who Would Be Kubrick, and saw his story transformed into 2005’s dramedy Colour Me Kubrick, where he was played by John Malkovich, with the screenplay being written by the real McCoy’s long-time personal assistant Anthony Frewin. He ended up dying of a heart attack in December 1998, just three months before Kubrick passed away due to the exact same cause, continuing their one-sided and inadvertent association right to the grave.
