Written by Anthony Frewin, Kubrick's own longtime research assistant, Color Me Kubrick recaps Conway's stunt with a curious streak of admiration for the impostor and staggering disdain for the rubes who fell for it. The film is downright nasty to the victims, whom director Brian W. Cook depicts as either flaming queens or shallow sycophants. Frewin and Cook (another Kubrick veteran) seem unhealthily obsessed with Conway's plot, which was brilliant, when you think about it.

Directors are seldom recognized by anyone outside the film industry, but they carry the same mystique for total strangers. Dropping just enough official-sounding gibberish to fool his marks, Malkovich (as Conway) has no trouble talking handsome young costume designers, aspiring actors and the like back to his personal casting couch. The opportunistic-minded souls are so smitten, they have themselves convinced that picking up his bar tab is the best investment they've ever made.

Malkovich makes an inspired choice for the role, mixing charm and delusion while never allowing the character to turn tragic. Drawing from a bottomless repertoire of bad accents, Malkovich takes great delight in depicting Conway as a lousy actor. From his point of view, the joke seems to be, "How could anyone fall for his routine?"

The actor demonstrated a self-deprecating sense of humor in Being John Malkovich, and here, he has another laugh at his own expense in a scene in which the faux-Kubrick recounts the trouble of getting his next movie financed, a sequel (of all things) entitled 3001: A Space Odyssey. When he drops Malkovich's name, the assembled crowd of admirers recoils, "John who?"

Film buffs should appreciate the movie's many in-jokes (as when the 2001 theme Thus Spake Zarathustra plays over a perfectly mundane trip to the laundromat), but it doesn't take long for the caustic characterizations to poison the whole affair. Though gays are likely to be the most appreciative audience for this bitter treat, Color Me Kubrick sports a nasty homophobic streak — just another facet of its superiority complex. It's ultimately no fun watching two men who knew the real Kubrick attack those who never had the pleasure.

[as featured in The Fort Worth Star Telegram]