Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 12:57 am
A Q&A with Anthony Frewin, Writer of Color Me Kubrick
3/22/2007 ScreenGrab
Color Me Kubrick
Anthony Frewin might not be an immediately recognizable name to most movie-buffs, but he has played a big role in making some of history's greatest films. As Stanley Kubrick's friend and personal assistant since the days of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Frewin was the legendary director's right-hand man, responsible for everything from sorting through the thousands of news clippings Kubrick received, to doing art department research, and to overseeing dubbed versions of his films. He was also, as luck would have it, the person entrusted by Kubrick to deal with one Alan Conway, a smalltime con man who spent part of the 1990s going around England pretending to be Kubrick (even though he looked nothing like Kubrick, barely knew anything about him, and apparently didn't even care for his films). Those experiences have now borne fruit in the screenplay for this week's Color Me Kubrick, starring John Malkovich as Conway and directed by Brian Cook, another longtime Kubrick collaborator. The jump from dealing with Conway to writing a story about him shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Frewin's career as a crime novelist (he’s penned the acclaimed books London Blues and Scorpian Rising). ScreenGrab interviewed Frewin via email for the film's release.
Anthony Frewin
What kind of knowledge did you have of Alan Conway or those who had been swindled by him during the period you worked for Stanley?
In the early 1990s a message was passed on to me at SK's house in Hertfordshire by the Warner Bros offices at Pinewood Studios. This was from a 'friend' of Stanley's who was trying to contact him. The name meant nothing to SK and he asked me to find out what was going on. I phoned the guy and he was achingly sincere and felt abandoned by Stanley who had changed his telephone number. I had no doubt that this person genuinely believed he had met SK. Obviously someone had impersonated SK. We thought nothing more of it. Then, a couple of weeks later, more friends of Stanley's started calling Warner Bros trying to contact him and we realized we had a serial impostor.
One of the friends said he had visited Stanley's house many times and from him I got the address of an apartment in the dingy north-west London suburb of Wealdstone and from that I went to the Electoral Rolls and found the place was occupied by someone named Alan Conway.
SK asked me to find out what I could about this Conway and keep a record of all those who had been conned by this aptly named character, and soon I had a thick file. Conway, I discovered, was a predatory gay bankrupt travel agent with a rap sheet six blocks long that started with offences from around the age of 14 onwards. It was all petty stuff: cheque kiting, fraud, embezzlement, burglary, and lots of importuning in gents' lavatories.
More and more people contacted us who had thought they had met the real SK. I would interview them and put all the details in the file.
Conway played a short con? it was a con for drinks, meals and sex. He did not play a long con. It was immediate cons. On the strength of his name he would promise young men parts in films or the opportunity to work on films or through his contacts an entrée into Las Vegas and so on.
Did you ever have any interactions with him?
Our attorneys advised us that under no circumstances should we have any direct contact with Conway himself as he could turn this to his own advantage.
There was one legal option open to SK and that was to get an injunction against Conway, but in order to obtain this we would have to prove to the court that Conway was indeed doing what we accused him of, and in order to do that we had to produce witnesses who would stand up and say they had been conned. Well, of course, nobody who had been conned wanted to go public.
Conway's undoing came about in two ways: first with Frank Rich at Joe Allen's restaurant (A Table too Far as SK described it) and secondly by Conway signing a legal document (the lease for a gay bar in Soho) in SK's name, a criminal offence. When the police moved in on him he admitted himself to a psychiatric clinic and the prosecuting authorities abandoned the case.
What made you decide to write a film about Conway?
[After] the end of Conway's SK impersonations, I was left with a fat file detailing his exploits. Now, I had always been interested in con men and frauds and impostors and for several years I had been struggling with adapting Herman Melville's novel, The Confidence Man (1857) for the screen. What was I to do, deep-six the file in a filing cabinet or . . . ? What I did was write a screenplay based on Conway from my notes as an exercise, and then I deep-sixed that in the filing cabinet and forgot all about it (we were making Eyes Wide Shut at the time). I did not mention the screenplay to SK at anytime as he would probably have said I was wasting my time. He died in 1999 not knowing about it.
It was a year or so after SK's death that I came across the screenplay when I was clearing out the office and I gave it to Christiane, SK's widow, as I thought she might find it amusing. She did, and she said it should be made into a film. I then gave it to Brian Cook.
What was Stanley's reaction to Conway?
Well, pretty pissed off as you can imagine, but also somewhat philosophical acknowledging that this sort of thing might be expected when you were in his position.
We learnt that Conway had only ever seen a little of one of SK's films and did not like it at all. SK said, What an ingrate! If he's going to steal my identity at least he could pay me the courtesy of watching my films and liking them!
One day SK said to me, I'm going to get my own back on Conway! How was he to do that? Easy. I'm going to go around pretending I'm him! SK's humour never deserted him.
Obviously, the film is not a fact-based account of Conway's escapades. (The subtitle of the film is A True?ish Story.) To what extent did you stick to the historical record? Did you at any point consider making a completely fact-based film?
The film is a fact-based account in terms of all the major events but, of course, a lot of the detail was unknown to us and we had to surmise based on what we knew.
What kind of encouragement or advice did Stanley give to the filmmaking ambitions of those of you who worked with him? I know that a number of people who worked for him earlier, such as Andrew Birkin, became filmmakers in their own right.
The encouragement was in observing SK work. Either you were interested and learnt something or you didn't.
You and Brian had worked together for many years assisting Kubrick. How did your relationship with Brian change when the two of you became writer and director. Kubrick himself was reported to have had somewhat complex relationships with his writers.
How did my relationship change with Brian? In a word, it didn't. We'd both worked with SK and knew how to go about it. You just get on with it and, as SK always said, never let your ego get in the way of a good idea! I don't think SK had complex relationships with his writers. Some of his writers may have thought they had a complex relationship, but then this is down to their own psychology.
John Malkovich's amazing performance is so central to this film:Did you write with any particular actors in mind? And did you wind up having to tailor the script to Malkovich's strengths?
The script was written as an exercise with nobody in mind. And it was not re-written when John came aboard. However he did adapt, change and contribute greatly once the film was in production, as befits an actor of his stature. I cannot think of anyone who could have played the role better.
I'm curious if you've ever seen the Iranian film, CLOSE-UP, by Abbas Kiarostami, which is based on a real-life incident in which an emotionally disturbed man posed as the film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and convinced a Tehran family to let him live with them in order to do "research."
I'd never even heard of the film but I've just ordered a DVD from amazon. Thanks for telling me about it. This would certainly make a great double bill with Colour Me Kubrick!
The subject of impostors and con-men has always been a rich vein for writers and film makers to mine. Recently we've had that Philip Roth novel, Three Degrees of Separation and a couple of films by Mr Mamet. It makes us think about reality and illusion and what we know and what we think we know. And don't forget the Melville title already mentioned and his Benito Cereno.
Colour Me Kubrick is really a riff on celebrity. A lot of the people Conway conned were sane, rational, intelligent people but the moment they touched the hem of fame (ie Conway) these qualities deserted them. It wasn't that Conway was a good con-man, it was that his marks were only too wiling and eager to be taken in. Thus the modern power of celebrity.
When you tell people that you were Stanley Kubrick's assistant, do they believe you? And if so, do you ever sometimes feel, on some strange level, like you're getting a taste of the power Conway must have felt?
Do they believe me? Well, I think they do, but perhaps they are conning me! A taste of power? If only?
3/22/2007 ScreenGrab
Color Me Kubrick
Anthony Frewin might not be an immediately recognizable name to most movie-buffs, but he has played a big role in making some of history's greatest films. As Stanley Kubrick's friend and personal assistant since the days of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Frewin was the legendary director's right-hand man, responsible for everything from sorting through the thousands of news clippings Kubrick received, to doing art department research, and to overseeing dubbed versions of his films. He was also, as luck would have it, the person entrusted by Kubrick to deal with one Alan Conway, a smalltime con man who spent part of the 1990s going around England pretending to be Kubrick (even though he looked nothing like Kubrick, barely knew anything about him, and apparently didn't even care for his films). Those experiences have now borne fruit in the screenplay for this week's Color Me Kubrick, starring John Malkovich as Conway and directed by Brian Cook, another longtime Kubrick collaborator. The jump from dealing with Conway to writing a story about him shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Frewin's career as a crime novelist (he’s penned the acclaimed books London Blues and Scorpian Rising). ScreenGrab interviewed Frewin via email for the film's release.
Anthony Frewin
What kind of knowledge did you have of Alan Conway or those who had been swindled by him during the period you worked for Stanley?
In the early 1990s a message was passed on to me at SK's house in Hertfordshire by the Warner Bros offices at Pinewood Studios. This was from a 'friend' of Stanley's who was trying to contact him. The name meant nothing to SK and he asked me to find out what was going on. I phoned the guy and he was achingly sincere and felt abandoned by Stanley who had changed his telephone number. I had no doubt that this person genuinely believed he had met SK. Obviously someone had impersonated SK. We thought nothing more of it. Then, a couple of weeks later, more friends of Stanley's started calling Warner Bros trying to contact him and we realized we had a serial impostor.
One of the friends said he had visited Stanley's house many times and from him I got the address of an apartment in the dingy north-west London suburb of Wealdstone and from that I went to the Electoral Rolls and found the place was occupied by someone named Alan Conway.
SK asked me to find out what I could about this Conway and keep a record of all those who had been conned by this aptly named character, and soon I had a thick file. Conway, I discovered, was a predatory gay bankrupt travel agent with a rap sheet six blocks long that started with offences from around the age of 14 onwards. It was all petty stuff: cheque kiting, fraud, embezzlement, burglary, and lots of importuning in gents' lavatories.
More and more people contacted us who had thought they had met the real SK. I would interview them and put all the details in the file.
Conway played a short con? it was a con for drinks, meals and sex. He did not play a long con. It was immediate cons. On the strength of his name he would promise young men parts in films or the opportunity to work on films or through his contacts an entrée into Las Vegas and so on.
Did you ever have any interactions with him?
Our attorneys advised us that under no circumstances should we have any direct contact with Conway himself as he could turn this to his own advantage.
There was one legal option open to SK and that was to get an injunction against Conway, but in order to obtain this we would have to prove to the court that Conway was indeed doing what we accused him of, and in order to do that we had to produce witnesses who would stand up and say they had been conned. Well, of course, nobody who had been conned wanted to go public.
Conway's undoing came about in two ways: first with Frank Rich at Joe Allen's restaurant (A Table too Far as SK described it) and secondly by Conway signing a legal document (the lease for a gay bar in Soho) in SK's name, a criminal offence. When the police moved in on him he admitted himself to a psychiatric clinic and the prosecuting authorities abandoned the case.
What made you decide to write a film about Conway?
[After] the end of Conway's SK impersonations, I was left with a fat file detailing his exploits. Now, I had always been interested in con men and frauds and impostors and for several years I had been struggling with adapting Herman Melville's novel, The Confidence Man (1857) for the screen. What was I to do, deep-six the file in a filing cabinet or . . . ? What I did was write a screenplay based on Conway from my notes as an exercise, and then I deep-sixed that in the filing cabinet and forgot all about it (we were making Eyes Wide Shut at the time). I did not mention the screenplay to SK at anytime as he would probably have said I was wasting my time. He died in 1999 not knowing about it.
It was a year or so after SK's death that I came across the screenplay when I was clearing out the office and I gave it to Christiane, SK's widow, as I thought she might find it amusing. She did, and she said it should be made into a film. I then gave it to Brian Cook.
What was Stanley's reaction to Conway?
Well, pretty pissed off as you can imagine, but also somewhat philosophical acknowledging that this sort of thing might be expected when you were in his position.
We learnt that Conway had only ever seen a little of one of SK's films and did not like it at all. SK said, What an ingrate! If he's going to steal my identity at least he could pay me the courtesy of watching my films and liking them!
One day SK said to me, I'm going to get my own back on Conway! How was he to do that? Easy. I'm going to go around pretending I'm him! SK's humour never deserted him.
Obviously, the film is not a fact-based account of Conway's escapades. (The subtitle of the film is A True?ish Story.) To what extent did you stick to the historical record? Did you at any point consider making a completely fact-based film?
The film is a fact-based account in terms of all the major events but, of course, a lot of the detail was unknown to us and we had to surmise based on what we knew.
What kind of encouragement or advice did Stanley give to the filmmaking ambitions of those of you who worked with him? I know that a number of people who worked for him earlier, such as Andrew Birkin, became filmmakers in their own right.
The encouragement was in observing SK work. Either you were interested and learnt something or you didn't.
You and Brian had worked together for many years assisting Kubrick. How did your relationship with Brian change when the two of you became writer and director. Kubrick himself was reported to have had somewhat complex relationships with his writers.
How did my relationship change with Brian? In a word, it didn't. We'd both worked with SK and knew how to go about it. You just get on with it and, as SK always said, never let your ego get in the way of a good idea! I don't think SK had complex relationships with his writers. Some of his writers may have thought they had a complex relationship, but then this is down to their own psychology.
John Malkovich's amazing performance is so central to this film:Did you write with any particular actors in mind? And did you wind up having to tailor the script to Malkovich's strengths?
The script was written as an exercise with nobody in mind. And it was not re-written when John came aboard. However he did adapt, change and contribute greatly once the film was in production, as befits an actor of his stature. I cannot think of anyone who could have played the role better.
I'm curious if you've ever seen the Iranian film, CLOSE-UP, by Abbas Kiarostami, which is based on a real-life incident in which an emotionally disturbed man posed as the film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and convinced a Tehran family to let him live with them in order to do "research."
I'd never even heard of the film but I've just ordered a DVD from amazon. Thanks for telling me about it. This would certainly make a great double bill with Colour Me Kubrick!
The subject of impostors and con-men has always been a rich vein for writers and film makers to mine. Recently we've had that Philip Roth novel, Three Degrees of Separation and a couple of films by Mr Mamet. It makes us think about reality and illusion and what we know and what we think we know. And don't forget the Melville title already mentioned and his Benito Cereno.
Colour Me Kubrick is really a riff on celebrity. A lot of the people Conway conned were sane, rational, intelligent people but the moment they touched the hem of fame (ie Conway) these qualities deserted them. It wasn't that Conway was a good con-man, it was that his marks were only too wiling and eager to be taken in. Thus the modern power of celebrity.
When you tell people that you were Stanley Kubrick's assistant, do they believe you? And if so, do you ever sometimes feel, on some strange level, like you're getting a taste of the power Conway must have felt?
Do they believe me? Well, I think they do, but perhaps they are conning me! A taste of power? If only?