Conspiracy theorists have long held that Stanley Kubrick helped fake the 1969 moon landing under the direction of the U.S. government, and now his daughter Vivian has come out to blast the rumors as “a grotesque lie.”
“There are many, very real conspiracies that have happened throughout our history…But, claims that the moon landings were faked and filmed by my father? I just can't understand it!!?” railed Kubrick in a tweet timed to the news that NASA's Juno spacecraft had reached Jupiter after a nearly five-year journey. “How can anyone believe that one of the greatest defenders of mankind would commit such an act of betrayal?”
Suggestions that Kubrick was approached by the U.S. government to “direct” the moon landing during post-production of 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey have been around since before the director's death in 1999, but the claims have been roundly debunked; most recently, a video that purported to show Kubrick admitting to the conspiracy was revealed as a hoax. Notably, the 2012 Rodney Ascher documentary Room 237 featured an interview with prominent conspiracy theorist Jay Weidner, who claims that Kubrick scattered clues about the allegedly faked landing throughout his 1980 horror film The Shining.
It's interesting to read Vivian's take on the matter after so many years, and it's clear she's incredibly disturbed by insinuations that her father would somehow betray his fellow citizens by faking an event that so has become so deeply wedded to the American imagination and our ideas of who we are. She is defending her father's integrity here, and that is absolutely her right. That said, the theory will continue to persist for as long as there are humans willing to believe it. In other words, forever.
You can read the full text of Kubrick's rant, in which she characterizes moon landing conspiracy theorists as “malicious cranks,” below.
Re: Faked Moon Landings
Many people have asked me about this. And this feels like the right time to respond … pic.twitter.com/UVlNFofFW8– Vivian Kubrick (@ViKu1111) July 5, 2016
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[Variety]