Reviving the Roots of a Classic Kubrick Conspiracy

Theories behind a faked moon landing constructed by Hollywood's most enigmatic film director

After last week’s congressional hearing — in case you missed it, the government sat down with three credible whistleblowers to address (and admit) that they have in their possession nonhuman craft and biogenic, all I have wanted to talk and read about is UFO conspiracies.

My fascination stems back to grade school. A story I briefly touched on in last week’s podcast with Jennifer Carmody. My sixth-grade teacher, whom I adored and respected, gathered us all on the floor on a rainy day after lunch and told us about being abducted during a road trip with her husband in New Mexico in the early 80s. She said she had made the mistake of telling one class about it years before us, so the story got passed along with false and exaggerated details. To avoid that happening she decided the best thing to do was tell the story herself to each new class to avoid sensationalized versions that sprang whenever she neglected to recount it. I remember being gripped by the details she shared. Her description of the craft approaching from afar, the blinding lights from it hovering over her, her punching her husband in the chest with a closed fist and him remaining in a frightfully paralyzed state until she finally blacked out. At the end of the story she rolled up her sleeves to reveal two long thin scars down the lengths of her forearms - "some kind of laser" injury, her doctor would later tell her.

Since her revelation, that rainy day in 1991, I’ve been fascinated by tales of abduction. And now seeing the government finally address them as factual, lends new credibility to all long-standing conspiracies. It feels like a celebratory new era we’re entering, where real life is exponentially stranger than fiction.

But before we dive into some of the more obscure variations, I figured Kubrick’s faked moon landing was a good place to start. What I consider a “quality conspiracy” that I’ve yet to side with or deny.

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Faked Moon Landing Debate: Reviving The Roots of A Classic Kubrick Conspiracy

In 1968, Stanley Kubrick released 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film is widely regarded as a groundbreaking masterpiece in the science fiction community. One year later, men walked on the moon.

Coincidence?

Maybe.

But in the elaborate landscape of American conspiracy theories, the idea that the U.S. government faked the moon landing by hiring a young visionary director—fresh off a stunning display of an imagined space landing—to film our first footsteps on the moon, is one with grounds for legitimacy.

Kubrick, known as one of the most enigmatic directors in cinema history, was notorious for taking an extensive amount of time to craft his masterpieces with meticulous precision. If you know anything about Kubrick, it’s his obsessive dedication to detail and symbolism, so nothing in a Kubrick film is there by mistake. 

His part in creating a potentially fake moon landing is by no means a new debate. Conspiracy theories about the Moon landing have been around for years. Decades even. And while it’s easier these days to spread these theories thanks to the internet, the belief that humans never landed on the Moon is way older than the web.

How did people learn and debate about Moon landing conspiracy theories before the internet? Books. Asking questions like: ‘Who shot the event from outside the capsule?’ ‘How is the American flag waving?’ ‘Why do the shadows look like they are the result of multiple light sources?’ ‘Why is the letter C visible on one of the rocks?

The 1974 (self-published) book We Never Went to the Moon by Bill Kaysing, was the first lengthy discussion on the topic in print. 

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“The Knight newspaper company in July 1970 found that a whopping 30 percent of Americans believed the Moon landing had been faked. And a Gallup poll in 1976 found that 28 percent of Americans believed that the Moon landing had been staged by the U.S. government—pretty consistent findings throughout the 1970s.”- Gizmodo

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“I’ve met three of the twelve men who walked on the moon. They had one important thing in common when I looked into their eyes: they were all bonkers. Buzz Aldrin, who was the second off the ladder during the first landing on July 20, 1969, almost exactly fifty years ago—he must have stared with envy at Neil Armstrong’s crinkly space-suit ass all the way down—has run hot from the moment he returned to earth. When questioned about the reality of the landing—he was asked to swear to it on a Bible—he slugged the questioner. When I sat down with Edgar Mitchell, who made his landing in the winter of 1971, he had that same look in his eyes. I asked about the space program, but he talked only about UFOs. He said he’d been wrapped in a warm consciousness his entire time in space. Many astronauts came back with a belief in alien life.

Maybe it was simply the truth: maybe they had been touched by something. Or maybe the experience of going to the moon—standing and walking and driving that buggy and hitting that weightless golf ball—would make anyone crazy. It’s a radical shift in perspective, to see the earth from the outside, fragile and small, a rock in a sea of nothing. It wasn’t just the astronauts: everyone who saw the images and watched the broadcast got a little dizzy.” - The Paris Review

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Art Harmon, a former legislative director for the U.S. House or Representatives, currently leads the Coalition to Save Manned Space Exploration has two words for conspiracy theorists who say men never went to the moon – "absolute nuts."

"They’re just troublemakers. There's always people who will say 'this never happened' or 'that never happened.' They’re just trying to divide people. We went," he said.

But those who insist the U.S. did not put astronauts on the moon have claimed their own "evidence" to a faked landing.

They question why the flag astronaut Neil Armstrong planted on the moon could not possibly be rippling, because there is no air on the moon. In reality, the astronauts bent the metal frame holding the flag, causing the ripples.

Every claim that no one went to the moon can be easily explained by science, physics or evidence brought back to Earth, Harmon said. He adds the conspiracy theories are "an insult to those 400,000 Americans who worked to get us to the moon and back."

Those hundreds of thousands of people, including scientists, engineers and factory workers, were scattered around the world.

One astronaut who actually walked on the moon in 1969 has no tolerance for those who call it a massive hoax.

When one conspiracy theorist challenged Buzz Aldrin and called him a liar, Aldrin punched him in the face.- Voanews.com

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Buzz punches moon landing denier in response to hotel ambush

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DISSECTING THE SHINING

The Office of The Overlook Hotel

At the start of the film, Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance meets with the manager of the hotel who is entrusting the protagonist with care of building through the winter season. The introductory meeting takes place in an ornate office where several neatly arranged items, including a small American flag on the desk and a statue of an eagle looking over them at the window, are seen. Theorists believe the setting is presidential in tone, and that the eagle is a nod to the name of the lunar landing module that allegedly carried Apollo 11 (also called ‘eagle’.)

All Work and No Play

The page that Jack leaves behind at the typewriter? Cast iron proof that Kubrick faked the Moon landing. Where you see the word “All”, as in 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’, Weidner sees “A11”, short for Apollo 11. Apparently, this line is an insight into Kubrick’s mental condition: that working on the Apollo 11 'project’ and having to keep it a secret has made him go a little crazy.

Wendy as Christina Kubrick

If Jack Torrance represents Kubrick, then Shelley Duvall’s Wendy represents Kubrick’s own wife, Christina.

When Wendy confronts Jack about his behavior — suggesting he has to quit, it parallels Kubrick’s own secrets. Jack’s response: “That is so typical of you!… I’ve made an agreement… I have obligations to my employers!” It’s so blatant! Wake up, sheeple

The Twins

Theory: The twins are a manifestation of 'Gemini' — the NASA mission before Apollo. Note: in the novel there aren't any twins. In the book the Grady sisters are 8 and 10 years old, and described as 'cute as buttons.’ Kubrick’s reinterpretation is definitely an odd twist.

The Hotel Carpet 

The peculiar design of the carpet is given a lot of screen time — we see this carpet throughout the film, particularly when Danny is playing with toys in the corridor. Shot from above, the scene highlights its geometric and hypnotic glory. The bold pattern looks remarkably similar to the birds-eye-view of the Apollo 11 launchpad in mimicking its sharp edges and unusual outline.

Danny’s Apollo Jumper

Danny hesitantly enters the dreaded room 237 wearing a knitted jumper that reads ‘Apollo 11, USA’, across the front. An obvious reference to the famous space flight and certainly a peculiar choice of clothing for Kubrick to include considering his meticulous control over every detail in his film sets. The choice of wardrobe is definitely on purpose and has fueled the theories of conspiracy fans who believe this rocket addition may be the strongest piece of evidence that supports the director’s involvement. 

Room 237

Considered one of the strangest and most unnecessary changes that Stanley Kubrick made that strayed from Stephen King’s book, was changing the number of the terrifying Room 217 in the novel, to 237 in the film. 

Theorists believe room 237 represents the moon-landing stage where Kubrick supposedly worked — the moon is 237,000 miles from Earth

Upon entering the room in his neat Apollo 11 jumper, Danny quickly exits covered in mysterious scratches and bruises with his cosmic jumper torn at the shoulder, alluding to the mission itself failing to reach its fateful destination 237,000 miles away. 

Whatever the case, it’s a strange choice seeing that it has no impact at all on the film or the story.

The Prevalence of Tang Cans

Tang was created for astronauts and seen stocked in the hotel’s pantry in the film.

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Re: T. Patrick Murray’s Interview

On 10 December 2015, the web site YourNewsWire.com published a video purportedly showing Stanley Kubrick confessing to his part in the faked moon landing.

Synopsis : Before his death, Stanley Kubrick granted a rare interview to an unknown filmmaker, where he allegedly stunned the young director (and the world!) by admitting his contribution to one of the greatest conspiracies in American history

A spokesman for Kubrick's widow, however, quickly proclaimed the interview was a lie. “Stanley Kubrick has never been interviewed by T.Patrick Murray the whole story is made up, fraudulent and untrue,” the statement read.

To this day, T. Patrick Murray has not admitted that his interview with Kubrick is a hoax, but is still banking the mystery that surrounds it.

The referenced video, as far as I can tell, has since been wiped from the internet. I couldn't find evidence of it online.

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Vivian Kubrick (Stan’s Daughter’s) Response

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Other Video Debates

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Collected Online Comments

-How was there enough power to transmit a video signal back to Earth? Also, the radio communication was in real time. How was that possible when there is a signal lag at great distances even on Earth?

-As a landscape photographer, one of the biggest issues I have with the photos taken on the moon is the apparent distance between the subject to the horizon, and the lack of background details. The depth of field is too short.. This would be consistent with the idea that this was fabricated on a set in Hollywood.

-My grandfather, a career military man and black ops agent in Indo-China from '50 to '57, went to his grave believing we never landed on the moon. Also, he thought wrestling was real.

- I can't decide which is more amazing. That we DID travel to the moon, or that we DIDN'T travel to the moon.

-I can understand faking it once but why would they push their luck and fake it several times?

-I watched the moon landing with my kindergarten classmates in Australia in 1969. I was mesmerised. (The song that accompanied the televised moon landing was 'The Sound of Silence' by Simon and Garfunkel). I had never doubted the authenticity of the moon landing until a few years ago when I stumbled across some stuff on the internet. Most of the stuff I simply thought was silly but I just can't shake one thing. How is it that when the astronauts jump on the moon they rise and fall back down quite slowly while the dust around thier feet, which I assume weighs a lot less than the astronauts, seems to rise and fall quite quickly? Surely the dust would take longer to fall back down when disturbed and cause a haze of dust for a while rather than just moving the same way dust does on Earth. I'm sure many have asked this question and there may be a very rational answer, but I have never heard any yet.

-There's one sure way to put all doubts away - to take high resolution photos of Apollo landing site. Not the blurry photos Nasa is showing us, but the high quality photos. Modern equipment is powerful enough to show every little detail of the items that should be still sitting on the Moon - lunar module, footprints of the astronauts, the flag, and other items. That would be great opportunity for Nasa to end theories once and for all.

- I think it has some credibility though would not go as far as to say it is likely. We know Stanley had a relationship with NASA as they exchanged equiptment (some expensive lenses and I believe a camera). So the link from Kubrick to NASA is known as fact. The rest is supported primarily by the 'wire' scenes of the moon landing where in a couple videos it appears astronauts are being pulled back into an upright position by a stage wire. Other arguments have been put forth involve citing shadows, star field, a flag waving, camera cross-hairs etc.. There is also an argument out there based on a challenges humans would encounter in moving through the Van Allen radiation belt.

So if you were to believe the landing was fake you would have to also realize it was a very well done fake. Something Kubrick certainly could have pulled off and he had that connection with NASA and hence = conspiracy theory.

- You said NASA took pictures of the footprints on the moon from lunar orbit? That's strange because when the lunar orbiter took long range photos of the Apollo 11 landing area all you could see were half a dozen blurred pixels of the LEM. I believe they did go to the moon but I also believe what we were shown was not the true moon landing. One of the moon landing photos shows the LEM at distance and another photo taken further back shows the same area and is identified by the exact same rocks and mountains in the background but the LEM is missing, also there is footage of an astrononaut hammering a spike into the ground and you can hear the hammer blows, this indicates it was not filmed in the vacuum of space, this footage was on the NASA education webpage and when conspiracists confronted NASA about this they removed it, they claimed the vibrations travelled through the gloves and suit and were picked up by the helmet microphone, those suits were highly insulated and there is no way they could conduct sound vibrations and if they did the astronauts would be dead from the heat as heat is much more penetrating than sound.”

- There is legitimately only a few hundred people on earth that can definitively say we landed on the moon or we didn’t.