Stanley Kubrick Faked the Apollo 11 Moon Landing in 1969, Or So the Conspiracy Theory Goes

This week is the anniver­sary of the Apol­lo 11 jour­ney to the moon. And while most peo­ple will cel­e­brate the event by acknowl­edg­ing the abil­i­ties and courage of Neil Arm­strong and com­pa­ny in this land­mark of human endeav­or, a small, though vocal, group of peo­ple will decry the moon land­ing as a fraud.

In that spir­it, French film­mak­er William Karel spins an elab­o­rate tale of intrigue in Dark Side of the Moon. (See out­takes above.) The 2002 film posits that the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing was staged by none oth­er than Stan­ley Kubrick. How else did the direc­tor get his hands on a super advanced lens from NASA to shoot those gor­geous can­dle-lit scenes in Bar­ry Lyn­don? The film is slick­ly pro­duced and fea­tures an impres­sive array of inter­vie­wees from Hen­ry Kissinger, to Buzz Aldrin to Chris­tiane Kubrick. Some of the oth­er peo­ple inter­viewed include Jack Tor­rance and David Bow­man. If that’s not a tip off that the whole movie is fake, then the bloop­er reel at the end dri­ves the point home. Only a lot of peo­ple didn’t get the joke. Con­spir­a­cy enthu­si­asts Wayne Green cit­ed the movie as fur­ther proof that the moon land­ing was faked.

Moon hoax­ers like to point to The Shin­ing as a con­fes­sion by Kubrick that he was forced into a Big Lie. In the doc­u­men­tary Room 237, Jay Wei­d­ner claims as much. And Michael Wys­mier­s­ki argues the same in The Shin­ing Code 2.0, a fea­ture length video that you can watch below. Or get right to the meat of things here.

And just in case you get swept up in Wysmierski’s loony log­ic, film­mak­er S. G. Collins makes the very com­pelling argu­ment that the tech­nol­o­gy sim­ply didn’t exist to fake the moon land­ing in 1969. Case closed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Room 237: New Doc­u­men­tary Explores Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing and Those It Obsess­es

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.