Dark Side of the Moon: A Mockumentary on Stanley Kubrick and the Moon Landing Hoax

Poor moon-land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists. Lack­ing the his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al grav­i­tas of JFK assas­si­na­tion con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists or the brazen pseu­do-rel­e­vance of 9/11 con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, those who believe the Apol­lo 11 mis­sion came out of a Hol­ly­wood back­lot must toil in deep­est obscu­ri­ty. Imag­ine suf­fer­ing from the aching con­vic­tion that the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment, in league with a respect­ed auteur or two, hood­winked the entire world with a few min­utes of blur­ry, ama­teur­ish video and gar­bled walkie-talkie speech — hood­winked the entire world except you, that is. Now imag­ine a Truther and a sec­ond-gun­man obses­sive shar­ing a laugh about all your impor­tant rev­e­la­tions. If indeed you do hold that mankind has nev­er vis­it­ed the moon, make sure you don’t watch usu­al­ly seri­ous doc­u­men­tar­i­an William Karel’s Dark Side of the Moon. In it, you’ll see your ideas fur­ther ridiculed, which would be unpleas­ant — or, even worse, you’ll see them vin­di­cat­ed.

These moon-land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists offer many alter­na­tive his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tives, and Karel picks a rich one. He pro­ceeds from the ques­tion of how, exact­ly, film­mak­er Stan­ley Kubrick came into pos­ses­sion of the advanced cam­era lens­es he used to shoot 1975’s can­dle-lit Bar­ry Lyn­don. Per­haps NASA, who had the lens­es in the first place, owed Kubrick for cer­tain ser­vices ren­dered six years ear­li­er? Cut­ting decon­tex­tu­al­ized file footage togeth­er with script­ed lines deliv­ered by actors, NASA staffers, and Kubrick­’s actu­al wid­ow, Karel tells an omi­nous­ly earnest sto­ry of how the CIA recruit­ed Kubrick and his 2001-test­ed cin­e­mat­ic crafts­man­ship to “win” the space race, at least on tele­vi­sion. Though lib­er­al­ly pep­pered with small false­hoods and inside jokes for film buffs, Dark Side of the Moon has nonethe­less inad­ver­tent­ly won its share of sin­cere adher­ents, includ­ing self-styled “Speak­er of Truth” Wayne Green. It’s been said many times, many ways: human­i­ty isn’t quite smart enough to effec­tive­ly con­spire, but we’re just smart enough to invent an infini­tude of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.