There have been many prolific geniuses throughout history ... Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Charles
Dickens, Vincent Van Gogh ... but legendary film director Alan Smithee differs from these
people in three important ways.
Firstly, he wasn’t a genius.
Secondly, most of his work could be described as “utter shit”.
And thirdly, he doesn’t actually exist.
Mind you, Alan never let his non-existence hold him back, and when you consider he directed
such outstanding films as Ghost Fever, The Shrimp on the Barbie, Bloodsucking Pharaohs
from Pittsburgh, and Le Zombi de Cap-Rouge, it’s hard to believe he isn’t a household
name.
But where did this mysterious purveyor of mediocre movies come from?
Alan Smithee was born in 1969, but through necessity rather than the birth canal, and
with the Directors Guild of America acting as midwife.
You see, Alan Smithee is simply a fake name, a pseudonym used by members of the DGA when
they were so unhappy with a movie they’d rather burn the negative, themselves, and
all of their possessions before seeing their real name attached to it.
But you couldn’t just “Smithee” your name out of a film willy-nilly.
Oh, no.
First, you had to convince a DGA panel you’d lost creative control of the project, and
even if you did get a “Yes”, you weren’t allowed to discuss the film afterwards.
In other words, the first rule of “Smithee Club” was that you did not talk about “Smithee
Club”.
People had used pseudonyms in the film industry before, of course.
In 1947, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted in Hollywood on suspicion of being a communist,
so he adopted various false names - including Robert Rich and Felix Lutzkendorf - to get
his work out into the world.
And in 1964, Sergio Leone made the legendary spaghetti western “A Fistful of Dollars”
under the name “Bob Robertson”, thinking it would be more palatable to American audiences.
But it was with the 1969 film “Death of a Gunfighter” that the most famous of all
Hollywood pseudonyms first came into being.
Until this point, pseudonyms were against the DGA rules so as to stop producers from
forcing little-known or unpopular directors to adopt them.
The DGA were also great believers in “auteur theory” -- which suggests that, while a
huge number of people come together to create a film, the director is the driving creative
force behind it, and should therefore be given full credit for his work..
With “Death of a Gunfighter,” however, things got a little complicated.
Lead actor Richard Widmark went full diva and got the original director, Robert Totten,
fired.
But when filming wrapped, new director Don Siege, told a DGA panel he didn’t feel it
was right for him to be credited as the director, as the film was mostly Totten’s work.
But Totten himself was understandably upset at having been unceremoniously canned from
the project, and he didn’t want his name attached either.
The DGA ultimately agreed neither director’s creative vision had been represented in the
final cut, but that left them with a problem.
Who were they going to credit as the director?
Some have suggested the name “Alan Smithee” – with its two Es -- was chosen because
it’s an anagram of “The alias men” — but this is basically an urban legend, with no
real evidence to back it up.
The truth, sadly, is somewhat duller.
“Al Smith” was the original suggestion, but someone pointed out that picking such
a common name probably wasn’t a great idea ... which turned out to be true, because several
“Al Smiths” were already working in the film industry at the time… so the “Al”
was changed to “Alan”, the “Smith” became “Smithee”, and a non-existent Hollywood
legend was born.
Weirdly enough, Smithee’s first outing as director was critically acclaimed, which must
have been more than slightly annoying for Death of a Gunfighter’s two anonymous directors.
He was specifically singled out for praise, with The New York Times writing that Alan
Smithee had “an adroit facility for scanning faces and extracting sharp background detail”
and Roger Ebert, for a long time the preeminent film critic in the US, saying he admired the
way Smithee “allowed his story to unfold naturally.”
But over the years, this would very much be the exception that proved the rule.
Watching an Alan Smithee film is usually the cinematic equivalent of getting the tip of
your penis caught in a car door.
In other words, extremely painful.
After all, who else but Alan Smithee would attempt a sequel to the Alfred Hitchcock classic
“The Birds”?
I mean, for Hitchcock fans, that’s akin to catapulting your own excrement at the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel.
Even actress Tippi Hedren, who appeared in both films, described “The Birds 2: Land’s
End” as “absolutely horrible” and went on to say that it still embarrassed her decades
later.
An IMDb rating of 2.9 suggests that embarrassment was entirely warranted, too.
In some cases, directors have “Smithee’d” their movies many years after the original
release due to them being well and truly mangled for television.
When it came to the TV version of David Lynch’s “Dune”, for example, he not only insisted
on an Alan Smithee directing credit, but also changed his screenwriting credit to “Judas
Booth” - a combination of “Judas Iscariot” and “John Wilkes Booth” ... and if your
screenwriting pseudonym is a mixture of the man who betrayed Christ and the man who shot
Abraham Lincoln, it’s probably fair to say you’re not a big fan of the script.
Director Michael Mann has had to give his credits a good “Smithee-ing” on more than
one occasion, not least when NBC wanted to recut his three-hour epic “Heat” back
in 1999.
Mann told “Variety” that so much was cut out of the movie it completely destroyed the
narrative, and he went on to describe the edit as “Piss-poor management of an asset
they paid a lot of money for.”
Another serial credit-murderer is Martin Brest, who felt the same way about the “in-flight”
versions of his films -- “Meet Joe Black” and “Scent of a Woman” -- as the rest
of us feel about “in-flight” meals.
Needless to say, he wasted no time in “Smithee-ing” the living daylights out of them.
Not all attempts by directors to “Smithee” themselves out of their films have been successful,
however.
Director Tony Kaye did his best to disown “American History X” after cast members
made changes to the script and the studio rejected his incredibly bleak finale.
Kaye left in a huff, and then tried to “Alan” his way out of a credit, which was rejected
by the DGA, so he tried again with another alias: “Humpty Dumpty”.
Surprisingly, that didn’t work either, so he sued the DGA for two-hundred-million dollars
and alienated himself from everyone in Hollywood in the process.
He’s also reported to have engaged in some pretty bizarre behaviour during this time,
like turning up to a meeting with the film studio accompanied by a rabbi, a Tibetan monk,
and a priest.
Which sounds like the start of an inappropriate joke your uncle tells when he’s had too
much to drink, but apparently Kaye was deadly serious, feeling he needed the help of God
to get his point across.
I suppose that’s Hollywood for you.
You never have that kind of trouble running a YouTube channel.
Possibly one of the most ironic uses of Hollywood’s favourite pseudonym was in 1997’s “An
Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn,” a mockumentary with Eric Idle playing a director
named “Alan Smithee” who tries to disown his big budget action film starring Sylvester
Stallone, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jackie Chan.
Needless to say, he can’t “Alan Smithee” himself out of the credits, because that’s
already his name, so he’s forced to steal the film and go on the run.
Which is all confusing enough as it, before you factor in what happened after production.
You see, director Arthur Hiller, like many directors before him, complained to the DGA
that he’d been kept out of the editing process and should therefore be able to abstain from
a credit on the film... all of which means that a film about Alan Smithee ... called
“An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn” ... ended up being directed by Alan Smithee
himself.
You just couldn’t make it up - which is pretty much how Hiller felt.
To add insult to injury, the film was a massive failure, which probably shouldn’t come as
too much of a surprise considering the entire plot was based on an obscure piece of Hollywood
culture the vast majority of the population has never even heard of.
It grossed just under sixty-thousand dollars worldwide, despite having an estimated budget
of ten million, and was absolutely crucified by the critics.
With a weird sense of coming full circle, Roger Ebert -- who’d written such a positive
review of “Death of a Gunfighter” back in 1969 -- gave it a score of zero stars.
It has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of eight percent positive, and their critical consensus calls
it "A witless Hollywood satire whose hammy, obvious jokes are neither funny nor insightful
of the movie business.”
Pretty damning, but then I suppose it’s their job to be critical.
When your lead actor’s saying a similar thing, however, then it’s probably not a
great sign.
Even when he was busy promoting the film, Eric Idle regularly came out with the phrase:
“This is rather dreadful” ... If it was possible for actors to Smithee themselves
out of a film, you can bet Idle would have done so, even if he was portraying a character
called Alan Smithee.
“Burn Hollywood Burn” won four “Razzies” – or Golden Raspberry awards – for Worst
Picture, Worst Screenplay, Worst New Star, and Worst Supporting Actor. all which went
to Joe Eszterhas, who both starred in and produced the film.
Sylvestor Stallone was also nominated in the ‘worst supporting actor’ category that
year, which is particularly ironic when you consider he was playing himself.
You know your acting career’s in trouble when you can’t even portray yourself convincingly.
Eszterhas also won the “Stinker” award for Worst On-Screen Hairstyle, and the film
was nominated for another Stinker in the category of “Most Painfully Unfunny Comedy” ... so,
yeah, it’s fair to say it wasn’t a great piece of work.
But perhaps its most damning legacy of all was that even Alan Smithee couldn’t get
work afterwards.
The negativity surrounding the film had brought so much attention to the pseudonym it could
no longer be used at all.
Filmmakers have used a variety of other pseudonyms over the years, but for comedy value none
are quite as good as screenwriter Robert Towne’s.
After his passion project -- 1984’s “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes”
-- was destroyed by studio interference he removed his writing credit and replaced it
with “P.H Vazak” … which might sound exotic, but was actually the name of his pet
sheepdog.
This not only highlighted the fact that more dogs should have surnames, but also resulted
in an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay, making P.H the world’s first and only canine
to be considered for an Oscar.
Good boy.
Animal pseudonyms seem to be popular within the screenwriting community, because fantasy
writer Harlan Ellison occasionally used the name “Cordwainer Bird” when his work was
mangled by producers.
Fellow writer Stephen King thought this was Ellison’s subtle way of flipping studio
execs “the bird”.
Here in the UK, we briefly had our own version of Alan Smithee, “David Agnew”, a name
that was invented to overcome a very British problem: Bureaucracy.
This pseudonym was used by the BBC during the 70s if freelance writers were unable to
incorporate changes requested by a show’s producer at the last minute.
When that happened, members of the production staff — who weren’t allowed to take screen
credits without a long, drawn-out appeals process — would be asked to perform a rewrite
under Agnew’s name.
One notable example is the 1979 Doctor Who episode “City of Death”, not least because
it was co-written by Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams.
If you aren’t familiar with Adams’ work, I encourage you to go and check it out.
That guy really does know a thing or two about life, the universe, and everything.
Anyway, David Agnew has since become a familiar name in Doctor Who fandom, occasionally popping
up in other episodes and books, not to mention the mockumentary “The Elusive David Agnew”
... which, by the way, was directed by some guy called “Alan Smithee”.
Back on the other side of the Atlantic, Alan has also enjoyed a thriving career outside
of motion pictures.
He directed two episodes of MacGyver, a few segments of Tiny Toon Adventures, and a couple
of episodes of The Cosby Show ... although to be fair, it isn’t only disgruntled directors
who want to distance themselves from Bill Cosby these days.
Smithee’s also written several comics for DC and Marvel, and has even dipped his toe
into the world of gaming.
The 1993 Nintendo game “Equinox” credits Alan Smithee as director, “Marine Sharpshooter
4” has him as art director, and in a weird twist, Alan showed up as the director of “Metal
Gear Solid 4” in a teaser trailer before being replaced by Hideo Kojima at launch.
Is it possible that Alan Smithee requested his name be removed from the project?
Maybe he didn’t want such a critically acclaimed game ruining his hard-fought reputation as
one of the worst directors ever to have lived.
Or ever to have not lived, in his case.
Like many famous directors before him, Alan’s also worked on quite a few music videos in
his time.
There was Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”, “Kiss the Rain,” by Billie
Myers, “Waiting for Tonight” by Jennifer Lopez, “Maria” by Blondie, and “Lose
My Breath” by Destiny’s Child ... but despite his glittering career in music promos,
there doesn’t seem to be an official “Alan Smithee” for the musicians themselves - which
is a shame, because some of them seem pretty keen to disown their most famous works.
Radiohead have long since grown tired of their signature song “Creep”, going so far as
to pull it from their live set for seven years; Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant once pledged
ten-thousand dollars to a radio station if they agreed never to play “Stairway to Heaven”
again; and, in 2008, Madonna publicly stated she wouldn’t sing “Like a Virgin” or
“Holiday” ever again unless somebody paid her “thirty million dollars”.
Mind you, she was singing them eight years later on her 2016 tour, so I guess someone
put up the cash.
So much for artistic integrity, eh, Madge?
After some thirty years at the top, Alan Smithee’s career was officially over by the year 2000
following director Walter Hill’s attempts to get his film “Supernova” off the ground.
Hill’s budget was not only cut by the studio halfway through production, but they also
decided to preview the movie before any of the effects had been added.
Not a great choice for a sci-fi film.
Anyway, Hill soon left the project, but due to the backlash from “Burn Hollywood Burn”,
his name wasn’t replaced by “Alan Smithee” but by “Thomas Lee”; a new name the DGA
were trying out.
The great Alan Smithee was officially dead.
But despite the significant handicap of being deceased, Alan still pops up every now and
then, albeit with various creative tweaks.
The duo of “Alan and Alana Smithee” wrote the screenplay for the film “Hidden 3D”,
and in 2010, a Dutch, female version of Alan -- “Ellen Smith” – most likely to meet
their imaginary employees diversity quota -- directed the film “Eep!”.
And then, in 2018, defying all medical expectations, the late Alan Smithee himself directed the
horror movie “The Night Watchers”, along with several episodes of the French TV series
“Tomorrow is ours”.
For a dead guy, he’s been surprisingly busy.
But, hey, Alan’s never let a little thing like not existing get in the way of his work
… and isn’t it about time Hollywood recognised that fact with some kind of award?
After all, who else can you think of with such an extensive IMDB listing?
Let me leave you with this thought: Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman was nominated for an Oscar
for the 2002 film “Adaptation”, along with his “late” twin brother Donald.
The weird thing, however, was that Donald hadn’t died.
In fact, he’d never lived.
Kaufman just invented him to add depth to his multi-dimensional plot, and decided to
give him a screenwriting credit ... so if Charlie’s non-existent Donald can be nominated
for an Oscar ... then why can’t our non-existent Alan?
He doesn’t have to win, of course ... and he probably won’t, because he’s directed
some of the worst films in history ... but hey, it’s the thought that counts.
Thanks for watching.