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.
