MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: The Alan Smithee pseudonym that directors used for decades when they didn't want credit on a film wasn't actually created for use on a BAD film, at all.
One of the seemingly worst directors in the history of motion pictures is Alan Smithee, who has directed a veritable cornucopia of absolute bombs over the years. This, of course, is because Alan Smithee is not actually a real person, but rather a pseudonym that was used from 1968-2000 as the official pseudonym to be used when a director no longer wanted their name to be associated with a film.
Generally speaking, the use of the pseudonym comes up when a director is dissatisfied with the final project, so that almost always means that the final product is bad. A good example of this is the 1996 film, Hellraiser: Bloodline, which was intended to be the first film directed by special effects designer Kevin Yagher, who had directed a couple of episodes of Tales From the Crypt for HBO before getting the gig directing the fourth Hellraiser movie by Dimension Films. However, when Yagher submitted his 110-minute cut of the film, Dimension Films hated it and wanted it drastically reworked, including beefing up Pinhead's role in the movie. Yagher declined to direct the new scenes and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers director Joe Chappelle was brought in to shoot the reshoots. The final film came in at 85 minutes and was cut so terribly that very little made sense in the movie. It pretty much ruined the Hellraiser franchise in terms of being released in theaters. Yagher took his name off of the film and used the Alan Smithee pseudonym. He later noted that the studio tried to get him to keep his name on the project by showing him three different cuts, but all of them were drastically redone from his version, so he turned them down.
However, while that's generally the problem with Alan Smithee movies, that isn't always the case, and it wasn't even the case on the first movie to use the Alan Smithee pseudonym.
WHY IS THERE EVEN A NEED FOR AN OFFICIAL PSEUDONYM FOR DIRECTORS?
The Directors Guild of America (DGA) is one of the most powerful guilds in Hollywood, and as a result, it maintains a good deal of control over how films are released and a good deal of it comes down to the "auteur theory," which states that the single most important person in the production of a film is the director. As a result, the credit for the director is considered sacrosanct. I did a Movie Legends Revealed a while back about how George Lucas ended up quitting the Directors Guild over a conflict regarding the credits to Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, which turned on the fact that the director, Irvin Kershner, was not credited at the beginning of the film, but Lucasfilm was, and thus that was disallowed by the Guild because you're allowed to not have credits, but you can't then have another person, like Lucas, credited at the beginning of the film if the director is not (the Star Wars films, of course, famously don't have opening credits, going right into the "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...."
Originally, the DGA wouldn't allow directors use pseudonyms PERIOD, because it feared that producers would put undue pressure on the directors to use a company pseudonym (after all, as noted in a recent piece, film companies often tried to AVOID crediting actors and directors because they feared that the actors and directors would become "stars," which would make them more powerful and, of course, that's precisely what happened when actors and directors began to get credited).
Under that same theory, then, the DGA would not allow movies to go without a director credited. You had to have SOMEone credited because, again, directors are so important to the process. Finally, though, the DGA agreed to come up with a pseudonym, but the first time that it was used, it was actually for a GOOD movie.
1969's Death of a Gunfighter, starred veteran film actor, Richard Widmark, and was originally directed by Robert Totten, a veteran TV director. Widmark did not like Totten's work and had him fired. Widmark brought in veteran movie director, Don Siegel (He directed Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1956 and most famously, a couple of years later, he directed Dirty Harry). Siegel only filmed about half of the days that Totten did, so even though the final cut of the film was roughly half Siegel/half Totten, Siegel felt that he was not really the director of the film, especially since he felt that Widmark was truly the "director" of the movie. So he didn't want credit, but nor did Totten. Ultimately, the DGA agreed that both men could use a pseudonym, instead. Originally it was going to be "Al Smith," but obviously, that's such a common name that there were very likely someone out there with that name who would direct a movie, so the DGA then thought "Al Smithe," and finally, "Alan Smithee."
Roger Ebert's original review of the film, released in 1969, had praise for Smithee, noting:
Director Allen Smithee, a name I'm not familiar with, allows his story to unfold naturally. He never preaches, and he never lingers on the obvious. His characters do what they have to do.
WHAT HAPPENED TO ALAN SMITHEE?
The downfall of the pseudonym came from the fact that the name itself started to become well known. The whole point of the original pseudonym was that it WOULDN'T draw attention to the fact that the movie was directed by a pseudonym. Once the name became famous, though, it drew attention to the fact that it was being used, and that was, of course, a problem.
It really culminated with the 1998 film, An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, about a filmmaker named Alan Smithee who wanted to take his name off of a film, but couldn't, since his name was, well, you know, Alan Smithee. Amusingly, Arthur Hiller ended up using the pseudonym for the film after a conflict with the producer of the movie.
The pseudonym was retired in 2000, and now directors just use alternate pseudonyms when they want to take their credit off of films. For instance, Walter Hill took his name off of 2000's Supernova, and chose to be credited as "Thomas Lee."
The legend is...
STATUS: True
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