Not all films turn out the way directors envisioned them. Sometimes it’s budget cuts, behind-the-scenes conflicts, studio interference; or perhaps the story was just horrible to begin with. Understandably, directors often don’t want to be associated with these films, so they would use a pseudonym in their credits instead. That pseudonym is Alan Smithee.
Smithee’s credits are a mile long. He has over 100 films attributed to him on IMDb. The list includes some of the cringiest films you could possibly think of – spoofs, parodies, god awful box office blunders – as well as names cemented in cult classic history like David Lynch’s Dune (more on this in a bit), Meet Joe Black (due to heavy editing) and Hellraiser Bloodline (studio conflicts, multiple directors).
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But who is Alan Smithee? And where did he even come from?
It all started in 1969, when director Don Siegel was filming Death of a Gunfighter. The film was originally Robert Totten’s, but because he was having disputes with the lead actor, the film went to Siegel. However, when it came time for the film to actually hit the screens, neither director wanted anything to do with it.
So, the Directors Guild of America convened to try to find a solution. They decided to create an alias: Alan Smith. But according to the late television director John Rich, that was a very common name, and hence, Allen Smithee (later changed to Alan Smithee) was born.
Ironically, Death of a Gunfighter received warm praise from critics, praise that was directed towards the non-existent Smithee. “Director Allen Smithee,” wrote the famous film reviewer Roger Ebert in 1969, “a name I’m not familiar with, allows his story to unfold naturally. He never preaches, and he never lingers on the obvious.” From that moment on, any movie that was deemed “artistically compromised” ended up with this pseudonym.
Another reason this pseudonym started gaining popularity within the film community is because of the auteur theory. “The auteur theory suggested that directors were the authors of any given film, and thus, any and all praise or criticism of a film was generally aimed at the director and their choices,” explains Bob Woolsey, Head of Film Production at Vancouver Film School. “Coupled with the rise of directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg, the auteur theory made directors as famous as the actors in their films.”
Woolsey continues: “As directors became more prominent and more powerful, they expected to have full creative control over their films. So, whenever studios would throw their weight around and tamper with the final cuts of films, directors would take their names off the projects and replace it with Alan Smithee.”
According to Tel K. Ganesan, a movie producer and distributor, there are a few stipulations as to when this name can be used. “The studio had to admit that it had taken control of a film from the director, for instance, before it could use the name,” he says. “Disavowing a film as a director also required the director to remain anonymous.”
One of the biggest examples of a film using this pseudonym is David Lynch’s Dune. Before Denis Villenueve introduced the modern world to the spices of Arrakis, Lynch attempted the same in 1984. But that film was marred in pre-production nightmares. Lynch wasn’t even the first director hired to do the job. Names like Ridley Scott and Alejandro Jodorowsky were floated for a while before he was called in.
Lynch only agreed to direct if he was allowed to split the book into two. But he was pressured by the studio to film it all in one go. Woolsey explains: “Originally, Lynch handed in a cut that was over 3 hours long. The studio made him cut it down and, naturally, the result was an incomprehensible mess. The theatrical version of the film did have Lynch’s name on it, but the subsequent television release was credited to Alan Smithee.”
To top that off, there were accidents, set difficulties, customs issues, rotting animals and sick cast members. The film is now widely regarded as a cult classic, but Lynch famously considers this a dark mark in his career.
The Alan Smithee pseudonym was discontinued sometime in the 2000s, and that is largely thanks to the 1997 movie An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn. The premise sees a guy who’s actually named Alan Smithee make a movie that gets recut by the studio, resulting in a terrible film. When he decides he wants to take his name off the movie, he realises his name is the same as the pseudonym that would normally replace it in the credits.
And in a rather hilarious instance of life imitating art, the director of the film, Arthur Hiller, was so dissatisfied with the final product that his name was replaced by Smithee in the credits.
By this point, the existence of this pseudonym had become public knowledge, making the credit a kiss of death. “Audiences wouldn’t go see an Alan Smithee film because they knew that the director must’ve been so unhappy with the project that they took their name off it,” said Woolsey. “Film enthusiasts took pride in figuring out who had actually directed these movies, and directors started to tell the behind-the-scenes stories of why they’d used the pseudonym.”
And so, the name Alan Smithee was retired in the 2000s. This name still pops up in credits sometimes (the most recent example is 2018’s The Night Watchers), but now aliases are selected individually depending on the film.
Smithee is probably one of the most prolific directors/screenwriters of our time. His credits in the film industry are as long as your arm, spanning multiple genres and decades in varying qualities. He is the most infamous director the world will never see, but his legend will live on forever.
