Alan Smithee: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
In the movie industry of the past, if a director's movie became the victim of [[Executive Meddling]] and bad acting to the point where he was no longer proud of it, he could request it to be credited to '''Alan Smithee'''.
There were, of course, rules about the use of the
Before 1999, Smithee was the only alias Directors Guild members were permitted to use. This was changed because of the parody ''An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn''; a combination of confusion from bad press surrounding the film and the [[Epic Fail|film's director wanting]] ''[[Epic Fail|his]]'' [[Epic Fail|name removed]] (which meant that a movie with the name "Alan Smithee" in the title had to be credited, under DGA rules, to ''Alan Smithee'') caused the name to be retired. Since then, aliases are selected on a case-by-case basis.
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* The first film to use the alias was the 1969 film ''Death Of A Gunfighter'', when actor Richard Widmark decided he was unhappy with the director and [[Wag the Director|arranged to have him replaced.]] Sadly, when the film was completed, neither the new nor the old director wanted to have it attributed to his name. The first suggestion for the name of the fictitious director was Al Smith, but the DGA said that there was already a director going by that name, and suggested Alan Smithee instead.
** When it was released, ''The New York Times'' and [[Roger Ebert]] actually praised Smithee's directorial work, though Ebert admitted that Alan Smithee was "a name I'm not familiar with." The version of the review on his website features a footnote noting the inaugural use of the Smithee name.
* David Lynch took his name off the extended cut of ''[[Dune]]'', which was not only directed by
** Of course that last one's surname has a [[Blue Velvet|history]] with Lynch.
** For those of us who missed this gem, [[Topless Robot]]'s [http://www.toplessrobot.com/2011/04/10_things_david_lynch_needlessly_added_to_dune.php article] explains why.
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* After Takeshi Kimura fell into depression he wrote all his subsequent screenplays, [[Godzilla]] or otherwise, under the gender-neutral pen name Kaoru Mabuchi. They were noticeably less well-written than his pre-Mabuchi screenplays.
* As a result of the infamous and tragic [[Hellish Copter]] incident on the set of the ''[[Twilight Zone]]'' movie, one second assistant director had his name removed from the credits and replaced with the pseudonym Alan Smithee.
* [[Alan Moore]] is [[Disowned Adaptation|completely disgusted by all the movie adaptations of his work]], and has requested that he simply be referred to as
** For [[Zack Snyder]]'s ''[[Watchmen (film)|Watchmen]]'' adaptation, Moore was simply uncredited.
* Averted by [[David Fincher]] on ''[[Alien]] 3''. He was brought in late on an already [[Troubled Production]] and faced [[Executive Meddling]] from the start, and wound up seeing the film edited without his participation, but since it was his first film, he informally disowned it instead.
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