What Happened

Alan Smithee was the official pseudonym used by the Directors Guild of America (DGA) from 1968 to 2000. When directors wanted to remove their names from films due to creative disputes or studio interference, they could petition the guild to use “Alan Smithee” instead.

The pseudonym was first used in 1969 for “Death of a Gunfighter,” a western starring Richard Widmark. The film had been started by Robert Totten but finished by Don Siegel after creative conflicts. When neither director wanted credit for the final product, the DGA created “Alan Smithee” as a solution.

Over the next 31 years, the name appeared on numerous productions, including:

  • David Lynch’s television version of “Dune” (1988)
  • The sitcom “MacGyver” (multiple episodes)
  • Various TV movies and direct-to-video releases
  • Arthur Hiller’s “An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn” (1997)

Why It Matters

The Alan Smithee phenomenon reveals how Hollywood’s guild system works to protect directors’ reputations while maintaining industry standards. Unlike other creative fields where artists might simply go uncredited, film industry rules require someone to take directorial credit.

The pseudonym also created an unintended consequence: critics and audiences began recognizing “Alan Smithee” as a warning sign of troubled productions. Roger Ebert and other prominent critics even reviewed films positively while praising “Smithee’s” direction, not knowing they were crediting a fictional person.

Background

The Directors Guild of America established strict rules about directorial credit to prevent studios from removing directors’ names arbitrarily. However, they also recognized that directors sometimes needed protection from projects that had been significantly altered against their wishes.

The guild created specific criteria for using the Alan Smithee pseudonym:

  • The director had to prove they’d lost creative control
  • The final product had to differ substantially from their original vision
  • They could never publicly discuss their real involvement in the film
  • The guild had to approve each request

This system worked relatively well for decades, with most viewers unaware of the pseudonym’s true meaning. The name “Alan Smithee” was chosen because it was generic enough to seem real but uncommon enough to avoid confusion with actual directors.

What’s Next

The Alan Smithee pseudonym was officially retired in 2000 after reaching peak irony. The final straw came with “An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn,” a comedy about a director named Alan Smithee who tries to disown his own film. The movie was such a disaster that its real director, Arthur Hiller, petitioned to use the Alan Smithee credit - creating a meta-commentary that broke the system.

Today, directors who want to disown their work must choose their own pseudonyms or work with the DGA to find alternative solutions. Some modern directors have used names like “Thomas Lee” or “David Gordon Green” (when it’s not the real David Gordon Green) for similar purposes.

The legacy of Alan Smithee lives on in film history as both a practical solution and an unintentional symbol of Hollywood’s sometimes dysfunctional creative process. Film buffs now recognize any Alan Smithee credit as a red flag that something went wrong behind the scenes.

The Ultimate Irony

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the Alan Smithee story is how it ended. After 31 years of successful anonymity, the pseudonym became too well-known for its own good. When Arthur Hiller made a movie specifically about this fake director, the film was so poorly received that he wanted to distance himself from it - by using the very pseudonym the movie was mocking.

This created an impossible situation: a movie about Alan Smithee, credited to Alan Smithee, effectively destroying the credibility of Alan Smithee forever. It was the kind of Hollywood absurdity that could have been a plot point in the movie itself.