used the name “Alan Smithee” as a joke? What I mean is I know the name was used as a form of protest for being forced to make a bad movie. But was there ever a movie where the director said “This is a really bad movie” wink, wink, nudge nudge?
The directors’ guild had very strict rules about who was allowed to use Alan Smithee and under what circumstances. I believe there were arbitration panels in place, so if the director couldn’t prove that his/her work had been artistically compromised, he/she would not be allowed to use the Alan Smithee pseudonym, even as a joke.
Well, there is An Alan Smithee Film: Burn, Hollywood, Burn (1997) and Alan Smithee’s Frankenstein (2012).
I don’t know the story behind Frankenstein, but Burn Hollywood Burn’s director credit was standard usage of the pseudonym, as director Arthur Hiller claimed that the movie’s screenwriter re-cut the movie without his approval.
I’m not entirely convinced that the whole kerfuffle wasn’t a stunt, but everyone involved claims it’s not, and the guild probably wouldn’t have let them use the pseudonym if they thought someone was trying to pull a fast one on them. Anyway, I don’t think the Alan Smithee name is officially in use anymore, probably at least in part due to that movie.
I’ve never seen an Alan Smithee film, but I was fortunate enough to catch a screenplay by Ace Baandige.
Yes, but the director had the movie taken away from him and he removed his name.
I’m not even kidding.
Harlan Ellison used the pseudonym “Cordwainer Bird” as his version of Alan Smithee in order to disassociate himself from a script. While the name is clearly a reference to Cordwainer Smith, his first use of it was actually for a character in one of his earliest scripts for Burke’s Law (played by Sammy Davis, Jr.). It’s possible he was sending a message by using the name.
I’ve read an explanation from him that Cordwainer means “shoemaker”, thus Cordwainer Bird is “someone who makes shoes for birds”, the most useless profession imaginable. No connection to Cordwainer Smith was implied.
Whenever a film goes wrong, everyone always blames ‘studio executives’, but has any director ever praised interference by them? They can’t be completely useless idiots, can they?
When you see a good movie by a normally bad director, is this good executive interference?
They do make good decisions sometimes. Perhaps even more than we give credit for.
I am in the minority, but I think the studio cut of **Daredevil **was far superior than the director’s cut of it that was released on DVD later.
Also, the guy who directed American History X wanted to remove his name from the movie, but couldn’t establish to the director’s guild that enough work had been done on it without him. They released the studio cut with his name still on it and it was well received. He has not received huge praise for his other work.
Not the director, but the 1981 film Student Bodies has “Allen Smithee” as Executive Producer, which I think was done deliberately (and may thus have gotten around restrictions about using the name for the director). The producer was Michael Ritchie who, appropriately, had taken over as director. The listed director, Mickey Rose, had been the original director.
The film should have been better than it is. It’s got some clever bits in it, but not enough to mmake it worthwhile. Probably the most famous was when the film stops midway and we go to a guy sitting at a desk when explans that, in order to make money, a film like this needs to be rated “R”. To be rated “R”, it needs nudity, blood, or profanity. Since they don’t have the first two, he says that he’d like to say “Fuck You!” There’s then a notice that the film has been rated “R” (which it really was).
In a perfect world, the guy at the desk would have been the real producer (director) Ritchie, or at least credited as “Allen Smithee”. But there’s n credit for him, even on iMDB.
I have little doubt that Ellison, noted SF writer that he was, took the name from “Cordwainer Smith”, a pseudonym for diploat Paul Myron Linebarger. I observe that Linebarger’s pseudonym is made up of two professions – “cordwainer” = "shoemaker*, and “smith”, as in “blacksmith”, or “silversmith”, or “tinsmith”. Ellison himself once explained the “Bird” part of his pseudonym as in “for the birds”, but I suspect it was more in the line of “flipping the bird”. He’s used the name a few times, in various ways.
*A “cobbler”, I’ve learned, doesn’t make shoes, “The Cobbler and the Elves” notwithstanding. A cobbler is a shoe repairer.
Besides being a shoemaker, I believe “cordwainer” is also an oblique reference to Linebarger’s real name. (I recall reading this in the introduction to one of his stories in an anthology.)
Cord = line
Wain = a heavy farm wagon; barge = a heavy flat-bottomed boat of similar shape.
In one of Ellison’s books, he states that he was a fan of Cordwainer Smith, and that “Bird” was, indeed, a reference to “flipping the bird”.
On a related note, in the 1930s when a Warner Brothers movie needed to show a movie theatre marquee, the film’s name was “Another Dawn”. So when they could not think of a good name for a 1937 Errol Flynn-Kay Francis film, they called it “Another Dawn.”
Kevin Smith said the producers talked him out of using the original ending of ‘Clerks’ (in which Dante gets shot and killed by a robber) and that it was a good call.