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Fri, 29 May 2009 16:24
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Who is Alan Smithee? No one real, actually. The name is an official pseudonym used by film directors when they do not want their name associated with a film, made for TV movie or television episode – for whatever reason.
The name was created in 1969, during the film Death of a Gunfighter. When the original director was fired, the production brought on a second director to finish the film. Since the new director only had a few days to work on it, and was not responsible for the majority of the film, he decided to lobby to take his name off of it. Too much of the film was really the vision of the original director. The Director’s Guild of America (DGA) supported his decision and came up with ‘Alan Smithee’ as a placeholder for the director credit.
Amusingly, this film got really great reviews. But in general, if a director finds him or herself in a situation where they are not proud of a film and want to disassociate the final product from the rest of their body of work, they can choose to invoke an ‘Alan Smithee’. Check out your favorite film database and you may be surprised by how many films are actually directed by this fellow.
Hopefully you’ll never have to Alan Smithee your short film, but anything is possible.
Good Luck!
Posted By Zeniba