If you look at the Internet Movie Database, one of the most prolific directors over the last 70 years has been Alan Smithy. He has been credited with directing over 156 feature films, shorts, and music videos, with several more projects in the works. Despite his prodigious output, however, Alan Smithy has never been nominated for an award, appeared on a red carpet, or conducted an interview. And this is because Alan Smithy doesn't exist. Learn more about Alan Smithy and why he was created on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. money so it can work for you. We invite guests to demystify investing. At least like the minimum 10% into the 401k. I'm Dave Ahern. And I'm Andrew Sather. And we hope you join us on the Investing for Beginners podcast. On the Investing for Beginners podcast. The story of Alan Smithy begins with the union system in Hollywood. The union system in Hollywood emerged in the 1930s as film workers organized to protect wages, working conditions, and creative rights in an industry dominated by powerful studios. During the early decades of the American film industry, major studios such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Brothers, and Paramount Pictures operated under a vertically integrated system in which they controlled production, distribution, and theater operations. Employees worked under long-term studio contracts and had little bargaining power, often facing long work hours and strict studio oversight. Inspired by the broader American labor movement and encouraged by the New Deal labor protections in the 1930s, filmmakers began forming guilds and unions to represent different crafts, including actors, writers, editors, technicians, and directors. Directors initially organized under the Screen Directors Guild, which was founded in 1936. One of its major leaders was Frank Capra, who helped push for collective bargaining and professional recognition of directors as creative leaders rather than studio employees. The Guild sought to establish rules governing director credit, working conditions, and creative authority, including protections over the final cut of films. In 1960, the organization was renamed the Directors Guild of America as television was becoming a major part of the industry. Over time, the DGA became one of the most influential unions in Hollywood, negotiating contracts that covered directors, assistant directors, and production managers across film, television, and streaming productions. But for the purpose of this episode, one of the major things that the DGA set standards for is film credits. One of the guiding principles behind the Directors Guild is the auteur theory of cinema. The auteur theory is that the director is the primary creative focus behind a film, functioning much like the author of a novel. According to this theory, even though filmmaking is a very collaborative process involving writers, actors, editors, and producers, the director's personal vision, style, and thematic concepts shape the finished work in a recognizable way It this theory that guides the credit rules established by the Directors Guild One of the most important rules is the one director credit principle In most situations only one individual director may be credited for a film, even though filmmaking is a collaborative process. The DGA established this rule to reinforce the idea that a film should have a single creative voice. The major exception is when directors are established as a team that's been formally recognized by the Guild. These are usually sibling teams, such as the Coens, the Wachowskis, the Farrelys, and the Russos. Another key rule is that a director must receive credit if they directed the majority of the film's footage. If a director is replaced during production, the Guild may conduct an arbitration process to determine who directed the largest portion of the completed film. The director responsible for the majority of the finished footage normally receives the sole credit. In rare circumstances, shared credit can be granted, but only after a formal guild review. And another rule, and the one that is the basis of this episode, is that a director's name, if they are a guild member, must appear on any film, and they cannot be credited as a pseudonym. This rule was created to protect directors as studios or producers might attempt to deny a director credit for their work. While this rule seems very reasonable, what if the final product didn't fit the director's vision for the film? What if a studio hacked and changed a film so much that it's no longer the vision of what the director wanted? According to the rules, the director was stuck having to take credit for something that they didn't want to take credit for. And this really wasn't that big of a problem for decades. But the issue came to a head during the production of the 1969 western Death of a Gunfighter. During the production of the film, director Robert Totten clashed repeatedly with the film star Richard Widmark over creative decisions and directing style, which eventually led the studio to fire Totten before filming was completed. The producers then brought in Don Siegel to finish the movie. By the time the film was completed, however, the final cut contained substantial material shot by both directors, creating a hybrid production that neither of them felt truly represented their own work as auteurs. Because the Directors Guild of America normally only allowed a single director credit, and because both men were dissatisfied with the mixed authorship of the final film, each of them requested that his name be removed from the project. To resolve the dispute, the Guild created the pseudonym Alan Smithy, which was used as the credited director instead. The original plan was to use the name Al Smith, but it was considered too common. They finally settled on Alan Smithy because no one in the film industry was known to have that name. Oddly enough, Death of a Gunfighter wasn't a horrible film. It currently has a 6.2 out of 10 rating on IMDb, which is okay, but not terrible. Moreover, no one outside the small circle of people working on the film knew who Alan Smithy was. The New York Times review of the film said it was, quote, sharply directed by Alan Smithy, who has an adroit facility for scanning faces and extracting sharp background detail. Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars out of four and said, quote, Director Alan Smithy a name I not familiar with allows his story to unfold naturally He never preaches and never lingers on the obvious His characters do what they have to do End quote With the creation of Alan Smithy, the next use was on the film Fade In, starring Burt Reynolds. The film was actually shot in 1968, before Death of a Gunslinger, but it wasn't released until 1973. Director Judd Taylor requested the pseudonym after disputes after editing. The Directors Guild officially adopted the Alan Smithy pseudonym for directors who didn't want to be credited for a film. To use it, a director had to go through a formal arbitration process with the DGA. The director had to demonstrate that the film had been substantially altered without their consent, that they no longer had meaningful creative control, and that the final product no longer represented their work. Over the next several decades, Alan Smithy appeared as the credited director in several dozen films, some of which were applied retroactively going back to the 1950s. There were a few notable cases. The Twilight Zone movie, released in 1983, had multiple directors, including John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, and George Miller. The first segment's director removed his credit following the tragic on-set helicopter accident that killed actor Vic Morrow and two child actors. The segment ultimately carried the Alan Smithy credit. The theatrical Dune film was directed by David Lynch. When the movie was later re-edited into a much longer television version, Lynch strongly objected to the changes. He removed his name from the TV cut and replaced it with Alan Smithy. He even replaced his screenwriting credit with another pseudonym, Judas Booth, a clear expression of his frustration. The 1990 film Catch Fire was a crime film starring Dennis Hopper and Jodie Foster that underwent heavy studio editing. Hopper, who was also the director, disliked the theatrical cut so much that he replaced his directing credit with Alan Smithy. Later, when Hopper regained control and re-edited the film for a home video release, the new version was issued under his real name and the film was retitled Backtrack. Up until the mid-1990s, Alan Smithy was known only to Hollywood insiders. It wasn't a secret per se, but it was inside baseball that only someone in the film business would actually bother to know. But that all changed in 1997, with the release of the film, an Alan Smithy film, Burn Hollywood Burn. The movie's plot is about a director named Alan Smithy, played by Monty Python's Eric Idle, trying to remove his name from a terrible film. However, he can't remove his name because his real name is Alan Smithy. Hilarity ensues. The actual director of the film was Arthur Hiller, and this is where things get weird. Hiller believed that the producers and distributors had significantly altered the film from the version that he intended, reshaping the story and tone in ways that he did not approve. Because the final cut no longer reflected his creative vision, he appealed to the Director's Guild of America to remove his credit. So in one of the greatest ironic twists in film history, the Guild allowed him to replace the name on the film Alan Smithy with the pseudonym Alan Smithy, even though the film itself was a satire about a fictional director named Alan Smithy who tries to remove his name from a movie to get it credited to Alan Smithy. It was Alan Smithy Inception The film was truly horrible It grossed only about at the box office on a budget of million and it regularly appears on lists of the worst motion pictures of all time It won the 1998 Razzie Award for Worst Motion Picture. And Arthur Hiller was nominated for Worst Director, which actually passed up a brilliant opportunity to actually nominate Alan Smithy. While very few people saw the film, the story about it spread widely and now the cat was out of the bag about Alan Smithy. Because the film drew massive attention to the pseudonym and its meaning, the Directors Guild concluded that the device no longer worked. In the year 2000, the Directors Guild of America officially retired Alan Smithy. Even though the DGA officially stopped using it, it continued to be used outside the Guild, and has become a cultural shorthand for someone disavowing a project. Alan Smithy still appears in comic books, television scripts, video games, and music videos. For example, Daniel Chichester had his credit on the Daredevil comic book changed to Alan Smithy when he was removed from the title. While Alan Smithy was retired, the Directors Guild continues to allow directors to request removal of a directing credit using the same appeals process. The only difference is that instead of using a single pseudonym, they can now choose from several. We don't know all of the pseudonyms that have been used, but we do know several. One of the first was Thomas Lee, used on the 2000 science fiction film Supernova after director Walter Hill left the production following major studio recutting and reshoots. Another example is Stephen Green, credited as director of the romantic comedy Accidental Love after the director David O. Russell abandoned the project due to financing and production disputes. While Alan Smithy may have officially retired, his legend still lives on. So if you're ever stuck on a project that you don't want any part of and don't want to take public credit for, instead, just ask that credit be given to Alan Smithy. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. Research and writing for this episode were provided by Cornelius Mountweasel. Today's review comes from listener, the OS New Mama on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, Timely and essential information. Gary has always chosen interesting topics that I would never have thought to learn about, but the topics he's covered lately I felt especially relevant and important to listeners to hear for historical context on current events. Whether his topic choices are intentional or I'm just primed to notice historical parallels, I'm glad he's doing it. Well, thanks, new mama. While there are lessons from history that we can all learn, I'm never trying to subtly make some contemporary political point. Everyone is free to draw their own conclusions from past events and how they apply to the world today. I'm not trying to lead anyone anywhere. Remember, if you leave a review on any of the major podcast apps, You too can have it right on the show. Joe Esterhaus, directed by Alan Smithy.
