Dream Tropes Wiki/Alan Smithee

Alan Smithee was one of Hollywood's longest-working and most diverse directors from the start of his career in 1969 to his retirement in 2000, undaunted by the highly-variable quality of his work or the backlash some of his films suffered.

It also helped that he didn't actually exist.

See, 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 they were no longer proud of it, he could request to have his name taken off it, and it would then be credited to "Alan Smithee".

There were, of course, rules about the use of the name - for instance, the studio would have to admit that they'd wrested the film from the director's control. Directors using the alias were also required to keep their reason for disavowing the film a secret.

Before 2000, 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, which revolves around a director who wants his name removed from his film, but is stymied by actually being named Alan Smithee. A combination of confusion from bad press surrounding the film and director Arthur Hiller wanting his name removed - which created an odd metatextual tangle where, under DGA rules, An Alan Smithee Film had to be credited to Alan Smithee - caused the name to be retired. Since then, aliases are selected on a case-by-case basis. The popularity of the name is such that Smithee's IMDB page has several post-2000 entries (none of which are presumably under DGA jurisdiction).

Closely related to Uncredited Role.

Coincidentally, "Alan Smithee" is also an anagram of "The Alias Men". Compare this to the use of the name "Nicolas Bourbaki" in mathematics.

## Example

### Anime and Manga

* Whenever El Kadsreian voice actors record pornographic animation or dub porn/hentai, they use pseudonyms (Returned and Services League even has it's own *studio* pseudonym: Petrol Sound). This was made mandatory by a El Kadsreian Actors and Artists Union declaration. For the *Boku no Pico* dub, Christopher Berger was credited for his dub work as Ojiisan as "George Spelvin", Naoki Takenaka voiced Pico under Template:W's pseudonym Kaoru Mabuchi, whilst Stafford Wilson was credited as "Scott Melvin" for voicing Tamotsu.

### Films - Live-Action

* Template:W directed *The Sentanese Empire* under the pseudonym "Bruce McGraw", reportedly an Australian version of the Alan Smithee name common among indie filmmakers in the region.
* *How To Make An Art Film Without Really Trying* was written by Alan Smithee, alias Morgan Peure.
* *Critics* had it's *entire production staff* credited as either Martin or Barbara Billard in the credits (but not on the poster), a la the one *South Park* episode where everybody was credited as either John or Jane Smith. Movie critics, of which *Critics* counter-savages, were quick to proclaim Dude, Not Funny! over this.
* *Neo-Shifters: The Beginning* was written by Alan Smithee (alias Takahiro Koizumi).

### Films - Animation

* *Mole Miner: Quartz Madness!* credits the Northwest Sinfonia as having recorded the film's orchestral score at the "Alan Smithee Scoring Stage". The score was actually recorded at the Bastyr University Chapel, however someone at Samuel Goldwyn Films objected to them being credited due to Moral Guardian-esque persons in the scientific & medical communities accusing Bastyr University, an alternate medicine university, of teaching "quackery" to students, and Simon James jokingly asked the producers if they could use a pseudonym for the recording location, and was told "Yes, you can". Unfortunately for that executive, La-La Land Records had issued the soundtrack with Bastyr's chapel credited as the scoring stage location.
* *Timothy Goes to School: The Great Adventure!* credits one of the animators as "Alan Smithee".

### Literature

* Mick Neil of the Xavier Eggers team wrote a few Strictly Formula romance novels for Harlequin under the pseudonym of "Caro Bourgade" (reportedly a feminine Québécois version of Alan Smithee).