Alan Smithee Makes a Name in Hollywood

“Alan Smithee is the secret shame of Hollywood,” says film historian Stephen Hock. “He’s the man Hollywood would prefer we not know about, not talk about and not ask any questions about.”

A secret for much of his 30 years in Hollywood, Smithee was spectacularly exposed during flaps over the final edits of 1997’s “An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn” and 1998’s “American History X.” He has quietly disappeared since then, but his legend lives on. Many of his secrets are revealed tonight in the American Movie Classics documentary “Who Is Alan Smithee?”

Smithee is the name taken by directors so unhappy with the final version of a film--usually after a studio or producer stepped in to make changes--that they ask to have their name removed.

It’s a wrenching decision, explains Martha Coolidge, who considered taking her name off of 1984’s “Joy of Sex” after the studio reworked her version, but it’s made when the director finds himself or herself answering yes to these questions: Will the film “embarrass me, humiliate me, disgust me for the rest of my life?”

As directed by Lesli Klainberg, the documentary makes for a fairly diverting hour in front of the tube.

However, it won’t win any prizes for innovation.

It’s a low-rent amalgamation of stock footage (directors at work, red-carpet arrivals and the like) and talking-head interviews with film historians, journalists (including The Times’ Patrick Goldstein) and those involved in disputes, including directors John Singleton (a flap over the 2000 “Shaft” remake) and Arthur Hiller (who invoked his own Alan Smithee on “Burn Hollywood Burn,” which, as fate would have it, was about a powerless director).

The documentary traces Smithee back to 1968 and his introduction in the movie “Death of a Gunfighter,” when a dispute prompted the directors’ union, the Directors Guild of America, to come up with a solution that would save both studio and directors from embarrassment.

After that, the DGA allowed the Smithee name to be used on 47 films, including 1989’s “Backtrack,” disowned by Dennis Hopper until it was restored to his edit, and several heavily edited airline or television versions of films, including the TV cut of David Lynch’s 1984 “Dune.”

The Smithee credit was effective only as long as the general public didn’t know about it, the documentary explains. So, after the very public “Burn Hollywood Burn” and “American History X” disputes--the latter of which is discussed in detail by director Tony Kaye and others involved in the film--that identifiable pseudonym was dropped and new ones allowed.

So, Alan Smithee, you might say, has gone back undercover, under an assumed name.

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“Who Is Alan Smithee?” can be seen at 7 and 10:30 tonight on American Movie Classics.