The sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds was an Alan Smithee joint. The pantheon of bad directors is full guys whose films are executed with endearing ineptitude–you know, your Tommy Wiseaus and Ed ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Alan Smithee was a loophole that allowed filmmakers to remove their names from movies. To use it, DGA members had to prove to a ...

Music imoressario Robert Stigwood (1934 - 2016) died eight years ago today. He was the manager of the Bee Gees and the executive producer of “Saturday Night Fever,” with which my late friend and ...

'Who is Alan Smithee' can be an interesting trivia question for film buffs. The name has been used in the credits of Hollywood films as a director more time than any other. Even prolific filmmakers ...

There are a lot of ways to tell if a production is in trouble -- last-minute reshoots, its release date keeps getting pushed back, the film isn't screened for critics -- but there's one particularly ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. During Academy Awards season in mid-March 2026, a longstanding rumor about Hollywood directors using a pseudonym in the credits of ...

Director Alan Smithee comes to Hollywood to make a movie. Due to a variety of factors, he decides to disown it and direct it under a pseudonym. Unfortunately, the Director's Guild requires that if a ...

“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 ...

Alan Smithee is back, and he’s got a couple of new gigs. Smithee, of course, is the DGA-sanctioned alias that was long used by directors who didn’t want to put their names on films that were screwed ...