Alan Smithee is the fictitious name the Director\u2019s Guild put on movies when the Director has been fired, or has been so badly recut he wants his name taken off.\u00a0 It becomes an Alan Smithee film.\u00a0\u00a0 It says \u201cDirected by Alan Smithee.\u201d\u00a0 The Guild is a powerful union and does not want films going out with no Director.\u00a0\u00a0 Producers might get ideas\u2026.<\/p>\n
I was playing the eponymous Alan Smithee in An Alan Smithee Film<\/i> (written by Joe Eszterhas) when the Director Arthur Hiller came up to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve just had a terrible thought\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cIf they fire me this will become an Alan Smithee film.\u201d<\/p>\n
They did.<\/p>\n
Joe Eszterhas removed Arthur Hiller, recut the movie and it became a genuine Alan Smithee film.<\/p>\n
He changed the name to Burn, Hollywood, Burn!<\/i><\/p>\n
The critics agreed it was one of the worst films ever and in 1998 it won a Razzie\u00a0 (The Oscars for Incompetence) for Worst Film of the Year.<\/p>\n
I felt sympathetic to all concerned.<\/p>\n
It is terribly difficult to cut documentary into successful narrative form.\u00a0\u00a0 The consummate master is Scorsese, who has done it not once but three times:\u00a0 once with George Harrison<\/i>, once with Bob Dylan<\/i>, and once with The Band<\/i> in The Last Waltz<\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0He has an uncanny sense of form.\u00a0 To reveal the bones of narrative structure beneath the endlessly changing skin of random commentary, this is tough.\u00a0 And it is by no means inevitable.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes, like Oakland, there is no there there.\u00a0 Certainly Joe Esterhaz was unable to find it, amidst the jumble of material he inherited, because he was trying to be funny as well.\u00a0 I know how hard this is because I think we managed it (just) in The Rutles<\/i>, thanks to the co-directing skills of Gary Weis,\u00a0 the editing skills of Aviva Slesin, and a bit of me.\u00a0 \u00a0To be funny, and to tell a story and be a documentary.\u00a0 Tough.<\/p>\n
So perhaps it\u2019s time for a little tip of the hat to The Rutles,\u00a0 <\/i>the documentary that is still going strong since 1978.\u00a0 The little train that could, that came 76th<\/sup> in that week\u2019s ratings, after an unnecessarily cruel mauling by a TV critic, \u00a0Frank Rich, who as a favour to a friend panned it in The New York Times <\/i>the day before it was shown.\u00a0 A guaranteed audience winner!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And yet here we still are.\u00a0 And where is that week\u2019s episode of Charlie\u2019s Angels?<\/i><\/p>\n Now magnificently after 35 years it is coming to Blue Ray in a glorious package that includes tons of new interviews, and my follow up documentary Can\u2019t Buy Me Lunch, <\/i>which contains some of my favourite Gary Shandling gags ever.<\/p>\n Some brave Canadians have stumped up their last Looney\u2019s to put this out and so you may find me shamelessly promoting it on Twitter.<\/p>\n It makes an excellent present.\u00a0\u00a0 Nudge nudge.<\/p>\n Eric Idle<\/p>\n (aka Alan Smithee.)<\/p>\n The Rutles Anthology<\/b> is released in the US and Canada on November 19th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.laffstock.com\/index.php\/catalog\/product\/view\/id\/2920\/s\/rutles-anthology-the-dvd-blu-ray-combo\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alan Smithee is the fictitious name the Director\u2019s Guild put on movies when the Director has been fired, or has been so badly recut he wants his name taken off.\u00a0 It becomes an Alan Smithee film.\u00a0\u00a0 It says \u201cDirected by Alan Smithee.\u201d\u00a0 The Guild is a powerful union and does not want films going out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":504,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions\/504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}