Alan Smithee(I)

The DGA decided that the name got so much exposure from the film An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (1997) that it was no longer an effective alias. The film Supernova (2000) was the first "post-Smithee" film; Smithee's successor was named "Thomas Lee" but it didn't take and the classic Smithee pseudonym has remained in use up to this day.

When I refused to take directing credit for the film Death of a Gunfighter (1969), as did Robert Totten, the Directors' Guild made up a pseudonym for Totten and myself, 'Allen Smithee.' As the picture was well received, I told my young friends who wanted to be directors to change their name to Smithee and take credit for direction of the picture. I don't know if anyone did this. I still think under certain circumstances, they might have cracked the 'magic barrier' and become directors. - Don Siegel, "A Siegel Film," London: Faber and Faber, 1993 (320, 321).