Ok, for those of you who might not know, who the hell was Alan Smithee ?

Well Alan Smithee was the title that the Directors Guild Of America advised that a Director had to use if they did not wish their name to be on a Movie.

The first time it was used on a Movie was back in 1967 on Death Of A Gunfighter, no I had never heard of that Movie either. On the other hand you will have heard of Dennis Hopper who used the title for the flop Catchfire that he directed in 1989 that starred Jodie Foster.

The Directors Guild have now decided that Directors should stop using the Alan Smithee pseudonym after it was used in the title of the 1997 flop An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn(if you have seen that we would love to see a review of it).

From now on Directors should use Thomas Lee. Which might be a bit of a pain if you are a Director and your name really is Thomas Lee.

Expect the first Movie to carry this name to be the Walter Hill directed Supernova which should be winging its way to us soon.

So hopefully now armed with this info you will know that if a film has either Alan Smithee or Thomas Lee as Director to avoid it.

I mean if the Movies own Director doesn't want anything to do with it then it must be pretty bad.

Tall Guy