The Magnificent Alan Smithee
Buford Lister has been giving me lots of trouble lately. He has asked for meetings with me and the man who created me. He has even approached the implied author, the man that the reader senses when they read my stories. This is getting exhausting. As I recall, Dr. Frankenstein had a similar problem with one of his creations.
Look, I have empathy for the guy. I really do. The problem is I can’t do anything for him. I am powerful in his world, but I am not nearly as powerful as he wishes I could be. He is a bit delusional, and he is more than a little desperate. He is worried. His insight is problematic for a fictional character; he has come to the realization that he is mortal. He will die when I do; that is a simple fact.
I am on this topic because I just watched The Professor and the Madman, a movie about making the first comprehensive Oxford English dictionary. It stars Mel Gibson and Sean Penn. I enjoyed the film, but as I watched it, I realized why I had heard so much about it when it was in development. The project was plagued with problems from its onset. The film went so far off the rails that the director, Farhad Safinia, refused to attach his name to it. The fact that he also wrote the screenplay speaks to how bad the final product turned out. I enjoyed the movie, but I do see why Safinia protested. The particulars aren’t necessary; just know that he was so upset with his loss of control over the film that he backed off and disowned it. For what it is worth, filmmaking and television production has a long history of disgruntled directors. Imagine how much must go wrong before choosing to have your name removed from the project. It seems pretty extreme, doesn’t it?
We now arrive at the tale of the magnificent Alan Smithee. From 1968 until 2000, if a director wished to wash their hands of a film, they would attribute the director’s credit to the fictional Alan Smithee. This happened a lot. Usually, the director had creative control yanked from them during the shooting of the film. As you might imagine, money often was at the center of the dispute. One of the problems with The Professor and the Madman was that the director wanted to shoot on Oxford University’s campus. The producers were unwilling to spend the extra money required to do that.
Alan Smithee was retired in 2000. Officially, we are not supposed to see any more projects attributed to him. Safinia used the name P.B. Shemran for The Professor and the Madman. Shemran is listed as the official director of the film. Smithee, Shemran, same difference. Both used to voice displeasure about creative control taken away by the money men and women.
We can now return full circle to Buford Lister. When I got up this morning, I found a 3×5 index card taped to my bathroom mirror. Obviously, he had found a way into my house and decided to try a new tactic. He refuses to give up even though, deep down, I think he knows there is no hope. Desperate people, you know? He drew a crude tombstone on the card. This is what was written on it:
Here lies Alan Smithee
Good luck to you
I took a quick glance at it, tore it up, and went back to bed.
