Alan Smithee

“I think I saw him once”

~ Captain Oblivious on Alan Smithee

“He iz one of my all time favorite directors. I aspire to his quality.”

~ Uwe Boll on Alan Smithee

One of Smithee's many directorial trademarks.

One of the greatest movie directors in the history of film, Alan Smithee (also Allen Smithee) has directed more than 50 feature films in his 40+ year lifetime.

Career

Born in the tiny Eastern European country of Batavia, Smithee's family emigrated to the U.S. ('Smithee' is actually the Americanized version of the family's old world name - 'Johnson') during the Great Peat Shortage of 1935. They eventually settled in Oxnard, California where Smithee's father, Tim, found work as a horsepainter. His mother, Esme, worked part time as the Governor of California (1936-38) until the vicissitudes of raising 13 children made it too difficult.

Smithee's first job in the movie industry was at Warner Bros. where he worked as a tripod for the immortal William "One Shot" Beaudine on several of the wildly popular Torchy Blane films. From there he worked his way up to assistant gaffer at Monogram and, in 1955, got his first big break substituting for famed cinematographer Arnie Ellis II after he was mauled by a sloth on the set of Tarzan Buys A Buick.

Filmography

Main article: Alan Smithee filmography

Beach Blanket Beats (1957) Reform School Hellcats (1958) Mars Needs Elvis (1959) Illegal aliens from outer space! (1959) The Hooded Anus (1961) Hillbilly Hijinks (1963) Come Back, Farley Granger! (1964) With Four You Get Pigs Feet (1965) Holy Crap! It's a Giant Lobster! (1965½) Chuck Winsor: Park Ranger (TV) (1966) The Eerie Area (TV) (1967) Godbother! (1968) Emmet Otterstein's Jug-Band Hanukkah (1969)

Motorcycle Mamas In Chains (1973) Hands Up, Honky! (1974) Kung-Fu Death-Cheaters (1974) Messy Jill, Goofy Bill (1975) Galaxy Fighters (1976) Galaxy Fighters II: Payback (1978) He's Behind You! (1980) Galaxy Fighters III: The Empire's New Hope (1981) Revenge of the Guy Behind You! (1982) Death Exterminator II (1985) Big Big Guns (1986) Ernest Goes to Rehab (1987) Passion of the Goodfellas (1990)

A Milli Vanilli Christmas (TV) (1988) Saigon Surprise (1989) Plop Plop, Fizz Fizz - The Movie! (1990) Pulp Muppets (1994) American π (1999) Dude, Where's My Toilet? (2000) Super Troopers (2001) Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) Fire Hydrant 2: Rehydrated (2007) The Uncyclopedia Movie (2006) Ni Hao, Kai-Lan (TV) (2008-) Withnail & I (2009)

External links

• The Invisible Hand Of Alan Smithee
• The Films of Alan Smithee

  Film directors of the world  

Visionaries:	Ingmar Bergman ♦ Peter Bogdanovich ♦ James Cameron ♦ Charlie Chaplin ♦ Coen Brothers ♦ Francis Ford Coppola ♦ Clint Eastwood ♦ Sergei Eisenstein ♦ Federico Fellini ♦ Alfred Hitchcock ♦ Stanley Kubrick ♦ Mira Nair ♦ Martin Scorsese ♦ Steven Spielberg ♦ Andrei Tarkovsky ♦ Orson Welles
Not-so-epic:	Michael Bay ♦ Neill Blomkamp ♦ Uwe Boll ♦ Tim Burton ♦ John Carpenter ♦ David Cronenberg ♦ Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer ♦ Mel Gibson ♦ Tom Green ♦ Spike Lee ♦ Sergio Leone ♦ George Lucas ♦ Dolph Lundgren ♦ Spike Milligan ♦ Michael Moore ♦ Leonard Nimoy ♦ Guy Ritchie ♦ George Romero ♦ Joel Schumacher ♦ M. Night Shyamalan ♦ Alan Smithee ♦ Billy Bob Thornton ♦ Joss Whedon ♦ Tommy Wiseau ♦ John Woo ♦ Ed Wood
Big in France:	Woody Allen ♦ Michelangelo Antonioni ♦ Darren Aronofsky ♦ Mel Brooks ♦ Sofia Coppola ♦ Jean-Luc Godard ♦ Jim Jarmusch ♦ Charlie Kaufman ♦ Jerry Lewis ♦ David Lynch ♦ Nicolas Winding Refn ♦ Rob Schneider | Remi Gaillard
Big in Japan:	Terry Gilliam ♦ Akira Kurosawa ♦ Russ Meyer ♦ Quentin Tarantino
Disturbing:	Guillermo del Toro ♦ Robert Rodriguez ♦ Rob Zombie