The Writer's Life 8/14 - Alias

"Alan Smithee" is a pseudonym for any director whose film is clearly taken away from her/him and recut heavily against her/his wishes in ways that completely alter it. It's an anagram for "The Alias Men." On Wednesday night I watched one of "his" films, Let's Get Harry (1986) on This-TV, channel 111 on Cablevision in NYC. It's a tale of unlikely heroics, a group of plumbers rescuing one of their own from a South American drug lord. Stuart Rosenberg, who had a distinguished career (Cool Hand Luke {1967}), had his name removed from it. Smithee has 80 works listed at IMDb, including shorts, music videos, TV shows and documentaries, and also 18 credits as a writer, nine as an editor, nine as an actor, and seven as a producer. Other notables who have had their names removed from a film are John Frankenheimer, who was at the helm of, among other fine works, The Manchurian Candidate (1961), Dennis Hopper, which is no surprise given his wild youth, and Kiefer Sutherland, who has four directing credits best described as promising. Here's a quote from another director who had a great career: "When I refused to take directing credit for the film Death of a Gunfighter (1969), as did Bob 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 (Invasion of the Body Snatchers {1956}).

Here's an ad for WD40 that ran in newspapers a long time ago. My thanks to Marie, who emailed it to her friends list:

The floating book shop had a visit from Bob Rubenstein, author of Ghost Runners. He has made the bizarre move of terminating his contract with All Things That Matter Press, which published my short story collection, A Hitch in Twilight. He was peeved that his novel wasn't made an audio book, which was his dream. In September the book will again be solely his, and he will seek a publisher. He has tweaked, removing profanity that kept it from being accepted by certain organizations. He is also contemplating a change of title. The hardest part of the literary process is getting published. He had half the battle won. He receives royalty checks every quarter and doesn't even cash them -- simply to annoy the publisher. I doubt it's a lot of money, but I bet most of ATTMP's authors, myself included, would love to have such sales and a bit of green coming in every quarter. I called him meshuga. Despite that, he bought Rising Star, which features many Jewish terms including the aforementioned. My thanks, and good luck, Bob. My thanks also to the other kind folks who made purchases on what was by far the most active session of the month.

Vic's 5th Novel: http://tinyurl.com/okxkwh5Vic's 4th novel: tinyurl.com/bszwlxh

Vic's 3rd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3

Vic's Short Story on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/k95k3nx
Vic's Short Story Collection: http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tiny.cc/0iHLb Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/kx3d3uf
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tinyurl.com/l84h63j

Vic's Rom-Com Screenplay: http://tinyurl.com/kny5llp

Vic's Horror Screenplay: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3f

Vic's Blog: http://vicfortezza.blogspot.com/

Vic's Web Site: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/