In the US, there's a movie director named Alan Smithee.
This director, who debuted with the Western 'Death of a Gunfighter' in 1969,
became famous after the movie got good reviews and was a box office hit. He consistently made movies for about 30 years afterward,
but due to various reasons like studio interference, he sadly never achieved the same success as his debut.
However, in 1998, director Arthur Hiller decided to make a movie inspired by him.
(He's famous in Korea for directing *Love Story*.)
The movie's plot was about director Alan Smithee,
who, when his film wasn't going the way he wanted due to studio interference,
decided to run away with the film reels.
And on February 27, 1998, *Burn Hollywood Burn: An Alan Smithee Film* premiered in theaters.
Here, Arthur Hiller listed the director as Alan Smithee instead of himself, out of respect for Alan.
$59 million? Anyway, this $10 million production opened and only grossed about $59 million...
Wait, $59 *thousand*... dollars. It was a massive failure.
Plus, the reviews were even gloomier,
recording an all-time low score: 8% from critics and 15% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.
(For reference, the widely criticized flop *Fantastic Four* (2015) got similar scores with 9% from critics and 18% from audiences.)
But when this movie came out, the people most flustered were Hollywood insiders.
The reason was that the person Alan Smithee
simply didn't exist.
Actually, the original directors of Alan Smithee's debut film, *Death of a Gunfighter*,
were Don Siegel (the guy in the photo) and Robert Totten.
Because of interference from the distributor, Universal, they couldn't make the movie the way they wanted,
so they didn't put their names down as directors,
and instead, they substituted the fake name Alan Smithee.
After this (and the widely cited flop *Hellraiser 4*), the name Alan Smithee was used by film directors who didn't want to admit they made a film (usually due to studio interference being the cause),
or failed works like the other famous(?) flop *Catchfire*. The name was used as a stand-in.
In other words, the reason Hollywood insiders were freaking out was
the anxiety that if this fact became public knowledge, their hidden failures under the name Alan Smithee
would surface and potentially ruin their careers.
(Side note: It's said that the reason Arthur Hiller listed the director as Alan Smithee earlier wasn't out of respect,
but because the movie didn't follow the direction he wanted, either.)
Although the movie was bad in both box office and reviews, it might have just been forgotten,
but it got caught by the Golden Raspberry Awards, which only selects the worst films.
It ended up winning 4 awards that year, including Worst Picture,
and this fact became known to the public, making Alan Smithee known as a kind of meme.
Consequently, directors gave up using the pseudonym Alan Smithee,
and the career of Director Alan Smithee was thus concluded.
감독 앨런 스미시의 커리어는 그렇게 막을 내리게 되었다고 한다.
"RIP to the 'Various Artists' of Hollywood, the legendary director who only scored own goals (and Razzies). We miss his prime time (lol)."
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