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Released
2002 · FILM

Who Is Alan Smithee?

Directed by
Runtime
50 min
Documentary

Synopsis

This documentary on the elusive director Alan Smithee was first shown on the American Movie Classics (AMC) cable channel. It explores the origin of the name and explains why the Directors Guild of America (DGA) initially permitted it to be used on Richard Widmark's western *Death of a Gunfighter*. The film traces the various difficulties director Tony Kaye encountered during the production and post-production of *American History X*, and examines why the DGA later refused to allow Alan Smithee to be credited for that film.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 18

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by George O DonnellShot by Ron DeveauxScored by Douglas J Cuomo

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