With the flop of last years ‘Fantastic Four’ both the director, Josh Trank, and the studio are blaming each other for its failure. We thought we’d have a quick look at other directors who want no association with their film.
Tony Kaye – American History X
Edward Norton as a reformed Neo Nazi earned him an Oscar nomination, but director Tony Kaye wasn’t happy who’d been leant on by producer. Kaye objected to their cuts and suggestions but it made no difference. Despite that the theatrical cut was the product of Ed Norton’s re-edits, which made Kaye so unhappy that he unsuccessfully petitioned to have his name removed and replaced.
Stanley Kubrick – Fear and Desire
His first film was financed by his family and friends he then spent years trying to acquire all known prints of the film to stop it from ever being seen considering it “like a child’s drawing on a fridge. A bumbling, amateur film exercise… a completely inept oddity, boring and pretentious.”
Steven Soderburgh – The Underneath
Before he directed the Ocean’s trilogy he directed the 1995 thriller The Underneath. Soderbergh hated it saying it was, “kind of a mess” and the only thing he got from it was using colour, “everything else about the movie I can’t defend. It was a failed experiment.”
Walter Hill – Supernova
Hill has brought us such films as The Warriors, 48Hrs and Red Heat but when MGM screened an unfinished version to test audiences with half finished effects Hill was furious and quit. So MGM hired director Jack Sholder who would re-edit, reshoot scenes and even deleted many of Hill’s original scenes. It was still rubbish so the studio hired Francis Ford Coppola to re-edit the film and it was finally released two years later. It was still rubbish. Walter Hill had his name replaced with Thomas Lee in the credits.
And of course as most people are aware there is the famous moniker Alan Smithee used as a pseudonym for the real director when they want their name removed from the credits. Such films include ‘The Birds 2:Lands End’ – whose real director was Rick Rosenthal and perhaps most famous of all was the film, ‘Burn Hollywood Burn’ directed by Arthur Hiller. The whole film was then retitled as ‘An Alan Smithee film’. D’oh!
