{the minstrel leaves the stage} 



 



 



 



Nice ax  



               



               I say.  



 



                           He says  



                                     



                                           “pyx



but I see how you could confuse that”



 



 



 



                                                             What else   



could I beg for but  



 



                                 pardon? 



                                            



                                               He tells me 



                                                             



                                                                   “there



is none not whilst I make water and libate;



buy me one of what you’re having; tell me



your ailings and next set I’ll slather the balm



across your brow”



 



           



 



                               I buy the spirit, but am fine, I tell him



 



my kids love their puppy, we all tussle.



                           



                                                               I’m guttered 



by this happiness.



 



                             He sings  



 



                                            “my psalmbook is a host 



of dogs baned and swole-up; of molars 



shattered by bruxing grief; you’re kindling”



                           



                                                                           He sings                                                 



“air out your eyes”



 



 



 



                                Is that a Hank, ’a Cash?



                         



 



  



“alms of such generous measure cannot be



guaranteed nor refunded ”



 



 



 



                                      You Catholic?



 



 



 



                                                              “i am catholic;  you know



i like your proximity and you can sure sit close;



this bar is dead yet I’m drinking left-handed!



come you; congregate with me around the mic”



 



 



 



Me?



 



 



 



        “you do you play?”



 



 



 



                                         I can’t play a thing. 



 



 



 



                                                                          “then you will



need a banjo; you’ll make of your right hand



a cup; strum; you could put your other hand



in your pocket; easy”



 



 



 



                                  But to keep such a pace? 



 



 



 



 



                                                                           “my heel



thuds and leadeth the way; though you peter out



though you rest, pick it back up; and whoa



therein’s dynamics; though you think I’ve lost stride 



the measure divides infinitely; though you lope behind 



you cannot drag the time it drags you along



a consecrated path a circle; we are bound



to overlap”



 



 



 



                   I’m slow of speech and tongue.  



Can’t you get someone else?



 



 



 



“no one is here; neon like moths tick



against tubes these lights so perpendicular



my silhouette glooms against the wall



and lurks; keep your face toward the signage,



mouth toward mic or voice and visage



you will bleed into the corner”



 



 



 



                                                   But I don’t know any words.



 



 



 



“save that line!  it is perfect for banter twixt



songs;  stutter;  be sheepish; the PA could sprawl



a mere hum across the crowded firmament



afterside this drop ceiling; play 



your self as a character; say it skutter tway;  



say Sewanee;  say right and reckon;



say Lawd; attribute weather to him; pluralize



his name, like They Lawds’s lightnin’ out;    



come Tulsa you’ll mumble the chorus; come



Joplin holler, Memphis sing



and Shreveport harmonize; come home



again we’ll blend our twang of breath;



but tonight, follow me; I’ll feed you the word”

I was eighteen the time I wore an ISSEY MIYAKE dress, and it immediately struck me: there was too much fabric. The sleeves were three times the length of my arms—the neck, intended for a giraffe. It fit me like a glove, but it flowed past the floor, pooling around my feet. But procuring some scissors, the shop girls explained: “Make of it what you want.” They pointed to some lines deftly hidden in the fabric. “There are many options.” And just like that, the consumer becomes the creator and the boutique becomes a personal workshop.



An inversion of the consumer-creator relationship and a reconsideration of the place of technology and engineering in fashion design, the dress was a product of the now famous collaboration between Issey Miyake and Dai Fujiwara.



Viewed today as the Godfather of Japanese fashion, Miyake already had world renowned for his groundbreaking designs. Miyake created the ISSEY MIYAKE design studio in 1970, and spent the following decades challenging the conventional shapes and European traditions of high fashion. Miyake demonstrated particular interest in the intersection of fashion and technology, most notably with his launch of his Pleats Please line in 1993. A production technique that uses a special heat press technique to infuse simple, colorful fabrics with shape and texture, the results are light yet defined, free-flowing yet highly constructed. Further, the polyester clothing requires minimal sewing and corresponds with Miyake’s mission for beauty and function in innovative form.A-POC, which stands for “a piece of clothing,” and rhymes with “epoch,” is the latest technologically-driven line from the Mikaye-Fujiwara collaboration. , Fujiwara and Miyahi’’s collaboration, and their technologically inspired designs and production lines, respond to timeless a question for the fashion world: the delicate balance between high art and a commercial success.



Fashion has always toed a fine line between its dual identitiest’;it is pulled towards the two poles of ready-to-wear street clothes and haute couture. For many designers, the answer comes through the creation of two lines. Designers will show their hand-made high fashion on the runways of Paris and Milan, and spread their names with special, factory-produced collections for lower-end merchandisers. Yohji Yamamoto partnered with Addidas, John Varvatos with Converse, Isaac Mizrahi with Target. These partnerships allow a designer to meet the demands of a more consumer-minded business as well as maintain the freedom of high fashion expression.



The answer for Miyake and Fujiwara, however, came not from the production of two lines, but from use of a new means of production. Merging computer technology with the creativity of the consumer, the design duo founded A-POC—“A Piece of Cloth,” and rhyming with ““epoch.”” A revolutionary design technique, A-POC transforms a single thread into clothing sans coudre. The designer develops a pattern program, funnels a single thread into the knitting machine and presto—out comes a tubular piece of cloth, size and shape dependent on its intended use. Sewing is superfluous. Reliance on sweatshops disappears, as do long hours of hand sewing in Parisian ateliers. In a way, then, A-POC piggy-backed on the work of Miyake’s earlier work, using technology to bring new vigor and innovation to the fashion industry.



Yet despite the use of machine production, A-POC defies the tedium of the mass, factory-produced clothes. It is the consumer who adds the final artistic element, who becomes the final designer. Cutting along faint lines embedded in the production of the cloth, the customer chooses sleeve length, garment length, neck style and more—transforming a long tubular creation into a functional piece of clothing. With a pair of scissors, then, mass produced clothing becomes a custom-made dream.



The power of this form-function solution brought the duo much acclaim, and shifted Fujiwara’s career notably from the textile engineer to the fashion designer. In 2006, Fujiwara became the Creative Director for ISSEY MIYAKE, Miyake himself moving on to new pursuits, and in this role, he has continued the MIYAKE tradition of fusing technology and fashion. Preferring to focus on the new, the original, Fujiwara rarely takes inspiration from the past. His shows are never send-backs to the 1920s flappers nor an homage to Versailles circa Louis XIV. He emphasizes what is new, different, and possible in the modern age. His philosophy is simple: “I do not believe that any discussion of art is possible without bringing technology onboard.”



And even in his most recent work focused on nature, Fujiwara has maintained this dependence on the mechanical and the industrial. Exploring the ways in which technology mimics, preserves, even enables the natural, he illuminates the connection he sees between the typically opposing forces. Last month in Paris he showed “Color Hunting.” In preparation for this show—the Spring 2009 collection—Fujiwara took over 3,000 color swatches to the Amazon Rainforest, aiming to capture the exact, quintessential shades of the jungle. For Summer 2008, Fujiwara was captivated by all things Wind. “To observe the wind is to be aware of nature, to think about the flow of air that envelopes us and the environment in which we exist,” the ISSEY MIYAKE Team explained. The collection thus included clothes unconventionally intended not to protect a person from the elements, but to enhance a person’s interaction with their surroundings.



For both collections, technology was the bridge to the successful partnership between fashion and nature. For “Color Hunting,” Fujiwara identified the natural hues he desired—creating some clothes to achieve the natural element—but he also experimented with the transformation of these colors in the urban landscape, capturing the effect a glass prism or metallic reflection create. To truly create the effect of Wind, Fujiwara partnered with Dyson—the high-tech British vacuum producers. Together the duo built an enormous cyclone to simulate the many forms of wind—mechanically engineering the very natural environment he hopes his clothes will enhance.



For some designers, their fashion shows seem an opportunity to shock and stun. Twice a year, the runway creates an opportunity to smile smugly and say, “Oh yes, I dared.” We love them for it. We love John Galiano for filling Parisian Vogue with models garbed as pirates. We love Marc Jacobs for throwing Grunge-wear in the face of New York’s most fashionable elite. Their dedication to the fabulous—even the absurd—is captivating. It frees us from the daily convention of what one wears.



But what’s interesting about ISSEY MIYAKE is that despite the utter originality of his work, Fujiwara is far from smug. He intends neither to shock, nor stun. Instead, he is eerily nonchalant about his originality, matter of fact, even. Whether by recreating the natural through the mechanical or by creating an entire evening gown from a single thread, Fujiwara will defy every fashion convention in existence all while suggesting that the convention never existed. He makes his innovation seem apparent—obvious creations the circumstance. His models add to this effect. Awash in perfectly engineered color-hues and surrounded by yards of free-flowing, crafted cloth, they seem entitled to the ingenuities enabled by modern engineering.



In conjunction with his participation with Harvard’s Project East fashion show, Fujiwara spoke with The Advocate, and he spent considerable time discussing the place for innovation. His design philosophy helps explain the aura of nonchalance: “Nothing, whether it is new media or emerging circumstances or matters, ever springs into existence suddenly or from nothing,” Fujiwara explains. New thinking and new designs come from precise situations that demand solutions. In a complex society of evolving desires and circumstances, innovative design is but a necessary reaction—a simple, inescapable reality.



***



Harvard Advocate: Issey Miyake is famous for his integration of design, technology, engineering and fashion, and you clearly greatly influenced this practice. Can you describe the relationship you see between fashion, technology, and directed research? Why is this important in fashion, and how do you imagine it will influence the future of design? How or does the relationship with technology morph fashion from the world of art into the world of science?



Dai Fujiwara: During the latter half of my research aimed at creating the A-POC brand, I came to embrace a vague image in my mind. Using the flow of a river as a metaphor, apparel is located in the downstream sector of the textile industry infrastructure. Apparel designers must wait for the items produced upstream and there is no great need to worry about how materials used in fashion are made. This approach and thinking had become fixed in the industry, and I was beginning to grow fed up with it.



Computers offer the convenience of guaranteed information operation, with costs remaining low [as well as] the ability to turn out highly adaptable items despite being created through automated mass production. I did not see much evolution in production lines controlled by machines, or in the production methods that required human hands.



Thus, just as I came to the conclusion that production lines not controlled by machines and production methods not requiring human hands were in fact necessary for fashion, I felt that the conventional image of the river had become hackneyed. Much like fish swim from habitats in vast ocean realms to congregate in plankton generated at the boundary line between warm and cold currents, new visions are being drafted and implemented in the midst of capitalist society – the scene of complex interactions between money, people, commodities and now the Net society.



Naturally, it is impossible to discuss fashion outside the realm of clothing, it is also true that it is no longer feasible to ponder fashion solely in terms of clothing. When, at crucial turning points, new information, new commodities, new images and new characters emerge, people will demand those new elements, along with other information, things and images. I believe that creating methods to initiate these new flows is extremely important. I also feel that proposing such changes from the viewpoint of fashion is an effective means of corroborating the performance of potential catalysts. Within my work at present, I strive to fully embrace these concepts.



It is difficult for individuals to generate turning points. However, it may be possible to bring about new movements by joining with different partners or consolidating different categories. If the time can be found to unravel circumstances or situations already in existence, and then find compatible partners to mutually discuss the world around us, our actions and discussions will lead to new ideas and movements.



In the same right, it is also necessary to forge the future of design. A vast array of accountability derived from the structure of society has spread to the design domain, prompting the need for capable designers to respond to this need. Based on the belief that easily manageable solutions are necessary, the A-POC design concept was launched Though it is my impression that there is little change in the scope demanded of fashion design, I can only conclude that the design clout of organizations unable to create items from the stance of environmental engineering will inevitably weaken. Design, by definition, is the work of formulating certain balances, coordinations and other elements. There is thus a need, I feel, to clarify what specific balances need to be struck. For the very reason that diversity is expanding within the sphere of fashion, the demands of design are much greater. Because the social responsibility in this area is in another increasing trend, it is clear that the sphere of design (referred to as balancing abilities here) is expanding and it will be vital to mount effective responses to social demands.



HA: With the continued collaboration of fashion designers and various technicians—from within and outside the world of design—how do you envision fashion’s place within society evolving? How do the technologies now available to fashion designers change the identity of high art and more consumer fashion?



DF: It is impossible to truly discuss the diversity demanded in fashion in terms of a system that looks to Paris or Milan as the pinnacles. Each new logistical revolution in today’s Web society raises momentum explosive to fashion, threatening the status of the conventional collections (twice yearly fashion markets).



Within the Web society, the demand is for “graspable clothing.” This refers to so-called “real clothes” – that is, apparel which easily appeals to consumers and is readily understood by purchasers. In a world that now expands across borders of time and distance, such fashions are beginning to take on the power to change values and thinking. I believe that this impact is also being felt at the “fashion week” events in New York, Milan and Paris – forums for showcasing new creations.



There is also the concern, however, that on the flip side of excessive demands for easily understood results, the overall scene will become tedious. When proceeding with a focus on creation in an era in which both information and commodities have begun to take on their own values, it will likely become difficult to continue to hold up both sides of diverse and “graspable” clothing.



Basically speaking, I believe that fashion must be allotted a major degree of freedom within the world we live in. In the quest for freedom, failure to resolve new issues characterized by strong demands for social qualities will render it impossible to nurture the freedom that everyone recognizes and wants. In that sense, fashion designers who continue to exist in environments of freedom while fulfilling their social responsibilities may very well represent the “new cool.”



With regard to high art and consumer fashion, while the ability of designers to make ready use of technology may place major restrictions on their work, it will also become easier to successfully benefit from cost balance and quality guarantees. Likewise, while the use of technology by designers signifies the transition into work with a high degree of social impact from a management standpoint, it also means that designers are taking on heavy social responsibilities at the same time. If this foundation can be mobilized to render new proposals for consumers through the act of supplying the world with clothing, it will also come to wield great clout in society.



HA: Last year you teamed up with Dyson to create “Wind” as an element of the Spring show and this year the colors of the Amazon influenced your show. Please comment on the relationship between nature and fashion. What is the role of nature in your work? How has your relationship with and your vision of nature changed over the years? How do the natural elements of the show connect with your more technological leanings?



DF: Any worthwhile discussion of nature is incomplete without the inclusion of technology. It is patently clear, therefore, that technology has become indispensable in sustaining the Earth, as we know it. These influences have already been internalized in the realm of fashion as well.



HA: Conventionally, nature and technology seem as opposing forces, and yet both greatly influence your designs. How do they come together in for you in design? How do they complement one another, oppose one another, etc.?



DF: Please conceive that nature is you, yourself. Technology, furthermore, is also encapsulated within your being. While as you say, nature and technology appear to act as opposing forces, in reality they exist in a mutually complementary, give-and-take relationship.



HA: Academy has routinely placed fashion on the sidelines of scholarship, and yet museums and design forums are increasingly acknowledging the place of fashion as a historical artifact and commentary. How do you see fashion and design as a social commentary? Do you have advice for scholars on ways to study and analyze these artifacts?



DF: In recent years, the reality that fashion differs from its conventional image as an extravagant and festive celebration, and is in fact one component of the overall social fabric, has come to be understood through the lens of economic angles. Someday, perhaps, an economist specializing in fashion may be honored with the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences!



HA: Would you like to share anything more on your design philosophy?



DF: Nothing, whether it is new media or emerging circumstances or matters, ever springs into existence suddenly or from nothing. Rather, I believe it is people who sense that the old ideas and thinking no longer do the trick are the forces behind such evolution. Toward that end, to enter new realms through the medium of design, I believe in the need to create, through your own effort and volition, specific opportunities for encounters which demand decisive situations and events. Once you take part in something that needs change, you have put yourself on the path

It is a rare rainy day in Los Angeles.** **At his request, I meet Allen Smithee at a bistro of the generic sort Hollywood directors like to frequent. He orders a salad. Allen—some spell it Alan; he doesn’t mind—lives in Malibu, or Santa Monica, or maybe even Brentwood.



The films of Allen Smithee are—I use the word advisedly—awful, but he is nevertheless prolific. Smithee isn’t the kind of director you’d invite back to your trailer for a friendly cup of coffee, nor the kind you’d expect to see blubbering graciously on the Oscar dais. He is certainly not the kind typically featured in celebrity profiles such as this one.



 The first film credited to Smithee was *Death of a Gunfighter*, a Western released in 1969. When I ask him about it, he performs a quick calculation in his head. “I guess I’m getting old.”



The direction of Smithee’s debut was praised by both *Variety* and Roger Ebert, who prefaced his comment thusly: “Director Allen Smithee*, *a* *name I’m not familiar with…”** **Since then, his directorial *oeuvre* has spanned comedy, horror, and drama, on both film and television. There is nothing he can’t do, and nothing he can do well.



“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he says.



A waitress comes to our table with a fresh bottle of Pellegrino. He flirts with her, not too aggressively, as she fills his glass. “You really haven’t heard of me?” he asks.



She hasn’t, but Smithee can’t really blame her. He, after all, does not exist.



Sanctioned by the Directors Guild of America, “Allen Smithee” was a pseudonym that a director could petition to use if he felt—and could conclusively prove—that his creative control over a film had been irrevocably compromised.** **



“I was perfect. ‘Smith,’ too obvious. ‘Smithee?’ Sort of chic.” He offers a glowing smile and spears a leaf of radicchio.



Although pieces on Smithee have surfaced in *The Los Angeles Times *and *Entertainment Weekly*, he has not broached the mainstream consciousness. But in lesser cultural estuaries, Smithee’s work has spawned not only an annual awards ceremony—The Smithees, which celebrate the worst films on video—but also a fledging field of academic scholarship. In 2001, the Allen Smithee Group of the University of Pennsylvania published the critical anthology *Directed by Allen Smithee*.



For many such theorists, the name “Allen Smithee” invites a brisk stroll through the historical authorship dialectic. The New Critics, perhaps exhausted by the tedium of extra-textual research, claimed the author’s intent had no place in literary criticism. To liberate the text, Roland Barthes killed the author. Michel Foucault summarily filled the void with his nebulous “author-function.”



I look up from my notes. Smithee is blowing bubbles in his Diet Coke. “Barthes is dead, Foucault is dead,” he says, “I’m alive.” He pauses. “Foucault *is* dead, right?”



He has a point. A century of scholars have implored us to sacrifice the author to preserve the sanctity of the text—laboring under the assumption that the text possesses a certain measure of sanctity to begin with. Smithee’s films are no more than the labors of a golem, onto whom Hollywood has projected its capitalist sins.



*** 



Smithee takes me to see his house—in Beverly Hills, it turns out. The seven-bedroom mansion he shares with his third wife has a screening room in the basement. It is there that we watch several of his films together.



Smithee’s characteristic style is, necessarily, a complete lack thereof. Plot, character, and setting strain against the bonds of logic, defying all structural intuition and narrative principles. The result is often unwatchable. Yet, impervious to the desperate remediations of director, editor, and screenwriter alike, it is as though the film has achieved sentience. This is the genius of Allen Smithee.



*The Shrimp on the Barbie*, released in 1990, is one of the longest eighty-six-minute films ever made. It was a vehicle for Cheech in the absence of Chong. Cheech Marin plays Carlos, who leaves Los Angeles for Australia and becomes romantically entangled with an uptight, inexplicably British-accented heiress. 



“Emma Samms, real sweet gal, was looking for work after *Dynasty*. She couldn’t get the Aussie accent down, but when I heard she used to do ballet, I was sold.”



“Why?”



“Flexibility. It’s key to acting; Robert Evans told me that.”



Within three minutes of the film’s opening, Carlos will be kicked ten feet into the air by a semi-domesticated kangaroo. Within ten, he will perform as Elvo, a Pakistani Elvis impersonator. Later, he will commandeer the microphone at a genteel garden party and, for reasons that are not entirely clear, offer a shrieking rendition of “Land of a Thousand Dances.”



Smithee nods emphatically. “That’s the thing, sweetheart, it’s a picture about cultural exchange. Cheech loves the song. I love the song. I’ll be damned if Australians don’t love that song, too.”



1990 was a banner year for Smithee—it also saw the premiere of *Solar Crisis*, which featured both Charlton Heston and Peter Boyle. Within the first thirty seconds of the film, in a *Star Wars­­-*esque cascade of introductory text, a typographical error appears on-screen. In the interest of journalistic integrity, I should admit that, to avoid watching more, I get Smithee on a tangent about the relative merits of kundalini and bikram yoga.



 But one of Smithee’s movies stands alone, the one he calls his favorite—1998’s *An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn*. It* *is his *Citizen Kane*. 



In this bewildering, big-budget picture, Eric Idle stars as a beleaguered first-time director who cannot abide his own bewildering, big-budget picture. The official DGA pseudonym is of no use to him, for his name is Alan Smithee.



“Clever, right? I know.”



*Burn Hollywood Burn *boasts an improbably famous cast, including Sylvester Stallone, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jackie Chan. I remembered seeing a poster of Stallone hanging in Smithee’s foyer. “Was that from the film?” I ask.



“Oh, no. I found one from* Rambo*, sliced off the title with an X-Acto knife. Sly is Sly.”



The catastrophe that met the film during its production is almost too ironic not to have been a post-structuralist publicity stunt—but, regrettably, the emphasis falls on the “almost.” Director Arthur Hiller (who served as president of the Directors Guild in the early nineties) elected to replace his own name with Alan Smithee’s when the studio chose as its final cut a version of the film edited by screenwriter Joe Eszterhas. In a bold flourish, the movie’s title was henceforth prefaced with “An Alan Smithee Film.” Art imitates life, but life imitates bad art.



*Burn Hollywood Burn* cost $10 million to make, but grossed less than $50,000. Accounting for inflation, its box office performance was inferior to that of even Ed Wood’s *Plan 9 from Outer Space *(1959), widely considered to be the worst movie of all time.



I asks Smithee if he has any regrets about this, his *magnum opus*. “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” he offers sagely. “Especially when each of the cooks has his own agent.”



***



Allen wants yogurt, yogurt from Pinkberry. Not from the Pinkberry on Santa Monica Boulevard, three minutes from his home, but from the Pinkberry in Venice.



“Trust me, it’s—it’s better. Not as tart. Because it’s closer to the ocean.” We drive there in his car, a high-end electric model, accelerating through a yellow light on Pico.



In “Artificial Auteurism* *and the Political Economy of the Allen Smithee Case,” an essay featured in *Directed by Allen Smithee*, Craig Saper aptly described Hollywood’s as a “conveyor-belt approach to filmmaking.” In Los Angeles, there is no backspace key, no eraser, no $100-million wastebasket into which ill-fated films—once in production—can be tossed.



Prior to the release of 1990’s *Catchfire*, both actor Joe Pesci and director Dennis Hopper demanded their credits be removed from the film.  The DGA left Pesci unattributed—but subbed in Allen Smithee’s name for the disgruntled Hopper’s. For the studio, it was more vital to preserve the illusion of a cooperative director than to acknowledge the presence of an actor plainly visible on the screen.



We park in a disabled space; Allen has a rear-view mirror tag** **left over** **from his ex-wife’s knee surgery. He kills the ignition and reflects on what I’ve said.



“Yeah. *Auteurs*, and all the French shit.”



In a way, he is right. The negative consequences of the wide embrace of *auteur* theory were perhaps best foreseen by Pauline Kael in “Circles and Squares,” her bristling response to Andrew Sarris’s “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962.” The vitriol drips off the page: “[The* auteur* critics’] ideal *auteur *is the man who signs a long-term contract, directs any script that’s handed to him, and expresses himself by shoving bits of style up the crevasses of the plots.”



I read Kael’s quote aloud and Smithee giggles with delight. “That’s me!”



 “What do you mean?”



“No one wants to see a marquee full of mangy orphans. That’s sad, that’s goddamn Dickensian. I don’t mind what a movie is, what it looks like, whether it’s any good. I’ll take them all in. As long as they sell.” Smithee isn’t asked to do Hollywood’s dirty work, but to take responsibility for the dirty work which has already been done.



The rain’s stopped, so we walk north along the beach with our yogurt. Alan tells me about his birth. Director Robert Totten quit *Death of a Gunfighter* over discord with leading man Richard Widmark, who replaced Totten with Don Siegel. By the film’s completion, neither Siegel nor Totten would deign to take credit for it. The DGA settled the dispute with the introduction of Smithee.



***



Now, more than forty years later, Smithee’s golden years in Hollywood have ended. From the pseudonym’s first implementation, directors who made use of it were technically forbidden from speaking publicly of their involvement in the film, but adherence to this ban quickly eroded. Prompted in particular by *Burn Hollywood Burn* and by director Tony Kaye’s highly publicized (and ultimately unsuccessful) struggle to extricate himself from authorship of *American History X*, the DGA discontinued the Smithee pseudonym in 2000.** **Smithee’s name still appears occasionally outside of the official jurisdiction of the DGA and has popped up at least once as a meta-gag in a *Simpsons* episode.



The current Guild policy is to generate a unique pseudonym for each contested film—a process that seems all the more insidious for its ambiguity. Now, Allen Smithee lurks within every director; every director is somewhere inside Allen Smithee. But it’s much more than that—Smithee is every hack screenwriter who tailors a script to maximize its opening weekend, every big-name actor who takes a well-paid role in an abysmal film, every agent.



If Hollywood needs Smithee to conceal the ugly, commercial nature of filmmaking on a mass scale, we need him just as much. The fantasy of the creatively engaged director preserves our collective deception as to the quality of mainstream movies; he is smoke and mirrors personified. With Allen as director, the illusion intrinsic to movie-going extends to a second dimension—we move beyond the suspension of disbelief in what we see projected on the screen to the far more naive expectation that what we see was created in good faith.



The optimists among us insist that there is room for art within the bowels of the financial Leviathan of the American film industry. But when, through the person of Allen Smithee, even its offal is repackaged for our unwitting consumption, it is difficult to be hopeful. As Hollywood lurches toward the great hulking inevitable, Smithee—if not the name itself, then what it stands for—will remain a horseman of its apocalypse, the incarnation of a creative crisis intrinsic to the medium. He is its *diabolus ex machina*.



We reach the Santa Monica Pier in time to watch the sun set behind the Ferris wheel. “What will you do next?” I ask him.



He chuckles, and shovels a raspberry into his mouth with his miniature spoon. “I’ll be around for a while,” he says. I believe him.