Alan Smithee (along with several variant spellings) was an official pseudonym of the Directors Guild of America, for use by members who believed (and succeeded in persuading the Guild) that their work on a particular film had been so damaged or altered by others that it no longer resembled the director's vision. Permission to use the pseudonym was not granted casually, and was not intended simply to disown poor work. The practice began in 1968 when Robert Totten and his replacement Don Siegel both believed their work on the film Death of a Gunfighter had been so distorted by those controlling the film that neither wanted credit for the result. The Directors Guild agreed and decided to create a standard pseudonym. Naturally, such a pseudonym needed to be unique so that it would never be confused with the name of an actual director. The name Smithee was chosen, the thinking being that no one actually named Smithee was likely to surface. In 1999, a film called An Alan Smithee Film: Burn, Hollywood, Burn was released, telling the fictional story of a director who wanted to remove his name from the credits of his film, but couldn't because his name actually was Alan Smithee. (Coincidentally, director Arthur Hiller removed his name from the credits of Alan Smithee and thus it actually is an Alan Smithee film.) The Directors Guild determined that the name had gotten too familiar to the public as a result of this movie, and ceased using it as an official pseudonym. Now pseudonyms are determined on a case-by-case basis, and different names applied to the films in question.
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