Tim Wilson
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COW Coins
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Many many producers have worked under pseudonyms. I’m not an expert in anything important, but I’m an expert in quite a few strange little byways — and this is one of them.
(Generally speaking, the rule goes: the more important it is, the less I know about it.)
My interest started with my great-uncle Mike was a producer and writer who worked under more names than I can remember. One thing he did that got some notoriety was The Price of Tomatoes on The Dick Powell Theater in 1962, featuring Peter Falk in his first leading role, and netting him his first Emmy. His co-star, an 18-yr old Inger Stevens was also nominated, and Falk spent his speech lambasting the Academy for not naming her the winner.
Uncle Mike’s name is nowhere on the thing. In fact, the only thing I can remember with his actual name on it is a film he wrote and produced starring Jayne Mansfield. (Her last film, as well as Walter Winchell’s.) Not a very good movie, actually a pretty bad one, but his wife, aka Aunt Dorothy was in it as well and has a crackerjack speech in one scene.
So I asked him about it. He said unless your name was Hitchcock, nobody wanted to hear about a guy who wanted to direct, produce, and write in movies AND TV. If word of that got around, and you wouldn’t get hired for any of those jobs, in either medium.
Anyway, pseudonyms are incredibly common among many non-actors. That’s not even counting people like Woody Allen, who has never done anything under his own name, Allan Konigsberg. In that sense, Woody Allen is less a pseudonym than a stage name, in that the name represents a specific person whose life and work we know, rather than somebody who’s trying to obscure his identity. Ditto Bob Dylan, McG, John Wayne and many more.
But there are more reasons than you can imagine for people whose work you are very familiar with to want to intentionally obscure their identity….some of which are obvious, and some of which are anything BUT obvious…none of which I’ll go into unless you really, really want to know…
…emphasizing the fact that nobody should ever feel any obligation to work under their own name, INCLUDING producers. Like my Uncle Mike.
Stephen Soderbergh uses the name Peter Andrews as a cinematographer and Mary Ann Bernard as a writer.
The Coen Brothers edit their own films under the name Roderick Jaynes…who was nominated for an Oscar for “his” work on Fargo.
Bob Dylan produced the film Masked & Anonymous under the name Sergei Petrov. (It was co-written and directed by Larry Charles, of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm fame, and is suitably psychotic.) Dylan also produced his album Modern Times under the name Jack Frost.
Stan Laurel directed several Laurel and Hardy pictures under his real name, A.S. Jefferson.
Fatty Arbuckle used the name William Goodrich after he, uhm…..well…
DW Griffith wrote under many, many names, my favorite being Irene Sinclair. Several of the rest sound so blatantly fabricated — M. Gaston de Tolignac — that Ernie Kovacs could have invented them.
A number of Italian directors worked under English names. For example, Sergio Leone was Bob Robertson for the original release of Fistful of Dollars.
Directors have often — maybe often? Maybe nearly always? — used pseudonyms when working in hardcore porn, notably Abel Ferrara under the name Jimmie Laine (Tales of A Wet P***y, Driller Killer).
The blacklist years led to pseudonyms becoming quite common indeed. Dalton Trumbo won two Oscars for writing under false names, Ian McLellan Hunter and Robert Rich — never under his own name. However, the Academy re-awarded his Oscar for The Brave One in his name in 1975, and Roman Holiday posthumously.
While less well-known today, director Joseph Losey won a Palme D’Or and Grand Prize of the Jury at Cannes in 1970 and 67 respectively, and best director awards in France and Italy, and a couple of BAFTA nominations, but directed under 3 additional names besides his won.
Alan Smithee was the DGA’s official designation for a disowned film (although the DGA has to sign off that it was in fact taken from the director, and not just something the director is embarrassed by or whatever), although after Burn Hollywood Burn, the secret was blown. You should really check out the list of who has used this name, Don Seigel and Jerry Frankenheimer among them. The first post-Smithee credit of this sort was Thomas Lee, used by Walter Hill on Supernova (2000).
Pseudonyms are even more common among novelists. Some don’t want to be pigeonholed, others want to get around common industry restrictions regarding frequency of publication. Steven King wrote under the name Richard Bachman for this reason, and to see if he could replicate success under a different name — he wanted to be known as a writer, and not just a “brand.” Among the stories he wrote under the name Bachman: The Running Man, adapted into a movie twice.
(The original author picture for the Bachman books was King’s literary agent’s insurance guy. That’s actually pretty badass.)
Donald Westlake is one of the most decorated and best-selling mystery novelist/short story writer/screenwriters of all time. In fact, he’s one of only two authors in the genre to win awards in all three of those categories. Number of pseudonyms: SIXTEEN. Scroll down the page to see why – he was insanely prolific, and no publishers would allow one of their clients to publish that much under one name.
This was in fact why Prince became an unpronounceable name, later, The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, and wrote the word “Slave” on his face. He wanted to make more than one record per year and his label said no. When he threatened to release records himself, the record company reminded him they owned the name Prince — even though that’s his actual first name — as well as the domain prince.com.)
Salvatore Lombino published 55 (I think) novels in the 87th Precinct series under the name Ed McBain, a number of which were adapted for the screen. Fans of the The Wire should consider these MORE than essential.
He later legally changed his name to Evan Hunter, a pseudonym he used when he wrote Blackboard Jungle based on his experience teaching in the Bronx while waiting for his writing career to kick in), and adapting The Birds and Marnie for Hitchcock.
(He was also a literary agent for a while, with Arthur C. Clarke and PG Wodehouse his most illustrious clients.)
Talk about pseudonymous recursion: in one instance, “Evan Hunter” wrote an adaptation of an “Ed McBain” story! The movie Fuzz (1982).
He’s one of the most fascinating cases of pseudonymous writing, because he spans so many genres, used so many names, and wound up in movies and TV, sort of bringing this back around to being on topic.
Mike. Michael. Mikey. Dude. DUUUUUUUUUDE. I’m telling you. Use any name you want. Producers, directors, writers, editors — these and many more have led the way for you.
Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW -
[Mark Suszko] ” The day and hourly rate is carefully calculated and represents the amount you need to get per hour to keep you not just solvent, but profitable. “
The magic word is profitable. The advice I was given as a tot absolutely worked for me: figure out the hourly rate you need to cover ALL the bases (including a chair for your office, software upgrades, new gear on your chosen schedule) — then double it. THAT’s the number that will take you close to profitable, at least partly because no freelancer works a full day every day.
If that “doubled REAL expenses” number is higher than is feasible to charge in your market, you need to:
- Figure out a way to cut costs without cheating on the math
- Figure out a way to need less from your life. Who needs chairs, right?
- Get a full-time job
- Get out of this business
- Charge
your profitable rate anyway and make the market come to you
Am I missing any options?
In any case, if you don’t do that first math correctly, you’re in for a world of hurt. A world of hurt with no chairs.
Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW -
They used to do all their manufacturing in the US. My father ran their facility outside Dallas.
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I pointed a friend to this thread who managed to summarize it, and the past 20 months, in one sentence:
“This just in, Apple changes shit and doesn’t care what you think LOL”
That’s her LOL, but when she sent it, I did in fact laugh out loud.
Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW -
[Oliver Peters] “[Aindreas Gallagher] “but avid editors are the most defensive people on gods earth when it comes to criticising any aspect of the software.”
LOL. With the possible exception of folks here! ;-)”
I can also tell you from having worked at Avid, those editors are the LEAST shy about criticizing Avid for any and everything. LOL I have no problem with that, nor did I at the time.
But I think you’re talking more about 10 years ago Aindreas, when Avid editors felt under seige by FCP, and were being defensive about their JOBS — a lot of the same dynamic here in the first year of FCPX. The difference being that Avid guys were actually losing jobs, whereas I don’t know of anyone whose lost a job to an FCPX editor.
By the time I left Avid in 2006, I’m not sure I could have named you an Avid editor who wasn’t also using FCP, or at least someone else in the office, and using it for real work. Indeed, Avid editors also using FCP was the basis for a considerable amount of their criticism and feature requests to us.
That’s an issue in this forum, yes? Talking about the present when we say we’re talking about the present? LOL
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It’s only 2 hours before the alarm goes off anyway. At that point, it’s almost more annoying to go to sleep than powering on through. 🙂
Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW -
Hi William,
See: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/1/859131
and: https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/1/859184
for details.
Best,
TimTim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW -
[hank roberts] “Could someone summarize, if the forum can’t be restored?”
I’m sorry Hank. The forum can indeed be restored, instantly, if G-Tech were inclined, which they are apparently just not at this time. But I think you can safely assume that if somebody provided a link to verify his claims that he was willing to stand by them. You might try asking a follow-up question in his Amazon comment.
Sorry not to have a better answer.
Regards,
Tim -
This reminds me of PT Barnum’s famous quote, “There’s a sucker born every minute “ — which he never said. It was said ABOUT him by a competitor, to the effect that only a sucker could take Barnum seriously, and there must be a ton of suckers for Barnum to be so successful.
More successful than the competitor of course, because HIS name I don’t remember….
Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW -
The FX Factory plugs also work inside Motion, Premiere Pro and After Effects.
Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW