The Director

Moments of make-believe often create curious stories, as these two tales will clearly show you.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
China is a massive country with a recorded history stretching
back thousands of years, but it wasn't always one big,
united nation. In ancient times, it was made up of
many smaller kingdoms, and it took one man, the First Emperor,
to unite them all. But the First Emperor, despite his accomplishments,
was not a beloved figure. He was as cruel as

(00:56):
he was visionary. When most leaders die, they are treated
to a state funeral, But when the First Emperor died,
his people did something very curious with the body. She
Wan d became king of the province of Chin when
he was only thirteen years old in two forty seven BC.
That name actually means First Emperor, and so obviously it
wasn't his real name, but we'll keep using it since

(01:18):
it's the name that he's best known by in history.
When he was about twenty one, his chief adviser and
his mother both tried to overthrow his rule. There's some
historical evidence that his adviser was actually his real father
rather than the previous king rough parents right, But amazingly,
Shei wan D stopped the coup. His advisor's slash father
killed himself, and his mother was imprisoned. This whole experience

(01:42):
obviously traumatized she wan D. He became inspired by a
philosophy known today as legalism, the idea that humans are
inherently selfish and require a strong central government to rule
over and punish them. Having experienced to childhood where his
own parents were so greedy that they turned on him,
she wand was ready to believe in the inherent evilness

(02:03):
of human beings. The only way that he could ever
feel safe was if he ruled over all people. Now,
there were seven states in China at the time, and
they were all constantly fighting with each other. Part of
this was because they all followed a strict code of
honor that meant battles had to be fought in a
certain way. They would all line up in a field,
giving each other a chance to get into formation, and

(02:23):
then they would attack, and so battles were almost more
like chess games played between two knights than a true
attempt to completely defeat one another. But Shiwandi's legalism beliefs
meant that he would not be able to abide by
these rules. He would fight as ruthlessly as possible to
ensure that everyone fell under his own thumb. Why spend
his life trusting greedy kings to follow codes of honor

(02:45):
when he could just eliminate those kings entirely. By two
twenty one BC, he had conquered all seven kingdoms and
declared himself emperor over it all, and at first China
prospered under his rule in what became known as the
Qin Dynasty. His strong centralized system of governments efficiently administered
the entire country, growing the provinces and undertaking several large

(03:07):
building projects. He even built what would become the Great
Wall of China, protecting the kingdoms from foreign invaders. But
even with all this power and a giant wall to
protect him, Shiwandi still didn't feel safe. It bothered him
that there were still those in the kingdom who would
speak out against his rule and his legalism philosophy, and
so He instigated a brutal crackdown on any human expression

(03:30):
that contradicted him or his beliefs. He had many people
killed and burned historical texts. He wanted to make it
as if there had only ever been one China, his China.
As the years went on, Shiwandi fended off multiple assassination attempts.
His own mortality weighed on him. He constructed a massive
palace for himself, which was to serve as his tomb

(03:51):
if his enemies ever defeated him. He had eight thousand
terracotta warriors constructed around that tomb, so that even in death,
he would have an army to protect him. But he
wasn't dead yet. Shiwandi next traveled throughout China looking for
a way to make himself immortal. He drank a variety
of strange concoctions, some of them containing substances that we

(04:12):
now know to be harmful, including toxins like mercury. The
irony is that in his quest for immortality, he may
have cut his life short while on this tour through China.
He died suddenly in two eleven BC, leaving no will
for instructions as to who should take his place. Now
none of shi Wangdi's servants mourned his passing. They didn't

(04:33):
like the guy, but they worried what would happen if
the Seven Kingdoms found out that he was dead with
no designated air and so as they continued to travel,
they hid his body inside his carriage, changing his clothes
for weeks and pretending to feed him. They kept baskets
of smelly fish near the carriage to cover up the
smell of the rotting body, and once they finally got

(04:54):
back to the capitol, they wrote up a fake will
that declared one of the emperor's more impressionable sons to
t take his place. Unfortunately, the new young emperor had
all of his father's temperament and none of his father's vision,
and was soon deposed. Despite all of Shiwandi's machinations, the
Qin dynasty only lasted fifteen years. It was replaced by

(05:15):
the Han dynasty, which came to power in twoo two BC.
The Han dynasty was known for being much more open minded,
incorporating a variety of philosophies from across China. As such,
it lasted for over two centuries. It's curious that even
though it was the Qin dynasty that united China. It
was the Han dynasty that actually made its people see

(05:36):
themselves as one. Allan was a nobody when he arrived
in Hollywood hoping to see his name in lights. He
wasn't one of the millions of kids with dreams of

(05:58):
becoming an actor. Alan was going to be a director,
the kind who made movies that were personal and bold,
that audiences lined up to see on opening weekends. This
was the late nineteen sixties when directors were becoming stars
in their own right. It was the era of the tour.
The French word meaning author used in film to describe
directors whose style and vision are so strong the movie

(06:20):
feels like their personal creation. Think Steven Spielberg or Wes Anderson.
And in this era, the director's vision often outranked the producer,
the screenwriter, and even the studio. And these tours weren't
just making art house films. They were directing mega hits
with massive budgets. Stanley Kubrick had just released two thousand
and one, A Space Odyssey, and Francis Ford Coppola would

(06:42):
soon make The Godfather. These were the kinds of directors
shaping Hollywood's future, and every young filmmaker wanted to be
one of them, so Alan got his chance with The
nineteen sixty nine Death of a Gunfighter, a gritty, character
driven western that blended old school shootouts with modern themes.
The film's original director had had a falling out with
a star and was fired mid production. Alan was brought

(07:05):
on to finish the film, and while it was his
first time behind the camera, he pulled it off amazingly.
The film was a modest success and earned strong reviews
with critics. Roger Ebert praised the direction while admitting that
he had never heard of the filmmaker before, and he
wasn't alone. Before this film, almost no one in Hollywood
knew the name Alan Smithy, but now the whole town

(07:26):
would be watching his career, and what a career it was.
Over the next few decades, Alan worked in almost every
genre imaginable, directing splashy action flicks, expensive sci fi thrillers,
quiet dramas, and dark comedies. A few of his movies
belonged to massive franchises, too, like the Twilight Zone movie
and Bird's Two Lands End, a sequel to the Alfred

(07:48):
Hitchcock classic. He dabbled in television and animation, as well,
directing episodes of mcgiver and even Tiny Toons Adventures. But
despite the growing credits, Alan remained something of a miss.
He never gave interviews, never appeared in behind the scenes footage,
and avoided the spotlight entirely. While other directors built public personas,

(08:09):
Alan stayed firmly behind the camera. As for the work itself,
while the results were mixed, There were a few modest successes,
but most of his films failed to impress audiences. One
of his lowest points came with the nineteen ninety seven
Burn Hollywood Burn, a satire about a director losing control
of his own movie. It was panned by critics and

(08:30):
swept at the Razzies, winning five awards there, including Worst
Picture and Worst Director, but somehow Alan kept getting hired.
The strangest thing about his career wasn't just the number
of duds. It was how wildly inconsistent his movies were.
One film would be loud and over the top, and
the next would be quiet and serious. Some were cheap,

(08:52):
made for TV soap operas, while others had big stars
and even bigger budgets. While he was born out of
the autur era, Alan had no signature's style of his own.
His films didn't even feel like they were made by
the same person, which made sense because in reality they weren't.
I said, Alan Smithee came to Hollywood a nobody, and

(09:12):
that was true. He was always a nobody because he
literally did not exist. Alan Smithe was a pseudonym created
by the Director's Guild of America in nineteen sixty eight
and used whenever a director wanted to disown a film
they were making. If a movie had been re edited, rewritten,
or altered so much that it no longer reflected the

(09:33):
director's vision, they could simply ask to have their name removed,
but the Guild required a name to appear in the credits,
and so they invented one. And that's why Alan's filmography
is so inconsistent and why so many of his movies
turned out to be disasters. The fact that he's credited
on over one hundred projects is a testament to just

(09:53):
how often movies spiral out of control. His IMDb page
is a graveyard of Hollywood fi. But at least the
films got finished, and maybe there's a lesson in that,
because for a guy who never existed, Alan Smithey has
had one of the longest and most prolific careers in Hollywood.
No ego, no drama, no vision, and always available. Maybe

(10:16):
that's the real secret to surviving in the film industry.
I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership

(10:37):
with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
and you can learn all about it over at the
Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.