american graffiti

1 Deployed whenever a director wants his name off the credits, the "Alan Smithee" pseudonym has been the identifying mark of a troubled film project for over two decades (Don Siegel's Death of a Gunfighter and Dennis Hopper's Catchfire are two of the more famous movies that go by the Smithee alias). But the imminent release of the Joe Eszterhas-scripted Hollywood satire, An Alan Smithee Film, has the Director's Guild reconsidering its policy. A spokesman for the organization said, in this week's Time Out New York, that the attention received by the Eszterhas movie "has undermined the anonymity of the Alan Smithee credit", and that the search could soon be on for a successor. Meanwhile, An Alan Smithee Film could, quite literally, end up being an Alan Smithee film - according to Variety, director Arthur Hiller, who's dissatisfied with the final cut, now wants out.

1 To the delight of the many Anglophiles among New York's music fans, the city succumbed last week to a full-scale British invasion. Within the space of six days, Suede pulled off two sold-out gigs (and impressed with a tighter-than-usual set); Mansun made an auspicious US debut (although female Japanese fans made up about half the crowd); and Gene played their biggest ever American show (and played it with far more gumption than you'd expect). All in the same week that the Chemical Brothers stormed the massive Manhattan Centre; and an energized Echo and the Bunnymen staged their jubilant US comeback (in the incongruous setting in a hole-in-the-wall club on the Lower East Side). Beyond Oasis and the Spice Girls, Britpop has yet to make an impression on the US mainstream, but you wouldn't know that from being in New York, where it isn't difficult to find obsessives who know their Mansun from their Menswear. There's even a new club called Blighty - billed as a "cheeky night of English madness", whatever that is. It can all get a little ridiculous: at the Gene show, for instance, a ripple of excitement coursed through the crowd when record company types started handing out compilation tapes - entitled "I Wish I Was In England".