Overview

American History X is a 1998 film directed by Tony Kaye and written by David McKenna . This film tells the story of a white supremacist who learns of the ultimate fallacy of his beliefs through a harsh prison term. Realizing that he has been misled by propaganda and hatred, he tries to save his younger brother from following in his footsteps. It stars Edward Norton in the lead role, and co-stars Edward Furlong, Beverly D'Angelo, Jennifer Lien, Ethan Suplee , Fairuza Balk, Avery Brooks, Elliott Gould, and Stacy Keach.

Norton was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance.

Controversy

The main controversy over the film centered around director Tony Kaye's attempts to try and remove his name from the credits, prefering instead to invoke the pseudonym Alan Smithee. Kaye alleged that his reasoning for this was Edward Norton's re-editing of the film to give himself more screen time. The Director's Guild of America ultimately denied Kaye the right to remove his name from the production, reasoning that Kaye had place ads in Variety attacking the film, thus violating Guild rules regarding the right to invoke the pseudonym. Kaye proceeded to sue the Directors Guild and New Line Cinema, claiming they had violated his First Amendment rights.

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