Poor Alec Baldwin. As if suffering the embarrassment of seeing an angry phone call you made to your 11-year-old daughter leaked onto YouTube wasn't enough, the Oscar-nominated actor recently heard that a film he asked his name to be removed from is to be released - a full six years after it was supposed to hit cinemas.
The Devil and Daniel Webster was directed by Baldwin and stars Anthony Hopkins, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Dan Aykroyd, as well as the Glengarry Glen Ross star himself. Based on the titular novel by Stephen Vincent Benet, the film hit the skids in 2001 during post-production when the FBI seized the investors' assets, including the film, in the course of a bank fraud investigation.
Baldwin subsequently asked for his name to be removed from the credits but the film was eventually sold to a new distribution company, the Yari Film Group. Boasting the new name Shortcut To Happiness, the film is to be finally released this weekend in the US. It has reportedly been re-edited into an unrecognisable form, with the bogus director 'Harry Kirkpatrick' listed on the credits.
Baldwin has not made any public comment on the film's release, but the US gossip site PageSix reports that he is advising his fans not to see it.
The movie has a Faustian theme, with Baldwin playing a down-on-his-luck writer upset by the success of a close friend, who makes a deal with the devil, played by Love Hewitt, to bring him untold wealth.
It is being released in six US cities on Friday - though not, perhaps, the six US cities where a film might usually be screened on limited release. Rather than LA, New York and Chicago etc, the film will be seen by cinemagoers in Las Vegas, Rochester, Fort Myers, Columbus, Albuquerque and Santa Fe.