This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab.
Creator Backlash
"'Ah, yes, I wrote 'The Purple Cow' I'm sorry, now, I wrote it But I can tell you anyhow I'll kill you if you quote it!"
— Gelett Burgess
Fandom is an interesting entity. Nobody can quite tell how people will react to anything, making the creation of a popular work a crapshoot. However, it's assumed that most creators hold an equal or greater amount of affection for their work than their fans. After all, they had to actually make it in the first place. So obviously, anything that's popular must be something the creator likes, right?
Not quite. See, the creators are just as human as everybody else and even if they're the origin of a particular work, that doesn't stop them from holding a negative opinion about it. This is what is referred to as Creator Backlash. It's the most high profile form of hatedom possible, since it's the very creator(s) of the work denouncing it. As they bring up their feelings of hatred for their work in interviews, public forums, and their other creations, it brings a certain amount of discord into being a fan when the very source has denounced it. It might even trigger feelings of betrayal, or resentment that the author has (apparently) become a holier-than-thou hypocrite.
It can take on many forms and for many reasons. Many creators feel their work has been ruined by Executive Meddling. Perhaps the creator didn't really intend for it to become so popular, only making it to pay the bills and fund their more serious work (perhaps even getting forced into continuing it). Perhaps people completely miss the point. Perhaps it has them typecast to a sickening level. Perhaps they were going through a rough time while making it. Perhaps it has become their only work that is generally known, casting them as a "one-hit wonder" in the eyes of the majority. Perhaps it's all of the above.
It is quite common for creators who start early to simply grow out of their early work. Added to which is the common artistic trait of always wanting to move on: the criticism is just an expression of boredom; been there, done that.
Or perhaps they just really do hate the work they created after all this time. The reasons are as myriad as the reasons a fan might choose to like their work in the first place.
Not all Creator Backlash is permanent, though. They can just as easily choose to later embrace their work when they get over whatever was troubling them in the first place. This seems to be quite rare, however. When it does happen, it usually seems to occur after a lengthy period of time has passed between appearing on the show and the present.
And, of course, no matter how bad the backlash is, the artists rarely return any of the cash they've made from a work.
Compare Old Shame, where the work in question neither caught on nor has many redeeming qualities in the first place; compare and contrast Bleached Underpants, where the work in question has... questionable history which its creators would like to dispose of.
Not be confused with Creator Breakdown or Artist Disillusionment, though they can definitely overlap with this. Artist Disillusionment is against fans while this trope is against works. Magnum Opus Dissonance is a Sister Trope, as is Disowned Adaptation. And definitely not to be confused with creators getting their backs lashed.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
Kyoko Mizuki and Yumiko Igarashi have come to despise Candy Candy, due to all the legal fights between each other caused by it.
The creator of the Slayers franchise, Hajime Kanzaka, stated a few times in interviews that, despite working on it, he had come to dislike the third season (Try) of the anime adaptation, which was one of the first divergences from the plot of the light novels. When the belated season 4 came out, a Discontinuity Nod noted this: on the plane chart that lists the numerous BigBads of the verse, the two that were slain in season 2 were dented, noting their destruction, but one of the higher-level demon lord's spots on the chart was intact—this particular lord, Dark Star Dugradigdu, was slain in season 3.
Strangely enough, characters from season three were depicted in the eyecatchs of the final episode (which depicted the various heroes and villains of the series). Filia is especially given a prominent background shot in the "Heroes" eyecatch.
Yoshiyuki Tomino is rumored to have despised working on Victory Gundam. In an interview, he outright said that people shouldn't watch it. This hasn't stopped several fans from naming it their favorite Gundam show.
He later warmed back up to Gundam though. He loved working on ∀ Gundam and wrote a memoir about it and how it cured him of depression. Just as well for the cast, as characters tend to die messily when Tomino gets depressed.
Tomino's dissatisfaction mainly stems from different source: Victory was under production when Bandai bought up Sunrise, and their desire to sell toys resulted in a good degree of Executive Meddling, including the first 5 episodes of the show being reshuffled with very little new footage, resulting in what was intended to be episode 4 being shown as episode 1. This was done to expose audiences to the titular Victory Gundam, with the hope of boosting the toy sales. Worth pointing out is the manga Crossbone Gundam, which Tomino worked on shortly after Victory ended, and is one of the most hopeful entries into the franchise as well as a fan favorite.
It should be noted that Tomino has something of a love-hate relationship with Gundam in general. Depending on the time and his current mood, he'll either consider it his greatest achievement or he'll think of it in the light of this trope. Some fans theorized this to be the reason behind Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ's beginning, which, in complete contrast to its predecessor Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam's bleak and serious storytelling, focused more on comedy, specifically of the So Unfunny It's Funny variety; the theory runs that Tomino was intentionally trying to sabotage the series so that he wouldn't have to make another sequel. For what it's worth, ZZ's story shifted back to the dark and serious tone of its predecessor in the middle of its run.
In a series of translated blogs, Takeshi Shudo, original head writer of the Pokémon anime, stated how he disliked the Strictly Formula that was pushed upon it, which led to his resignation....and then after he left, he disliked how his own prize creations Musashi/Jessie, Kojiro/James, and Nyarth/Meowth of Rocket Dan/Team Rocket going way past Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain and into harmless territory.
Eric Stuart, the voice of Brock, was initially accepting of his role; but he grew tired of how people would seldom acknowledge his other work and only talk to him about voicing Brock. This was seen as a significant decision of his to retire from anime voice acting to focus on his music career. To a lesser extent, Veronica Taylor (Ash) and Rachael Lillis (Misty) were also weary of how fans would bring up voicing Ash and Misty when they both had many other roles in anime; but they at least seem pleased that people enjoy watching Pokémon.
Osamu Tezuka hated one particular episode of the 1960s Astro Boy anime so much that he personally destroyed the negatives before the episode could even be aired. Too bad a copy of that episode had already been shipped to the US and dubbed. This episode would later see a VHS release as "Astro Boy: The Lost Episode".
Also, there are a handful of stories he wrote that he permanently pulled from circulation (i.e. not available, even in compilation form) due to said stories not being up to his usual standards.
For reasons unknown the author of the manga Hyouge Mono along with the editorial staff quit as consulting staff or distanced themselves from the anime project. And in a pseudo Alan Smithee fashion Yoshihiro Yamada also asked his credit be changed. He did not demand he take his name off the series nor did he adopt a pseudonym but rather changed the credit from Original Story to Original Concept (or Original Work to Original Scheme depending on the translation).
In-universe on two occasions in Bakuman。. Mashiro and Takagi dislike Tanto, even though it has some degree of popularity among children and most of the other characters besides Eiji and Nanamine like it, as it's difficult for Takagi to write gags and not popular enough to get an anime. After some difficulty, they persude the editors to let them end it. Eiji eventually wants Crow to end, so he invokes his right of ending it at the height of its popularity on his terms. He's stated he could easily keep it going for some time, but wants to end the highest rated manga at it's highest point, instead of simply going on and on.
Robert Crumb has come to hate Fritz The Cat, especially after the movie came out and he felt it ruined his work forever, so in a follow up comic he killed Fritz off and discontinued the books.
His single most hated work, however, is the "Keep On Truckin'" comic; mainly because of how well-known and overused it became, how closely identified he became with it, and the fact that no one else realized it was supposed to be a satire.
Pierre "Peyo" Culliford hated The Smurfs, but continued to work on it because it was a Cash Cow Franchise. He had a lot of pressure from his publishing company, from the team that did the cartoon version, from some French TV animators (for those of you who remember French TV in the '90s: Dorothee), and from kids.
James O'Barr came to hate The Crow because it glorified revenge (though the fact that the comic's popularity and success indirectly resulted in Brandon Lee's death probably didn't help either). All royalties he received from the movie were donated to charity.
However, the Special Edition released in 2011 shows that now, O'Barr has come to terms with the work, seeing it as about true love and the importance of self-forgiveness. This is thanks in no small part to Brandon Lee's fiancée Eliza Hutton, with whom O'Barr became close.
Warren Ellis grew to despise Planetary and its fans after they constantly sent him e-mails asking when the new issue was coming out. However, the situation came to a boil after the death of Ellis's father. When he asked his fans not to contact him while he was in mourning, guess who kept on e-mailing him? There's probably a good reason the later issues were so slow to come out.
Though the backlash never seems to extend to the work itself, which never wavers in quality. He even wrote a final issue years after the series was thought to have been finished.
Dave Sim, the creator of Cerebus The Aardvark, gradually began to regret the female characters he created in the series (feeling they were idealistic and unrealistic depictions of women).
Sim's collaborator Gerhard really doesn't enjoy looking at his background art from Church and State and has flat-out stated that he didn't like the writing in the later story arcs, saying that by that point, Sim had lost him as a reader.
It gets to an extent where he really has it in for DC. He has compared his relationship with the company to having a child you love, then having it kidnapped by gypsies in the night and every once in awhile they send you photographs of the kid working as a prostitute.
His loathing of the film adaptations of those same comics is particularly well-known; Moore goes uncredited in all.
At conventions, Kurt Busiek accompanies his signature on copies of Spider-Man/X-Factor: Shadowgames with the refrain, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
Although Joe Quesada was the true diabolical mastermind behind Spider Man: One More Day, it was written by J. Michael Straczinsky, who absolutely hated it even as he was being paid to write it. He had asked that his name not be put on the infamous final issue (a request that was ignored) and tells people at conventions where to find Quesada as his own personal vengence.
JMS also hoped he could use OMD to undo "Sins Past", another story he wrote under protest (in his version the Goblin Twins were Peter and Gwen's kids; Quesada didn't like the idea of two teenagers having sex, and proposed the much less squicky idea of Osborn being the father). He was told he couldn't.
Tintin: After World War II creator Hergé started a magazine named after his creation. It became a Cash Cow Franchise, but the stress took his toll on him to the point that he literally fled to another country for a few months to take a rest. He played with the idea of quitting the comic altogether, but he never quite did. Yet new "Tintin" albums became less and less frequent as the decades progressed and most of the work was done by his assistants.
Suske En Wiske: Creator Willy Vandersteen also suffered from this, but with all his comic strip series. He usually started a new series, but after a handful of albums he became bored with them and passed them on to his assistants, while he started a new project. In the final two decades of his life he was just a creative advisor to most of the series he started.
Piet Pienter En Bert Bibber: Creator Pom refuses to this day to be interviewed about his comic strip. He despises that period of his life and can not be humoured about it.
Nero: Creator Marc Sleen never quite understood why so many of his fans prefer the old, crudely drawn black-and-white albums to his later, better drawn albums in color?
James Stokoe, creator of Orc Stain, has decided to cut himself off from Sullivan Sluggers comics he did to Mark Andrew Smith's script, made it clear he doesn't want to get involved with the book anymore and asked for his name to be removed from it.
Fanfics
Post's reposting of his popular Teen Titans epic, "These Black Eyes", begins with this summary- "Noir, an incredibly overpowered Gary Stu, joins the animated Teen Titans. During his tenure with the heroic youngsters, many grammatical errors are made, many gross atrocities of the first-person narrative are committed, and a bunch of bloody drama is spilt in the name of lifeless nerdiness. Act One consists of his beating up the Titans and the Titans loving him for it. Act Two consists of predictable villains coming back to battle the Titans in a huge cataclysm of page length and sound effects. Act Three shall never again see the Internet because it sucks major donkey rectum. This has not been edited, but it has been preserved—not so much by me but by those few generous (depraved?) souls who felt this fic needed to stay in existence."
He deleted his earlier X-Men: Evolution fanfic, Between the Walls, for similar reasons. He never reposted it.
Many writers have written a Lemon story, and come to hate it, as it becomes more reviewed, written and popular than any of their other works.
Greg X, one of the staff members of The Gargoyles Saga has, on several occasions, publicly disowned his TGS work. Many of his issues stem from story structure, to characterization (ask him how he feels about what TGS did to Demona some time), and too many fan-created characters who no one but their fan creator had an interest in. That, and he just prefers Greg Weisman's plans and comics. A very diplomatically written blog post can be found here detailing how he feels.
With thousands of reviews and numerous people saving docs of Fierce Deity's The Legend Of Zelda fanfic series, you'd think that he'd be heartened. Nope, he wants nobody to ever mention those "pieces of crap" ever again, despite the latter story, "Eternal Ark" being reasonably written with an engaging plot and interesting original characters.
The Open Door by Academia Nut was abrupty declared dead despite its large fanbase on Stardestroyer and FF.net, mostly due to the author losing interest his own story.
FF.Net and FIMFiction.net author Meowth Rocket/Meowth's Toon Dragon is known for his A New Face in Ponyville story, considered one of the better 'Human In Equestria' stories, as well as some decent Pokémon and Sonic the Hedgehog stories and the famous "Payback from a Pipe" Family Guy fic. He's also written a couple stories that he considered so bad he purposely refused to transfer them over to his harddrive, all but erasing their existence forever. But nearly COMPLETELY averted with Payback from a Pipe. Even though he hopes it's not the only fanfic he's ever known for, he still loves it and all the recognition he's gotten, as well as all the fans of it.
Gregg Landsman, once a prolific and well-liked Neon Genesis Evangelion fic author, has essentially given up on the Eva fandom and disowned his most popular fic, Nobody Dies, after the severe Fan Dumb regarding a Wham Episode that Retconned several chapters.
Film - Animated
Richard Williams was so devastated by what happened to his masterpiece The Thief And The Cobbler that to this day, he absolutely refuses to talk about or even acknowledge the films existence to anyone.
Disney's Robin Hood. At the time of its release it was considered by the studio to be a piece of crap, but it was and is quite a popular film.
They've never been excited about The Black Cauldron either, which only occasionally pokes its head out of the Disney Vault and gets little to no mention of even existing.
They mostly pretend Song Of The South, about a Reconstruction-era freed slave telling folk stories to two young white children on a plantation, never happened because of racial characterisations which seem offensive to modern audiences. Under current CEO Robert Iger, they seem to keep flip-flopping between deciding to release it on DVD and deciding to let it rest.
Walt Disney claimed he disliked how the Alice in Wonderland film turned out, that Alice herself had no heart, and was glad that it failed at the box office. In fact, unlike others of his films, it would never be re-released to theaters in his lifetime. It would not get a theatrical re-release until 1974, more than twenty years after its release!
Walt was also similarly displeased with Dumbo, apparently. It was a low-budget, cartoon-like, hour-long movie that he had had very little to do with; and it ended up making more money than the high-budget, realistic, feature length films like Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Bambi that he was heavily involved in. Never mind that it was released at a time when he was trying to prove that animation was more than just cartoons (see the second Fantasia example below). According to Neal Gabler, in response to the critical praise of the film, Walt dismissed Dumbo as "just one of those little things that we knocked out between epics."
Although Peter Pan fared better at the box office than Alice in Wonderland before it, Walt didn't care for that film either, claiming that the titular character was unsympathetic and unlikeable. However, unlike Alice, Peter Pan did well enough in its initial run for Walt to allow it a theatrical reissue during his lifetime, which came in 1958. However, that was the only reissue of the film when Walt was alive; its next reissue would not come until 1969, eleven years after its first reissue and three years after Walt's passing.
The Pastoral Symphony segment from Fantasia initially featured a full-on 'darky' caricature named Sunflower as one of the 'centaurettes'. She was removed in 1969 and, despite the presence of old, uncensored prints, Disney denied her existence until the release of the re-mastered edition in 2000.
While on the subject of Fantasia, Walt Disney mentioned the film when he appeared during the 1942 Academy Awards to accept the Irving Thalberg Award. Trying to hold back tears, he said, in reference to making Fantasia, "Maybe I should have a medal for bravery. We all make mistakes. I shall now rededicate myself to my old ideals." He was ashamed of Fantasia, not so much of making the film as of its pitiful box office performance. He felt that audiences were ready for a film like that in the wake of Snow White, but when it flopped (and was right on the heels of Pinocchio being a flop), Walt's self-confidence was shattered. Fantasia's performance discouraged Walt from making anything else too artistic, which was why any films made thereafter, such as Cinderella or Peter Pan, were safer, more mainstream fare.
Orson Welles, who played Unicron in Transformers The Movie, apparently couldn't even remember what it was called, and stated that his role was that of "a huge toy that does horrible things to other toys." And he died five days after completing his work on the movie. That is some rapid Creator Backlash.
Dan Harmon, one of the screenwriters of Monster House, wrote a wonderful apology letter to a young girl after her mother, a friend of a friend, wrote him explaining the girl's nightmares over the movie, a letter in which he complained about the Executive Meddling on the movie.
"And next time Monster House is on, just remember that the guy that wrote it told you it was dumb."
Peter Sallis, voice of Wallace in Wallace & Gromit stated that he preferred the original shorts such as The Wrong Trousers to the duo's big screen debut in The Curse Of The Wererabbit, making him one of the movie's few critics. Nick Park has also stated that while he holds no regrets over the movie, he feels personally that Wallace and Gromit are better suited to the short films, rather than feature-length.
Flushed Away got hit by this for the entire studio of Aardman; as the Executive Meddling the film underwent and its subsequent box office failure caused them to break off ties with Dreamworks and move to Sony.
Sir Alec Guinness grew to hate the series over time and regretted having played Obi-Wan Kenobi, because of how audiences came to only remember him for the role despite his illustrious career. He once famously told a fan who claimed he had seen the movie a hundred times that he could have an autograph if he never watched the film again. Ironically, Star Wars made him rich, as he was the only actor able to get a cut of the gross (2%). In his autobiography, Blessings in Disguise, he acknowledges this irony, and admits that the film gave him the financial freedom to do whatever he wanted with his career for the rest of his life. The other cast members knew how much he disliked the series while filming, and commented that he still remained professional despite his own feelings towards the film.
A great many of those involved in Star Wars up to and including George Lucas came to see it (temporarily) as a noose around their necks. Lucas especially felt this way since working on the movies led to a divorce from his first wife.
Everybody who worked on Star Wars Holiday Special either denies its existence or wishes to hunt down and destroy every copy.
When Conan O Brien brought up the subject of the Holiday Special with Harrison Ford during an interview, Ford first tried to deny it ever happened. Then, O'Brien announced they had a clip. The look on Ford's face was one of whether he should flee the scene or terminate O'Brien with extreme prejudice.
Carrie Fisher has similar feelings about the special, she mentions in her autobiography Wishful Drinking that both the special and her association with Star Wars as a whole led to her to start taking drugs (her role as Princess Leia in the special has her noticeably intoxicated in each scene she's in).
Rick Moranis hated doing Streets of Fire, mostly because he was not allowed to improvise, and he disliked the finished product.
Stephen King still doesn't want to talk about the adaptation of The Lawnmower Man. It departs so far from his short story that before it was released he sued the producers to prevent them from promoting it as "Stephen King's The Lawnmower Man" (a few onesheets with that wording nevertheless still exist). He hates it even more than he hates the original Children of the Corn adaptation.
King's opinion of his early novel Rage has very much soured when the book, about a school shooter, was connected to a Real Life school shooter. He ordered the book put out of print.
Michael J. Fox regrets having been in Teen Wolf, which has maintained its cult popularity and got a sequel. Fox refused to do the sequel, which caused problems because he was the title character. Ultimately, Jason Bateman was cast as a Suspiciously Similar Substitute.
Hilariously, Smith—who was wearing the same overcoat that his character Silent Bob wears in the movie, and using the name of his close friend and fellow protester Brian Johnson—made a point of telling the interviewer that he hadn't seen it, "but [fellow Catholics] tell him it was really, really bad," despite thinking Clerks was really funny.
He also famously made a mock apology for how awful Mallrats was on the official movie website just to screw with all the fans who hated it. Listen to the commentary track on the Laserdisc and DVD—Smith, Ben Affleck, and Jason Mewes destroy the movie all throughout.
In-Universe example: The movie Galaxy Quest shows the cast of the Star Trek knock-off despising the show for both derailing all their careers and being their only means of support. Ironically, the Shatner counterpart is the only one who doesn't mind it.
Gwyneth Paltrow was displeased with View From The Top and doesn't speak very positively about some of her film roles in the mid-'00s.
David Fincher doesn't talk about Alien 3 and refuses to put it on his resume to this day, chiefly because he was brought onto the film late in its already troubled production cycle (which had gone through three other directors and numerous rewrites), and his vision for the final product was hampered by major Executive Meddling. He finally does speak about it here, but without fondness. Supposedly, he was interviewed for The Beast Within: The Making of Alien documentary, but it was all cut because he did not have a single positive thing to say.
Sigourney Weaver forced the script writers to kill her character Ellen Ripley off in the third movie, and only reprised her role after being offered a ton of money.
Joss Whedon's opinion about Alien Resurrection is that it twisted around all the good ideas in his script. The director, Jean-Paul Jeunet, was never happy with it either, and makes dismissive comments about it on the DVD for his next film, Amelie.
Joss Whedon disowned the Buffy the Vampire Slayer film for which he provided the script. He launched the series to correct the errors of Executive Meddling; its pilot retconned away some events of the movie. The pilot established that it was the script version that happened when the only specifics given are that she burned down the gym at her old school.
Faye Dunaway regrets having played Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest and doesn't like to talk about it, either.
Bela Lugosi had a love-hate relationship with Dracula for the rest of his life. On the one hand, typecasting destroyed his career. On the other hand, anything he had was due to Dracula, so he kept some gratitude. He was even buried in the cape, although that was the idea of his wife and son.
Joel Schumacher has apologized for Batman & Robin in this interview. Also, George Clooney highly regrets being in this film, feeling that he helped kill the franchise. One persistent, unattributed rumor is that he will give the price of admission to the film back to anybody that approaches him and says they saw it in theaters. Clooney also likes to say he played Batman gayto show his contempt for the part. Even the soundtrack of the film hates the film. Soul Coughing recorded "The Bug", which includes the repeated mantra "George Clooney is Satan."
Tim Curry (AKA Dr. Frank N Furter) was VERY reluctant to talk about being in The Rocky Horror Picture Show for years, mostly due to some rather unpleasant memories involving stalkers and people digging through his trash. In recent years, however, he's become more open to talk about being in Rocky Horror and sees it as a "rite of passage" for teenagers. Most of the main cast of RHPS at first distanced themselves from the production, only to embrace it years later. The lone hold-out is Peter Hinwood, who played Rocky, who immediately and permanently tried to pretend it never happened, albeit for different reasons - he's incredibly self-critical and finds it extremely embarrassing to watch himself on a big screen.
Roland Emmerich regrets making the 1998 remake of Godzilla, but protects it all the same.
I've always hated that damn James Bond. I'd love to kill him.
Distancing himself from 007 is one of the main reasons he took the role of Zed in Zardoz. Needless to say, that worked beyond his wildest dreams.
Definitely averted now, as despite being retired, Sean Connery reprised the role of Bond for EA's video game adaptation of From Russia With Love (which he even considers his favorite Bond film), re-recording new dialogue and the like despite being more than 40 years older.
Reportedly, Connery's regret over doing the Bond films at least partially stems from the fact that he felt he had gotten too old to convincingly play the part long before it was finally recast. Roger Moore ended up feeling the same way about the later half of his tenure as 007 (he was disturbed to learn that he was old enough to be his love interest's grandfather in A View To A Kill).
Chevy Chase hated Caddyshack II, even during production, so much so that after a take, he mentioned to the producer to call him when a laugh track had been added, and stormed off in disgust.
Groucho Marx later regretted the Marx Brothers' first film The Cocoanuts, saying of its two directors, "One didn't understand English and the other didn't understand comedy."
Alec Baldwin claims to hate his long-shelved directorial debut The Devil and Daniel Webster/Shortcut to Happiness.
Bill Cosby hates his notorious 'comedy' Leonard Part 6 as much as audiences did - possibly even more, going on numerous talk shows telling people not to see it even before it was released.
Robert Pattinson, the male lead in the Twilight movie, has outright mentioned in interviews that he hates his character Edward and considers Stephenie Meyer insane. The female lead, Kristen Stewart, doesn't seem overly fond of the movie either, but she's less vocal about it. There are some pretty great photos floating around of her looking utterly bored at the premiere to Breaking Dawn Pt. 2
Jared Padalecki has denounced his role in New York Minute with the Olsen Twins; although he does it mostly in jest, he still said that it's the one film credit he wishes he could erase from his resume.
Even the Olsen Twins themselves have recently gone on record stating that the film was done purely to fulfill a contractual obligation.
Back in the 1970s, after years of making the character his own, a cheesed off and increasingly typecast Christopher Lee made a complete disconnect from Dracula. It didn't help that Christopher Lee reported that Hammer Film kept him playing the role well below his actual payscale by essentially guilt-tripping him - 'you work at this pay we say or we'll have to put these crew members you like out of the job'. If his claims are true, no wonder he hated the role.
Orlando Bloom, while never outright complaining about or bashing his Pirates of the Caribbean character Will Turner, has made it bluntly clear that he wants nothing more to do with the character. Keira Knightley seems to share a similar disposition towards Elizabeth Swann. Predictably, neither returned for On Stranger Tides. Though apparently, their dispositions toward their characters stem not from the characters themselves, but the romance story that took over the trilogy.
The movie Field of Dreams has the character of Terence Mann (James Earl Jones) who just wants to be left alone by the fans of his writing. Terence Mann is said to be inspired by the life of reclusive author J.D. Salinger. Salinger is the author sought by the main character in Shoeless Joe, the novel the film is based on. Salinger became reclusive after critics panned Nine Stories, his short story anthology published after The Catcher in the Rye.
Mark Romanek, director of the award-winning psychological thriller One Hour Photo, has refused to release his directorial debut Static (a quirky black comedy reminiscent of David Lynch) on DVD. He has expressed that, while he does not actually dislike the film, he considers it a "sophomore attempt" that does not stand up well when compared with his more recent work; and is best forgotten. This is exacerbated by the film's seriously Downer Ending.
Megan Fox has a history of badmouthing the director and franchise that made her famous, Michael Bay and Transformers. Though she's certainly not the only one who feels that way, as Shia LaBeouf has mentioned that he wasn't too fond of Revenge Of The Fallen himself, claiming that the film made no sense to him (or anyone else for that matter). Bay definitely has a real talent for pissing people off, as several actors and actresses including Scarlett Johansson, Kate Beckinsale (who claimed that Bay made her feel "ugly" on the set), and Bruce Willis have all said in one way or another that they would never work with Bay again.
In her Razzie acceptance speech for Worst Actress, Halle Berry called Catwoman an "awful, piece of shit movie." And the crowd went wild.
Sylvester Stallone is not fond in retrospect of his various attempts to stretch into comedy, famously calling Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot "the worst movie ever made in our solar system, including alien productions we have never seen."
Stallone has also expressed distaste towards Rocky IV and Rocky V, and to a lesser extent Rocky III. He said that if he could make Rocky IV again he would have hired Bill Conti to score it (this is the only film of the series to have been scored by someone else - Vince DiCola, if you're wondering) and would have punched Brigitte Nielsen in the face.
He also deeply regretted Rhinestone but did enjoy working with Dolly Parton nevertheless.
Many of Peter Sellers' early 1970s efforts, when his star had fallen far enough he was willing to do anything, qualify as this in one way or another. He tried to prevent the release of 1970's Hoffman and badmouthed 1972's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland before it opened. In fact, he called his 1965 through mid-1970s output a "bad patch" to Time magazine not long before his death. Sellers was infamous for being overly self-critical of his work, though - the truly shameful work didn't kick in until the '70s. (And Hoffman is surprisingly popular with the more devoted fans.)
John Wayne aggressively campaigned to be cast as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror. He would later shudder at the mention of the movie and claimed the moral of the story was "not to make an ass of yourself trying to play parts you're not suited for." This movie did have a very good, and tragic, reason to be regretted; it was shot in Nevada near an atomic test site, and many of the cast and crew (including director Dick Powell, co-stars Susan Hayward and Agnes Moorehead, and Wayne himself) were later stricken with cancer - studio owner Howard Hughes was so devastated he took the film out of circulation.
Fritz Lang came to dislike his best-known film, the sci-fi epic Metropolis, called it "silly" and "ridiculous" in interviews, and tried to draw attention to his favorite film M instead. There were many reasons for this: the heavy Executive Meddling by distributors who cut a quarter of the film's footage (Lang died believing that a full cut no longer existed, and the full cut was only re-assembled in 2011), reports that it was Adolf Hitler's favorite film (especially bitter since Lang was half-Jewish, and emigrated from Germany in 1934 to get away from the Nazis note As well as the Jewish ancestry, which the Nazis knew about, Lang’s previous film, Das Testament Des Doktor Mabuse, had shown the title villain spouting Nazi propaganda phrases as part of his insane rants, and had been banned for incitement to public disorder. Controversially, Lang recounts that Josef Goebbels called him in for an interview, claimed to have had no personal part in the banning of Doctor Mabuse, and offered to make him the boss of the government controlled film studio UFA, overlooking Lang’s Jewish ancestry as part of the deal. Lang asked for time to consider, then fled the country that night.), and that the plot was a little silly (and was written by his ex-wife, whom he divorced over political and creative differences - namely, that she was becoming a Nazi). It overshadowed the other 3 decades of his long film career.
Mike Judge hated Office Space for several years after its release. Due to insane amounts of Executive Meddling and lousy marketing, he had trouble watching it again without those memories popping up. He said that he never watched the whole movie again for many years until his daughter asked to watch it. Recently, though, he's felt a bit more positive about the film.
Could count as Old Shame too: J. D. Shapiro, the original screenwriter of Battlefield Earth, was fired from the film because Executive Meddling wanted to change his script too much, and he didn't want to - considering the end result of the changes, a wise choice. Shapiro even wanted to remove his name from the credits, and shows his disgust (and Self-Deprecation) by both receiving the Razzies of the film (the one for Worst Screenplay in a radio program, and the one for Worst Picture of the Decade at the actual ceremony!), and posting an apology letter, which included the line "The only time I saw the movie was at the premiere, which was one too many times".
Co-lead Barry Pepper didn't like it any more than Shapiro, and said that if he'd known one of the Razzies had his name on it, he would have shown up alongside Shapiro.
Orson Welles had a love/hate relationship with Citizen Kane, leaning often towards the latter, as he considered his later works The Trial and Chimes at Midnight to be much better. This is in large part because after it was voted the Best Film Ever Made multiple times, Citizen Kane became the only thing anybody wanted to talk to him about. It's also likely because, despite its historical acclaim, the film failed to win a Best Picture Oscar and Wells didn't win Best Actor for it. It also wasn't much of a financial success (largely due to William Randolph Hearst's smear campaign), which led to RKO Pictures prematurely terminating his contract.
He also did not like The Stranger all that much, calling it one of his worst films, though as he said, "I did my best with it." It was his attempt to make a more mainstream film after Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons flopped at the box office, ironic as The Stranger made a profit. He also disliked the omission of a somewhat dreamlike scene, which he felt would have made the film more interesting. Today, the film is somewhat admired, if not considered one of his best works.
Babylon AD was hit with this before it even came out. The director, Matthieu Kassovitz, has been quite open about how his initial vision of a dark but thoughtful cyberpunk world was edited beyond all recognition and turned into "a bad episode of 24." (For context, Rotten Tomatoes rates this movie at 7% freshness.)
Reportedly, the second Astérix movie suffered from this. The owners of the franchise decided that the movie wasn't Asterix-ish enough, so they dropped all the elements they didn't like for the third movie. Unfortunately for them, said third film was a spectacular failure, while the one they didn't like is still the most critically and commercially successful of all three movies.
Jerry Lewis to this day refuses to talk in any great detail about his unreleased film The Day the Clown Cried, a WWII comedy (with heavy tragic elements) about an inept German clown who is sent to a concentration camp and who, feeling unaccepted by the people on his side of the fence, decides to entertain the Jewish prisoners. Few people have ever seen the film, and Lewis apparently keeps his own VHS copy locked away for good.
Paul Verhoeven disowned Showgirls after the film's writer Joe Eszterhas edited the film without his permission. When the film won its numerous Razzie Awards, he accepted them to show his hatred of the film.
Hoo boy, Caligula. Writer Gore Vidal walked away from production because he hated how director Tinto Brass wanted satire in the film. Brass was then cut loose because producer Bob Guccione wanted hardcore sex involving his Penthouse Pets. Neither Vidal or Brass are officially credited in their roles. Most of the actors now look upon it as an Old Shame due to its reputation as a high-budget porno; Anneka Di Lorenzo eventually won a lawsuit claiming the film damaged her career (though the punitive damages were overturned on appeal).
He also wasn't proud of Myra Breckinridge claiming it missed the point of the book-the director, Michael Sarne, also wasn't proud of it due to executive meddling.
Harlan Ellison has made it very clear that he is not a fan of The Oscar, which to this day remains his only feature screenwriting credit.
Screenwriter Mike White disowned School Of Rock after the director decided to play up gay stereotypes without his involvement. Being bisexual and with a gay father, White was not pleased when he saw the final product.
William Gibson has distanced himself from the film adaptation of his short story Johnny Mnemonic, for which he wrote the screenplay, claiming that Executive Meddling turned what he and director Robert Longo had envisioned as a more experimental, independent film into a mainstream, generic sci-fi action movie.
The Farrelly Brothers disowned the film Outside Providence (co-written by them and based on a book by Peter Farrelly) after producer Harvey Weinstein insisted on numerous changes from the source material and recut the film in order to make it closer to their There's Something About Mary rather than the coming-of-age tale the original story was. The final film was a flop with critics and audiences and has been more or less forgotten.
Michael Moore does not like the film Slacker Uprising, which was a documentary that he only did to complete a three film deal with producer Harvey Weinstein. He even personally bought the rights to the film so Weinstein would never release it theatrically and chose to premiere it for free online.
Wes Craven has disowned a pair of movies in his career. He disowned The Hills Have Eyes Part II as he only made the film for the money and felt the story ended with the first movie (he later co-wrote the sequel to the remake though, which may have been him feeling what he could have done to make it better). Many years later, he disowned Scream 4 due to the constant Executive Meddling the film suffered and the amount of rewrites and reshoots done on the film. He has hinted making a fifth film though.
Jim Sheridan has come out and disowned Dream House after the film's producer locked him out of the editing room after reshoots where done (which were done after the film tested poorly). It is not known what Sheridan's original cut was like. As stars Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz refused to do any promotion for the film, it's safe to say they aren't too fond of it either.
Please, please, PLEASE don't mention The Exorcist to Linda Blair. It's not so much the movie itself that she despises, it's the fact that 40+ years later it's the only thing people ever talk about around her. Especially don't speak of the power of Christ, nor whether or not it compels you.
Michael Biehn disowned The Blood Bond, a film he starred in and co-directed, after its nightmarish production and being fired as soon as filming ended (as the film's writer felt it was his movie and not Biehn's). Biehn's voice was also dubbed and he was horrified when he saw the released version.
In-Universe in American Dreamer, the writer of the Rebecca Ryan books has his mother claim to write them, as he feels the books are just pulp trash.
Mickey Rourke severely dissed A Prayer For The Dying before its release (he said making it was "a nightmare"), and director Mike Hodges tried to take his name off the credits; needless to say, both have disowned it.
Richard Griffiths hates talking about his role in Withnail And I, not because of the quality of the film but because he and most of the cast and the crew were shafted by producer Denis O'Brien and have never received their proper payments.
Blake Edwards hated his 1972 film The Carey Treatment so much that he refused to be involved with the post-production on it. The constant Executive Meddling from MGM became so bad that he tried to leave the film during production (only to be told by the studio that doing so would end his career).
Edwards also didn't like how his script for City Heat was rewritten, to the extent that he's billed on the credits as "Sam O. Brown" (have a look at the initials).
Sam Peckinpah disowned many of his films due either to Executive Meddling or the final product not turning out well. Major Dundee is the most infamous example, due both to its chaotic production and drastic editing by the studio. Kris Kristofferson claims that Peckinpah was so angry at producer James Aubrey's interference on Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid that he actually urinated on film negatives before sending them to the studio. Take That indeed.
Peckinpah didn't always like being associated with bloody films like The Wild Bunch either. He often claimed the mellow comic Western The Ballad of Cable Hogue as the best film he made.
David Lean grew increasingly tired of critics praising the "beastly little British films" like Brief Encounter and Great Expectations he made early in his career. It's not that Lean disliked the films per se; he mostly hated critics using them to disparage his later epics. His unfriendly run-in with Pauline Kael and Richard Schickel stands out: "How could the man who directed Brief Encounter make a piece of shit like Ryan's Daughter?"
Additionally, Lean claimed to have made Madeleine (1950) solely to appease his wife, actress Ann Todd. He always disparaged the movie to interviewers, claiming it his worst feature film. That Lean and Todd divorced shortly after the film's release probably didn't sweeten his opinion.
David Lynch is so sorry for the Dune movie. So, so sorry. So sorry that he got the DGA to credit the longer version to Alan Smithee.
Stanley Kubrick so hated his first two movies, Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss, for the amateurishness he felt they demonstrated that he bought up most of the prints later in his life and destroyed them. He also hated "Spartacus" because of the Executive Meddling. All three films are not included on the Stanley Kubrick DVD and Blu-Ray box sets.
According to a 2007 autobiography, both John Leguizamo and Bob Hoskins really, really hated working on the Super Mario Bros. film. It got to the point where they would get drunk in order to endure the experience of the film. They both knew it was going to be bad and they made the most of it.
Dennis Hopper also regrets the movie. During an appearance on a talk show, he shared an anecdote of telling his son that he made it so he could have shoes. His son told him that he didn't need shoes that bad.
Takeshi Kitano disowned Brother (his only American film to date) due to the constant Executive Meddling and troubles with the MPAA (the film was heavily cut to receive an R rating). After this experience, Kitano swore to never direct another film in the US.
David O. Russell has disowned I ♥ Huckabees (which nearly destroyed his career) due to its Troubled Production and his on-set treatment of Lily Tomlin (which went on to hit Memetic Mutation status and made Russell impossible to hire for a few years).
Ralph Bakshi isn't fond of the released version of Hey Good Lookin' due to Warner Bros. forcing numerous changes to the film (the original cut was a mix of live action and animation) and delayed the film for seven years before finally dumping the film in select markets. When interviewed in 2010 on the film, Bakshi spoke positively about the first cut but had little to say about the released version.
He also wasn't happy with the Executive MeddlingCool World underwent from Paramount, which led to Bakshi retiring from filmmaking.
Kate Capshaw hates her role as Willie Scott as much as the fans do, expressing disgust with it even during filming.
The second Highlander film, Highlander II: The Quickening suffered from this quite a bit. By the end, many of the main cast had only finished the film because of their contract obligations.
Much later, Adrian Paul was less than happy with the final product that was the fifth film, Highlander: The Source after it was finished.
Paul Newman disliked his role in The Silver Chalice; so much so, he named it the worst film of the 1950s and even invited some guests to see the movie and mock it MST3K style.
Minor example in Star Trek Into Darkness. Damon Lindelof apologized for the largely unnecessary fanservice scene of Alice Eve in her underwear. The fact that they had filmed a shower scene for Benedict Cumberbatch but cut it might also be part of the problem.
Literature
Gelett Burgess's exasperation over the popularity of his fluff 1895 poem The Purple Cow, as quoted above.
More a love-hate relationship than despise, but this is part of the reason Arthur Conan Doyle was led to kill off Sherlock Holmes, who overshadowed all of his other writings. He eventually got over it. To quote a letter that Doyle sent a friend after The Final Problem:
Holmes is dead and damned! I have had such an overdose of him that I feel towards him as I do towards paté de foie gras, of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day.
It's not so much that he got over it, but that he felt forced to resurrect Sherlock Holmes seeing as how people were shouting "MURDERER!" at him on the street.
Similar to the above example, Agatha Christie came to hate the famed fictional detective she created, Hercule Poirot. To quote The Other Wiki: "By 1930, Agatha Christie found Poirot 'insufferable' and by 1960, she felt that he was a 'detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep'. Yet the public loved him, and Christie refused to kill him off, claiming that it was her duty to produce what the public liked, and what the public liked was Poirot." She would eventually tweak Poirot through one of her other characters, Ariadne Oliver, who was a mystery-writer turned detective. (Yes, Ariadne's an Author Avatar; yes, she exists; no, we don't blame you for not knowing that.) Unlike Doyle, Christie never got over it; just before she died, she released Curtain, a novel she had written years ago, in which Poirot was killed off.
She may have killed off Poirot in Curtain in part because she found him intolerable, but another reason was to prevent another author from taking over the Poirot series if she died during World War II. She began the book during the Blitz, when nobody in London knew if they'd survive.
Michael Crichton intended for his 1990 novel Jurassic Park to be a standalone work. However, he was more than happy with it being adapted into a film, selling the book's film rights before it was published and helping to write the film's screenplay. Once the film was a massive financial success, its creators began pressuring Crichton to write a sequel, despite the fact that he had never franchised any of his work. He reluctantly agreed, publishing The Lost World in 1995, which retcons a lot of plot points from Jurassic Park. Its film adaptation and second sequel Jurassic Park III were created with no involvement with Crichton whatsoever.
Crichton has tried to Torch the Franchise and Run twice to no avail. The first novel ends with the park being destroyed and all the dinosaurs being killed by the fictional Costa Rican air force. This was partially retconned with The Lost World, However.
AA Milne grew to loathe his Winnie-the-Pooh books, as it typecast him forever as a "writer of children's books" and he could never go back to writing adult fiction. He even tried to kill off Pooh at the end of the 2nd book. (It didn't work.) E. H. Shepard, Pooh's illustrator, also suffered from this, as it overshadowed his work in political cartoons. Similarly, Milne's son Christopher Robin grew to hate the works as well, for he was bullied constantly for being immortalized in them.
At one point, Christopher accused his father of exploiting him in the stories. Ironically, he later owned a bookstore, where it's inevitable that someone was going to ask that question.
Similarly, Lillian Moller Gilbreth didn't like Cheaper by the Dozen or Belles on Their Toes, which her children wrote, because they made her and her husband's life's work look silly.
Another similar example, Peter Llewelyn Davies is forever known as the basis for J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Davies hated being associated with "that terrible masterpiece" and it is believed that's what drove him to alcoholism and suicide.
In-story example: Misery by Stephen King is about an author who hates his popular character, kills her off, and then finds himself in the care of the character's biggest fan....
In Real Life, Stephen King has come to regret writing the novel Rage because someone decided to make life echo art with that book - or rather, make death echo art. Current copies of The Bachman Books no longer feature Rage. But the short story Cain Rose Up, which deals with similar topics, is still in Skeleton Crew. For those wondering, both Rage and Cain Rose Up concern a student who kills people on school grounds; the former has the main character/narrator "only" kill two teachers in the course of a long quasi-therapy session with his classmates, be treated sympathetically by all but one of said classmates (in the end the others turn on the Only Sane Man) and ultimately get shot by the police - but not fatally; both he and the holdout are last seen in different mental institutions - whereas the latter features a sniper who is still killing indiscriminately at the end of the story.
Jack Kerouac found Visions of Cody to be a superior work to On The Road, and was disappointed at how much more people focused on the latter.
In the introduction to a rerelease of A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess called it "pornographic" and said the main reason for reading it would be for the "raping and ripping." He was particularly outspoken against the film adaptation, though he was not involved in its creation.
Richardson actually insulted his work Clarissa in the prologue of one of the volume published, saying the main character was dull and didn't understand how anybody enjoyed the work. He later picked apart the morals in Clarissa in another of his works.
Mark Twain came to think of Tom Sawyer as the exemplar of everything that's shallow and stunted in the American spirit. His disgust found its way into Huckleberry Finn, in which Tom comes off as more of a thoughtless Jerk Ass than a mischievous scamp. He wrote Sawyer into two more books after that, though Twain did have financial troubles later in life due to poor investments.
Western author Louis L'Amour early in his career was hired to write a series of stories about the character 'Hopalong' Cassidy for a western pulp magazine. The stories were not about an original character and were extensively edited to tie in with a 'Hopalong' Cassidy TV show. L'Amour later in life denied ever writing them in the first place, even to his own family. They were only reprinted after his death.
Anne Rice, for a time, disclaimed her popular Vampire Chronicles series, as well as the connected Mayfair Witches series, due to converting to Christianity, but she got over it later.
Another in-story example: Sharyn McCrumb's novel Bimbos of the Death Sun features an author who despises the series of cheesy Conan the Barbarian-style novels to which he's become metaphorically chained by success and merchandising, all the while wanting recognition for his use of Celtic mythology in the books.
Isaac Asimov had a minor version of this regarding his famous short story "Nightfall", considering it to be far from his best work and in no way deserving of all the acclaim it received. This was partly because it was one of his earliest works (he wrote it when he was 21), and the notion that it was his best story suggested that he hadn't improved as an author in 50 years of writing. One of the most-remembered paragraphs from that story (it's toward the end) isn't his work, having been added by editor John W Campbell.
Similarly, one of the reasons that it took 30 years for the fourth Foundation book to come out was that he was tired of the series. The main thing that got him to work on Foundation's Edge was the boatload of cash he was offered.
Stephen Crane believed that the best way of writing was to go experience something, then dash off your thoughts rapidly and without editing, while being careful not to go on too long. For reasons uncertain to biographers (a bet may have factored into it), he decided to write The Red Badge Of Courage, based on nothing he'd ever seen, heavily edited, and by his own admission "too long." Naturally, "the damned Red Badge" made him famous, while not necessarily helping to dispel his conviction that Readers Were Morons.
Peter S Beagle called A Fine and Private Place (his first novel, and fairly well received) his "state of grace" novel, where he must have been protected by whatever spirit watches over young and self-important authors.
Double example with The Last Unicorn, whose popularity has overshadowed a LOT of Beagle's work, and questions about a sequel have increasingly annoyed him. He's finally going to give in, though, so he can't hate it that much...
Shocked by the conditions in which Dust Bowl refugees lived, John Steinbeck wrote a satire, L'Affaire Lettuceberg. He decided, however, that it would be better not to publish it, because it was to "cause hatred through partial understanding" and he preferred "making people understand each other." Reconsidering the subject, he wrote The Grapes Of Wrath, a much more direct and passionate work.
Akiyuki Nosaka can't even re-read Grave of the Fireflies because he hates it so much. It seems to be related to Survivor Guilt, given that the ending of the story wasn't quite the same as the way his life turned out.
Upton Sinclair was severely upset that the only thing about The Jungle that stuck with America was the horrific conditions of the meat packing industry, as opposed to the socialist Author Tract that took up most of the book.
"I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."
Lucy Maud Montgomery was sick of her most famous work, Anne of Green Gables, by the time she wrote its sequel. The creation of Emily Starr was a direct result of her own disillusionment with her work - though she went on to put out eight books in the Anne series anyway (the last two books feature Anne as a supporting character, rather than the main character she'd been in previous instalments). In addition, the series was written out of order, which meant that the last book she wrote wasn't Rilla Of Ingleside, which ends the series, but Anne Of Ingleside. By then she was thoroughly tired of writing Anne - and it shows.
Henry James grew to dislike Washington Square, mostly because of the comparisons it got to the works of Jane Austen.
J.R.R. Tolkien said of his work that people "are involved in the stories in a way that I'm not" and that he was not sure that the tendency to treat the whole thing as "kind of a vast game" was a good idea. He also referred to obsessive fans who became so devoted to Lord of the Rings as "my deplorable cultus," and was surprised and alarmed by the way the books seemed to take hold of some people, especially those who came to gawp at his house or called him from California at 7 p.m. (their time - 3 a.m. his), to demand to know whether Frodo had succeeded or failed in the Quest (this specific question being asked in between the releases of The Two Towers and Return of the King), what is the preterite of Quenyan lanta-, or whether Balrogs have wings. Also, while not about the work itself, Tolkien put everything he hated into one of his fictional languages: the Black Speech. To his dismay, some fans thought it was cool...
Douglas Adams suffered from terrible black moods, and in response to constant nagging from fans for a new The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy book, he gave them a dose of his depression in literary form:Mostly Harmless. It's a depressing, nihilistic book in which Everybody Dies and the Earth is irrevocably destroyed in all universes. It made any more sequels impossible, and was a big middle finger to all his fans. Years later, Adams said he regretted ending the series on such a depressing note, and was in the early stages of writing a sixth book that would have fixed it all when he died.
When Mostly Harmless was adapted for radio as "The Quintessential Phase" the Downer Ending was revised into a more optimistic version, although it's not entirely clear how authentic this was to Adams's unfinished plans.
He also regretted elements So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, which is happier, but perhaps less of an H2G2 book; in particular the bit where he snaps at the reader that if they want a Marvin bit they can skip to the end. He also commented that the book was backwards; Arthur as the seasoned galactic traveller amongst Muggles, and that part of him kept saying he couldn't just bring the Earth back like that. The last line of the book is "There was a point to this story but it has temporarily escaped the author's mind", and Adams once said that this was him "owning up".
Peter Benchley came to regret writing Jaws when he learned that drastic overfishing was driving many shark species to extinction, coming to believe he was at least partially responsible due to his book (and the eponymous film version) instilling a cross-cultural fear of sharks around the world. He spent the rest of his life trying to make up for it by becoming a vocal ocean conservation activist.
An In-Universe example: In Frank Stockton's short story "His Wife's Deceased Sister", the protagonist writes the eponymous novel, which is so wonderful that he instantly becomes famous. However, this work is a one-off, and it is so good that it sets an unrealistically high standard to which he is held, and every other novel he submits is rejected, with the editors being insulted, thinking he he is foisting his rejects upon them. Driven to financial ruin, he comes to regret ever writing his masterpiece, and must write under a pseudonym to make ends meet. Eventually, when he manages to write another masterpiece, he ends up destroying it, fearing that it will again ruin his career.
L Frank Baum resented writing sequels to the Wizard of Oz, and repeatedly tried to end the Oz series altogether. Several books end with firm declarations that he has told the reader everything there is to know about Oz, or that Oz has cut itself off from the rest of the world, and he can no longer give the reader new stories as a result. Yet Baum's other books never sold well, and for strictly financial reasons he was forced to repeatedly return to the tired franchise.
Dr Seuss came to feel a deep regret for the racist anti-Japanese cartoons he drew during World War II, to the point he dedicated Horton Hears a Who! to a Japanese friend.
Subverted by the author of Lolita, who said in a interview with Playboy magazine that while "he'll never regret Lolita" he does feel it overshadowed all his other works, which he feels are more deserving.
Goethe came to regret, and, for a time, disowned The Sorrows Of Young Werther, partially because he regretted putting the personal issues it was based on in the public light, partially general embarrassment with the romantic movement, and partially annoyance with the obsessive fandom.
Ian Fleming was sufficiently unhappy with his novel The Spy Who Loved Me that he licensed the title only and required the film producers to write an entirely new story.
Live Action TV
Dave Chappelle came to loathe how people started showing up to his stand-up comedy exclusively to demand that he replicate skits from his TV show, specifically the infamous Rick James one. This even led to a nervous breakdown, ensuring that the third season (or any after it) of Chappelle's Show would never get finished. And then there were the people who would yell at him, "I'm Rick James, Bitch!" (including one who apparently did so while he was with his family). Took about two minutes for him to feel Dude, Not Funny!. The significant Misaimed Fandom from his sizeably white audience who were there simply for the Uncle Tomfoolery and completely missing how Chappelle was satirizing and mocking such attitudes didn't help matters much, either.
Eddie Murphy refuses to acknowledge his old Saturday Night Live characters, though they are some of his most enduring legacy.
It's probably because of a 1995 "Weekend Update" sketch in which David Spade, as part of his "Hollywood Minute" segment, made a brutal Take That at Murphy's (then-)lackluster career, saying "Look, kids, a falling star! Make a wish!", that reallypissed Murphy off.
Both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (and to a lesser extent, most of the original cast; Galaxy Quest was based partially in reality, after all) had a period of Creator Backlash after Star Trek ended, mostly because they were being typecast as Kirk and Spock, and the rest of the crew. It seems that they all got over it, though. Having your angst, and the revived franchise make you richer than Croesus does tend to change your viewpoint.
In fact, the author of I Am Not Spock not only went on to write I Am Spock, but also has now officially become the original cast member with the longest on-screen association with the franchise, with his role in the 2009 film. And Shatner is not in the film only because there was no plausible way to bring Prime timeline Kirk back fromhis bridge-dropping.
Robert Beltran (Chakotay) made disparaging comments about Voyager for years, even while the show was still running. He's often criticized the quality of the writing, the technobabble and the fact that he wasn't given a whole lot to do over the series' 7-season run. He's also expressed sincere disdain for the character of during chats with fans. It's believed that Beltran was given an out-of-nowhere relationship with Seven of Nine (aka the incredibly hot Jeri Ryan) by the producers in order to shut him up long enough for the show to finish. One popular story floated around the net is that he demanded a huge pay raise in the hopes the producers would fire him, but they just gave him the money.
Brannon Braga quite justifiably hates the Voyager episode "Threshold" (as do all the cast and most of the fanbase) - to the point it never happened, complete with later Discontinuity Nod. Equally, the TNG first-season episode 'Code Of Honor' has the same thing.
Jolene Blalock takes a similar tack with Enterprise, or at least the series finale. In fact, several members of the cast (including Scott Bakula, Connor Trinneer and Blalock) joined the chorus blasting the show in media interviews in the months following "These Are The Voyages", which was roundly criticized by reviewers and fans alike.
Even though Patrick Stewart doesn't want to be Picard anymore, he doesn't regret his role in the slightest. In William Shatner's ST documentary The Captains, he want so far as to say that he is perfectly happy if he were to be remembered mainly for having played Picard after his death.
Most of the other cast members hold a similar fondness for the show, and don't mind a little typecasting if only because they're touched by the love of the fans and are proud of the best moments of the shows.
The only one with real regrets about his time on TNG is Wil Wheaton: a large portion of his autobiography Just a Geek focuses on his coming to terms with his (in retrospect) ill-made decision to leave the show due to Fan Backlash and increasingly being sidelined by the show's creators. It probably didn't help that his character was one of the most hated on the show, either. Nowadays, he seems to look back on his time on TNG with real nostalgia, and doesn't seem above some good-natured ribbing of his old character, either.
Marina Sirtis felt that the worst of the Trek movies was Insurrection, saying that she fell asleep during its premiere.
If so Richard Dean Anderson: before he was Jack O'Neill he was everyone's favorite mullet-sporting hero, MacGyver. Now, while Anderson has always been deeply appreciative of the show (going so far as to appear on the SNL spoofMacGruber and doing a well received Super Bowl ad for Visa as the character) he's been noted as having been greatly stressed out by it since he was the star of the show and thus he never could take a break. It was one of the reasons he stated that SG-1 had to be an ensemble show, so that he wouldn't have to "carry" it by himself.
Amy Jo Johnson, the first Pink Power Ranger, has shown everything from visible discomfort to outright shame in regards to the role that made her famous (and probably typecast her forever). This has affected many of her fellow actors, but most of them were martial artists first and foremost and didn't have as great a desire to make it as serious actors as Johnson. Many of them have commented that they'd love to come back for cameo roles every year if asked, and look back fondly at their years on the show.
What makes this ironic is that Johnson shamelessly shilled the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie in 1995, going so far as to suggest it was as good as Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz combined (a comparison for which she was roundly mocked). In retrospect, it's hard not to wonder if she had been paid to give that statement, or if she had somehow been forced into making it.
Jason David Frank, who played Tommy, the Green/White Ranger, comes back for a cameo every third season and is apparently more than happy to stop and talk about Power Rangers to those who recognise him on the street. Plus he's gone on to own a martial arts dojo in LA, do MMA and invent a martial art style... He gets around for sure.
Johnny Yong Bosch also doesn't mind too much about his Power Rangers past either. In fact in it one of the main factors that propelled him into a successful career of voice acting.
For years, David Yost (who played Billy, the original Blue Ranger) seemed this way, but in a 2009 interview he admitted that the main issue was his getting gay-bashed behind the scenes, and that he didn't hate the show itself or the fans, who have been very supportive.
If Amy Jo is the best example of this from Power Rangers,Lost Galaxy's Danny Slavin is a very close second. It's believed that he only took the job to pay for law school, and has repeatedly turned down invitations to Power Morphicon. Not helping matters, reportedly the producers screwed Trakeena's actress out of most of her paycheck during the Lost Galaxy/Lightspeed Rescue crossover episode, which lead to him walking off the set in protest. It took a miracle for him to cameo in the 10th anniversary episode "Forever Red".
In an interview, the widow of Ray Goulding (of Bob & Ray) noted he didn't like to have the early episodes of the duo's 1951-53 TV show brought up in later years because "it was infancy for television" and he was "appalled at how really naive they were about what to wear and how to appear." Different times...
Tom Baker was reportedly keen to distance himself from Doctor Who after leaving the show, refusing to appear in the 20th anniversary episode "The Five Doctors", and for a long time refusing to do conventions and public appearances related to the show. This was at least partly due to the length of time he spent on the show and being quite burnt out about it and partly because his iconic performance largely overshadowed everything else he did since then. It's worth noting that by 1980, sources show Baker as alcoholic, despondent, and nearly impossible to work with; executive meddling and heavy typecasting had taken a toll, his marriage was on the rocks, and he was not at all enamoured of newer writers like Christoper Bidmead or producer John-Nathan Turner. He was nearly 50, and had little career left. He seems a lot more comfortable being associated with the show in recent years, however. In 1993, Baker filmed a small part for the short "episode" Dimensions In Time. It's said there was far more planned using a different script, but Executive Meddling and a primadonna host got in the way. From 2009, Baker returned as the Doctor for three five-part series of audio dramas for BBC Audio, and in 2011, he finally began to star in the audio dramas for Big Finish Productions. He has shown some regret about not doing "The Five Doctors" and distancing himself from the series at large, but at over 70 years old his health will not allow more involvement.
It took a long time for Peter Davison to become comfortable with his tenure as the Doctor. With most of his career still ahead of him, he had been terrified of being typecast and did everything possible to prevent it, including insulting the show to the press. In recent years, Davison has also mentioned the show's low budget and poor treatment from the BBC were a major source of his resentment towards the franchise. He has since said that he wishes that he could have worked on the show when it had the budget, studio support, and prestige it currently enjoys. Since the late 90's up to the present day, he's happily been playing the Doctor in monthly Big Finish Doctor Who episodes, and recently reprised his role on TV in the mini-episode "Time Crash" as part of a charity drive. David Tennant used the short as a massive fan-gasm shout-out to Davison's tenure on the show: "you were MY Doctor." Tennant has repeatedly cited Davison's interpretation of the Doctor as his primary inspiration, and reason for becoming an actor. Davison had always felt that he was too young for the role. In "Time Crash" he felt he was at a more fitting age to play the Doctor, and had a grasp on the character that he was happy with. Ironically, the role of the Doctor being played by a younger man (and the contrast between the character's physical age and his actual age) was one of the primary things that carried over into the new series, thanks in part to Davison's example.
The Second Doctor Patrick Troughton quit the show in 1969 to avoid being typecast, and because he wished to return to other programmes. He went as far as to urge Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon) and Wendy Padbury (Zoe) to depart at the same time. Troughton enjoyed making comebacks in "The Three Doctors" and "The Five Doctors", and finally alongside Colin Baker in "The Two Doctors", and looked like he was thoroughly enjoying himself in all of them. Of course Troughton didn't hate the character — he would make himself available at conventions, and any time he and Jon Pertwee were at the same convention, the two would appear at joint panels and jokingly mock-bicker as Two and Three did in "The Three Doctors" and "the Five Doctors". Troughton also counseled Davison to stay on only 3 years, and this aided in his decision to leave the show in 1984.
Janet Fielding has stated that she was pretty bitter towards the show when she left because she wasn't happy with how she and her fellow companions were treated. This reached its highpoint with a notorious on-stage outburst at Panopticon 1993 when she told a room full of fans that any show that treated its female characters as badly as Doctor Who did deserved to have been cancelled. She's since gotten over it and is much more comfortable with the show now, although her negative remarks about certain stories on DVD commentaries have still caused controversy.
Surprisingly subverted by Colin Baker, who you would think — given that he was the only actor playing the Doctor to be fired from the role, that his era was for a long time not incredibly popular with fans and that, well, he had to wearThat Coat — would have plenty of reason to not want to have anything to do with the show again. Instead, barring some rather understandable regrets, he's always appeared quite enthusiastic about the show, being associated with the show and returning to it in some form on occasion. Baker, long before David Tennant took the trope and ran with it, was theAscended Fanboy on Doctor Who, having been a childhood fan of the show. He too has been doing Big Finish dramas as the Doctor continuously since the late 90's, and he (and the writers) went the extra mile to completely rehabilitate Six's reputation, leading to him being a poster boy for Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
Robin Williams does not like being called "Mork", or being greeted with "Nanu nanu". Even as far back as "Reality, What a Concept..." (1979) he had to let the crowd (chanting "Mork! Mork! Mork!") know that he preferred doing stand-up. On his "Live 2002" album, something similar happened, and he actually said he'd rather forget Mork. Most notably, for years he's been unwilling to say "Nanu nanu" even as a reference... until recently, it seems (at around 2:18). Perhaps he has mellowed.
Actor and singer Danny Smith is rumored to be annoyed at people who still think of him as Merton Dingle from Big Wolf on Campus. It's unknown whether it's true or if he's over it.
Morgan Freeman does not want to be remembered for being Easy Reader, and has made as much clear when interviewers try to ask him about it. He's mellowing a little bit about it, but still feels that he stayed with The Electric Company for too long.
Tina Louise was NEVER Ginger on Gilligan's Island. Don't ask her about it, she won't talk about it anyway.
To the extent that she refused to reprise the role even for the Filmation cartoons (in one of them Dawn Wells voiced both Mary Ann and Ginger).
Ellison also wrote a book ranting about how Executive Meddling ruined his original script for Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever".
Contrary to rumors, Joe Odagiri, the lead in Kamen Rider Kuuga, doesn't despise his tenure as a Kamen Rider, but he tends to dodge the subject in interviews as he's been trying to make it as a serious actor. Milestone CelebrationKamen Rider Decade has an Alternate Universe Kuuga as a major character, played by another actor (Ryota Murai, who conveniently enough is a Promoted Fanboy of Kuuga).
Likewise Shigeki Hosokawa, who played the title character in Kamen Rider Hibiki, made a blog post just after the show ended in which he talked about how badly the second half of the show was mismanaged, in particular complaining about how they got rewrites for the final episode while filming it. Like Odagiri he apparently dodges the subject of Hibiki in interviews, and though in that same blog post he said he'd be glad to come back (if someone competent were in charge), he's practically the only main cast member who didn't return in Decade. (In Decade, the past Rider series casts are usually Alternate Universe versions that are only loosely based on the original casts. Hibiki shares with Den-O the distinction of having its original cast reassembled... minus Hibiki himself and his apprentice Asumu. It's hard to know if they were recast because Hosokawa declined to return, or if they just didn't want the whole "Hibiki turns into a monster and Asumu has to Shoot the Dog and become the new Hibiki" thing to happen with the originals.)
Tamao Satou, the actress of Oh Pink in Chouriki Sentai Ohranger, had shown dislike for the role since the season ended. It took time, but she's apparently had a change of heart since then, taking part in a photo shoot for the theater premiere of one of the recent Sentai VS Movies in-uniform, and most recently performed a cameo role of the character alongside Oh Red actor Masaru Shishido amongst other Sentai alumnists in the 35th anniversary series Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger.
Masaru Nagai, who played the Red Ranger of Mirai Sentai Timeranger, now wants to be disassociated from the show and claims his professional debut was a drama he appeared in long after Timeranger. He once appeared on a variety show with fellow Red Ranger actor Tori Matsuzaka (Takeru Shiba in Samurai Sentai Shinkenger), who reportedly made thinly-veiled comments about actors trying to deny that they starred in tokusatsu. Unlike the above case, he refused to return for Gokaiger, letting Yellow Ranger Shuhei Izumi do it instead.
Most of the adults of Full House did not like the show and hated its Tastes Like Diabetes nature, with Bob Saget and John Stamos being the most vocal (Dave Coulier appears to be the only adult male lead who has expressed no regret over his role). Unusual for this trope, the entire cast got along extremely well and remain close friends to this day. Stamos has mentioned on talk shows about having a psuedo-Revival where him, Saget and Coulier would be roommates after the kids had grown up and left. Saget has joked about an event where him and Stamos were near a car accident, and speculated on what the driver must have thought when they saw "Danny and Uncle Jesse" coming to the rescue.
John Moschitta Jr. dislikes being known for his fast-talking Micro Machines commercials, and has called Micro Machines "some of the lamest toys" in interviews.
It was rumored around the fandom of Lexx that Michael McMannus loathed playing Kai, since the character was an actor's worst nightmare, someone who, as mandated by plot, always looks exactly the same and can't even show a facial expression. He stuck it out for the show's entire run, though.
This does seem fairly plausible because he does seem to be having a lot of fun on the few occasions that he gets to play Kai as anything other than the dead assassin.
Eva Habermann, however, was an aversion; she left the show because it took so long for news of whether or not season two was coming that she would've had to have given up other work to stay. She was under no obligation to come back for the first two episodes, and did it just to give them time to work The Nth Doctor into the plot instead of forcing the writers to just drop it on the audience out of nowhere.
An in-universe example: in Extras, Andy Millman (Ricky Gervais) finally achieves his dream of writing and starring in his own sitcom, only to see Executive Meddling and Fan Dumb turn the whole thing into a total (though very successful) embarrassment.
Although he doesn't outright hate it like most examples of this trope, John Cleese has stated he always had a mixed reaction to Fawlty Towers most famous episode The Germans because of all the Memetic Mutation surrounding the episode and the loss of its original meaning.
Cleese even expressed irritation about most of the sketches of Monty Python's Flying Circus, feeling they were repeating themselves very quickly on. He also felt that the TV format didn't allow them to perfect the sketches as well as he wanted. This was also the reason why he left the series early on and want to move on to do other things. He especially dislikes one of his most well-known and popular Python sketches, the Ministry of Silly Walks, because it's so banal.
Patrick McGoohan seemed to bounce back and forth in his opinion on his creation, The Prisoner, embracing it at times (witness his participation in "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" on The Simpsons) and refusing to talk about it at others. He reportedly declined an invitation to appear in the 2009 remake, though this was likely due to poor health (he died before it was broadcast).
He did allow himself to be quoted as saying he was pleased with the remastered DVD (and later Blu-Ray) version of the original series.
Henry Winkler hated being remembered only as Fonzie, and refused to answer to fans who called him that. However, some references in Arrested Development suggest he's mellowed over time.
Robert Reed absolutely hatedThe Brady Bunch (but not the Brady Bunch - he loved the kids), feuding with creator Sherwood Schwartz throughout the run, trying to get out of his contract and flat-out refusing to appear in the final episode because the script was so bad (had the show been renewed for a sixth season, Schwartz would have seen to it that the family would be without Mike Brady). However, he returned for the later TV movies and series (and the TV movie adaptation of Barry Williams' memoir Growing Up Brady is dedicated to Reed's memory).
Ashley Pharaoh, co-creator of the much-derided Bonekickers, penned a "letter to my younger self" article containing sage nuggets of advice... one of which was "Do not write Bonekickers".
Castle has an In-Universe example when the title character, a novelist, got bored with his current hero (Detective Derrick Storm) and Dropped a Bridge on Him at the end of his last book. He then starts up a new series about Detective Nikki Heat, based on Beckett.
Mandy Patinkin has gone on record as saying that starring in the first two seasons of Criminal Minds was the worst mistake of his acting career, despite the praise critics heaped on him for his performance, since he personally considered the show's content too disturbing for network TV.
Richard Bacon, host of the short-lived British quiz show 19 Keys, would later say of the show, "It was a game show that was almost impossible to follow, let alone enjoy. Buzzers, sirens, a prize fund that would go up or down for no apparent reason - imagine being in a pile-up on the M25 with me in the car screaming general knowledge questions at you. That was 19 Keys."
Gene Rayburn did not recall hosting the 1985-86 Break the Bank as a happy experience. Him being replaced in the next season didn't help matters either. Thus we'd never again see any reruns of Rayburn Bank (less so since GSN hasn't shown that particular series).
The embargo of the Rayburn episodes goes all the way back to 1986, when CBN Cable Network only showed the Joe Farago episodes.
Rayburn was infuriated when Rolling Stone magazine revealed his real age in an article, claiming that the information would probably get him fired due to insurance problems. And he was right: shortly after the article appeared, he was fired. Making it even worse was that despite the format being silly and calling for a silly host (with Gene known for being a total goofball on Match Game), Kline & Friends insisted on telling him not to be silly because Break the Bank was supposed to be a serious and suspenseful show.
A possible related Rayburn-embargo is the case of The Match Game Hollywood Squares Hour. Rayburn wasn't happy on the show, partially due to the inexperienced Jon Bauman but in large part because the Squares format was so broken; Gene Wood reportedly said that Rayburn was "dragged kicking and screaming" into the show. But this is as likely (or less so) as it just being chalked up to a dual-ownership issue, as Fremantle Media and MGM have the rights to the respective shows now.
Chuck Henry will not allow his 1989 version of Now You See It to be seen in reruns, fearing that his credibility as a newscaster would be hurt if people remembered that he was a game show host at one point — consensus is, however, that Henry was a competent host (and besides, what more damage could it do after having to be rescued while reporting on a forest fire?). GSN does air the original Jack Narz version occasionally.
Game Show host Tom Kennedy had this happen a couple times through his career. While he enjoyed doing a nighttime version of The Price Is Right in 1985-86 (stating that he would've continued with it had it been renewed), he felt he didn't do a good job (like Henry, fans disagree greatly). Unlike Chuck Henry, though, he let GSN air his version.
The creators of Friends openly acknowledge in one of the Season Eight commentaries that they don't like the Chandler/Monica plot in "The One With The Truth About London."
They also have some disdain for Season Six, feeling they were simply going through the motions during that time period. Not surprising, given that this was when a lot of the backstage drama with issues like Matthew Perry's drug addictions really began to hinder the series.
Spitting Image: Co-creator Peter Fluck has gone so far to claim he "hates puppets" in an interview with The Guardian. Back in 2000 he planned to throw all the 900 and counting puppets of the original show on a bonfire because he was so sick of them. Luckily someone got a better idea and decided to simply auction them.
Initially, James Gurney gave his blessing to the Hallmark miniseries of Dinotopia, but he was very unhappy with the final product. He had wanted an original story, preferring to leave the characters from the original books in everyone's mind, but he didn't like where they took that original story.
Ted Knight did *not* like being remembered as The Ditz Ted Baxter from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and it caused him a lot of personal angst. The role's The Danza aspect was responsible for a lot of people confusing actor and character.
Music
Commonly happens to One Hit Wonder bands that never came near the success of that one hit with anything else. For example, the band A Flock Of Seagulls came to dislike "I Ran" because for their entire three decade existence, nobody cared about any other song they released.
This general concept is parodied amusingly in the Barenaked Ladies song "Box Set": "I never thought I'd be regretful/Of all my past success/But some stupid No.1 hit single/Has got me in this mess..."
Which is ironic, in hindsight, as that's what "One Week" turned out to be: their stupid No.1 hit single. Not a bad song, but definitely atypical. BNL's reaction? Call their greatest hits collection Disc One after another line in "Box Set" ("Disc One, it's where I've begun/It's all my greatest hits"), try to name one of the new songs on that collection "One Weaker" (it didn't stick), mock it on their next album, Everything to Everyone ("Kinda like the last time/With a bunch of really fast rhymes/If we're living in the past, I'm/Soon gone."), and move on. They still play "One Week" at concerts, but they often swap it out for an acoustic version.
Devo dumped the albums, Shout, Total Devo, and Smooth Noodle Maps in the crapper, and haven't performed a thing from any of them since reuniting in 1995.
Devo's also lambasted their brief foray into CD-ROM gaming, "The Adventures of the Smart Patrol".
Comments on the ill-fated Devo 2.0 project with Disney have been more about how absurd it was, and that being the reason why they did it.
Not sure if it's backlash against the song itself or just the circumstances, but Madonna has said that if she knew she'd be called the "Material Girl" for almost thirty years, she would have never recorded the song.
Radiohead grew to hate their first hit song "Creep" because people would show up to their concerts exclusively to hear it, acting indignant until they play it and leaving immediately afterwards. They continued to play it reluctantly, usually stating how they have no respect for the people that want to hear it right before. They eventually cut the song from their playlist altogether for a long period of time, and wrote "My Iron Lung" about it (sample lyrics: "This/This is our new song/Just like the last one/A total waste of time/My iron lung")
Ed O'Brien has said the distinctive guitar crunch in "Creep" resulted from guitarist Jonny Greenwood intentionally trying to ruin the even-then despised song during recording. The band felt it improved the song so they kept it in.
Thom Yorke also dislikes another early hit, "High and Dry"; in his words, "It's not bad...it's very bad." Radiohead hasn't performed it live since 1998.
While they weren't particularly hits, the band also quickly disowned the single "Pop Is Dead" and the Pablo Honey album track "Prove Yourself" - they consider the former a poorly written song, and just quickly stopped playing the latter live because they were unsettled by the audience singing along to the repeated line "I'm better off dead".
One of the reasons that a Led Zeppelin reunion took so long to fully materialise is because Robert Plant came to utterly abhor "Stairway to Heaven", calling it "that bloody wedding song."
Conversely, Jimmy Page has derided "Living Loving Maid (She's Just a Woman)" as filler. The song reportedly offended his girlfriend.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience eventually grew to hate their cover of "Hey Joe". Famously, during a televised performance on British talk show It's Lulu, Hendrix cut the song short, announced "We'd like to stop playing this rubbish," and launched into an impromptu cover of Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love".
Alain Jourgenson, leader of the pioneer industrial rock band Ministry, repeatedly voices his complete disgust for their early synth-pop years, especially their debut album With Sympathy. Jourgenson claimed that they recorded "an abortion" due to their record label demanding that they record a synth-pop album. Jourgenson allegedly destroys any copy of the album that he can find.
He also hated the song "Stigmata", which was one of the band's first popular songs. He got over his dislike for the song after a while, but it was very rarely played live during the band's career.
Neil Young is unwilling to rerelease his Time Fades Away live album due to bad memories of the preceding tour and Young's decision to have the album processed on the unreliable "Compumix," an early computerized mixer (which a worker referred to as "the Compufuck"), hindering any hopes of remastering the album. Time Fades Away is currently the only Neil Young album of completely original material that is not reissued on CD.
Kurt Cobain often mentioned in interviews that he thought "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was one of the worst songs he wrote and wondered why even one of what he considered his better songs (like "Drain You" which was played at every Nirvana concert from its writing until the day he died) wasn't a hit like "Teen Spirit".
Cobain also hated the polished sound of Nevermind.
Bobby McFerrin has completely disowned "Don't Worry, Be Happy" because of Misaimed Fandom: he intended it as satire, but most fans of the song took it at face value. When he signed up with a new record contract, he went through great trouble in negotiation to insure that he never, ever, ever, ever has to play that song ever again.
The Beastie Boys started refusing to play "Fight For Your Right" at concerts because the very crowd that they were criticizing with the song adopted it as their anthem.
They have also apologized for that entire album (Licensed to Ill) due its misogynistic, homophobic, and generally irresponsible lyrics. Their work has become a bit more classy since then. This has led to other protests about missing the point that their early lyrics were satirical and exaggerated, and they're not fun anymore.
Cage recorded a violent, drug-oriented album called Movies for the Blind. Though considered a underground Hip HopCult Classic by fans and critics, he dismissed it as being too random and fragmented, and said that it glorified drugs.
Billy Joel got sick of "Piano Man" for a time and refused to sing it in concert. He got over it, though the audience tends to save him the trouble of singing it when he plays it nowadays. And reportedly, he's not any too fond of "Just the Way You Are," either, because it's a love song to someone he ended up divorcing. Joel also retired "Uptown Girl" (another love song to an ex-wife) from his stage show for a long time, but he eventually reintroduced it.
Five Iron Frenzy came to hate "Combat Chuck" and completely stopped playing it at shows. Eventually, on their farewell tour they reinstated it as part of the "Medley of Power Ballads and Bad Taste".
And they even expressed their hatred here, replacing the last part of the lyrics in the medley with "This song sucks/Put it back, Put it back."
Stephen Sondheim has often expressed disdain for his West Side Story lyrics, especially "I Feel Pretty". In Time magazine, he commented to the effect that the song in question sounded more like Cole Porter than anything an urban Latina would be likely to sing.
Gustav Holst had this kind of feeling towards The Planets Suite because it overshadowed his other compositions.
He even refused to write a piece for Pluto after it was discovered. He ended up being vindicated in that choice since Pluto is no longer considered a planet.
Similarly, according to The Other Wiki, Edvard Grieg referred to his famous In the Hall of the Mountain King as an "infernal thing reek[ing] of cow-pies and provincialism." He also had an Old Shame in the form of a symphony in C minor.
Brazilian band Los Hermanos made success with a catchy pop-rock song named "Anna Julia", and the band eventually grew a hatred for this song. Amazingly, the closest circle of fandom also hates it, probably because it's "too commercial". Apparently, music is Serious Business, too.
Also from Brazil, Herbert Vianna of Os Paralamas do Sucesso doesn't like very much their first album, Cinema Mudo, which he considers full of Executive Meddling.
One of the reasons Tom Lehrer had such a short "active" musical career was that he quickly learned he was bored stiff by the idea of performing the same set of songs over and over and over. Some of his performances only happened because he wanted to visit the place were they were located. (Australia being a major example.)
Noel Gallagher of Oasis describes their third album, Be Here Now, as "the sound of a bunch of guys on coke in the studio not giving a fuck." He also started to dislike "Roll With It", calling it "appalling".
This is why "Roll With It" doesn't appear on the band's best of album despite being (nearly) their first No.1 single. There are also no songs from Be Here Now although there were a few that could reasonably have been included (most notably "Don't Go Away", which remains one of the band's biggest hits in the US and is reasonably popular back home; Noel considered another, "D'You Know What I Mean?", but gave up since "its length upset the flow of the record"). Liam, incidentally, does like Be Here Now, in a rare case of Broken Base extending to the actual creators.
Noel and Liam Gallagher not agreeing on something? Shocking.
And now Noel states that "We should have never made Standing on the Shoulder of Giants." (''Be Here Now''s successor, widely considered the band's low point), claiming he was burned out and uninspired but Liam pressured him into writing new songs.
Several Beatles have tried to disown The Beatles or their work at some point in their solo careers.
John Lennon says "I don't believe in Beatles" at the climax of "God." This sentiment is also expressed in some of his writings: "they picked on Yoko, so..."
Early on, Paul McCartney was so desperate to distance himself from The Beatles that his 1973 college tour included no Beatles material—at a time when he didn't have much solo material. Possible subversion later—in the '80s, Paul was presumed to be trying to distance himself from the Beatles when he was also heavily covering his part of their work.
George Harrison said that his biggest break was getting into the Beatles, and his second biggest break was getting out of the Beatles.
John, George and Ringo have all gone on record as utterly detesting "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," partially because Paul insisted on recording it and re-recording it so many times, and partially because John and George considered it "granny music" to start with. Ringo, on the other hand, is on record as stating that he loathes the song because of the excessive-to-the-point-of-creepy dissonance between the song and its lyrics — what seems like a cute pop ditty is actually a celebration of a serial killer of the Ted Bundy type.
Also worth noting is John's parody of Paul's biggest hit "Yesterday": "Yesterday / I'm not half the man I used to be / That's because I'm an amputee..." Supposedly John never cared for the song and didn't particularly like having his name on it.
Paul and their producer George Martin did originally want to release it as a solo song, but Executive Meddling proved otherwise.
Jane Asher never wants to talk about her relationship with McCartney anymore. So don't ask her.
John wasn't fond of the way "Help!" (the song) turned out, as it's lyrics were meant to be serious. He wanted it to be a piano ballad.
John was also unimpressed with the popularity of "Hello, Goodbye!" saying "'I Am The Walrus' was the B side to 'Hello, Goodbye!'"
Elton John's 2002 hit "This Train Don't Stop Here Anymore" is about an aging, weary and lonely rock star, heavily implied to be John himself, reflecting cynically on his life, career and music. While the song is about his life in general, the first verse in particular has some very snarky things to say about his music:
All the things I've said in songs All the purple prose you bought from me Reality's just black and white The sentimental things I'd write Never meant that much to me
The video for the above — based around a young Elton John preparing for a gig, and dealing with fans and hangers-on backstage, where it is clear that he is simply going through the motions with little real enthusiasm — further adds to this reading.
Elton has openly expressed displeasure with his 1986 album, Leather Jackets, claiming it was "one bag of coke after another" and that he was "not a well budgie" when he recorded it. Taupin has voiced displeasure of 1997's The Big Picture due to its slick production values. Elton has also described 1973's Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player as a disposable "bubblegum album" he recorded under pressure while sick with glandular fever and on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
A much older example: Frederic Chopin never wanted Fantaisie-Impromptu to be published because of its similarities to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and asked his friend Julian Fontana to burn it (the Impromptu, not the Sonata). However, after Chopin's death Julian published it anyway and since then it's become one of Chopin's most well-known melodies. One can only wonder what Chopin would be thinking from beyond the grave...
Ludwig van Beethoven himself is said to have been exasperated with the success of Moonlight Sonata, saying "Surely I've written better things".
Novelty songs, when they are recorded by artists who primarily do serious work, almost invariably become a major thorn in the side of that artist. Nobody likes seeing the serious compositions they worked so hard to bring to life ignored in favor of some silly thing they did as a joke.
Chris Rice has expressed great disdain for his frequently requested "Cartoon Song".
Scooby-Dooby-Doojah.
Ask David Bowie what he thinks of "The Laughing Gnome"... if you're tired of life.
Steve Taylor, another Christian artist, didn't dislike his song "Lifeboat" until his audience kept screaming for it every night of that album's tour. Since the video featured Steve wearing drag to play the teacher, that was expected of him to do on stage as well, which Steve greatly enjoyed.
King Crimson refuse to play anything from their first few albums live for fear of "...becoming old dinosaurs." Aside from official pronouncements, the period between Islands (4th album) and Lark’s Tongues in Aspic (5th album) marked the permanent departure of lyricist Peter Sinfield, along with every other band member (and writer) save Robert Fripp himself, and the adoption of a completely new musical style, with a different instrumental line-up. It would be reasonable to infer that royalty considerations, difficulty in adapting the music for the new lineup and desire not to revisit an era that was so carefully abandoned have all played a part.
This has not stopped Fripp in recent years from overseeing extensive remasters of the early albums. He'd probably deny that money was the prime consideration...
Frank Loesser was rather annoyed about "Thumbelina" being one of the most popular songs he'd written.
In similar fashion, Eric Boswell (1921-2009) was rather annoyed about nativity hit "Little Donkey" - he’d composed many other songs, many of them witty, satirical, irreverent and rooted in his native Northern England. Plus, people kept assuming that he must have been old when he wrote it in 1959, and hence must have died in the mean time. He did admit liking the way that the royalties covered all his bills, though.
Bloodrock turned away from hard rock on their last two albums (partially due to their original lead singer being replaced by a born-again Christian). During live performances, the band often refused to play their earlier songs with morbid or cynical themes such as "Whiskey Vengeance" and "D.O.A." (their only actual hit).
"American Pie" made Don McLean a success and then just as quickly killed his career. McLean got so annoyed that the one song was all anyone ever wanted to hear from him that he began refusing to play it in concert; naturally, attendance dwindled to almost non-existent levels. McLean was also rather irritated at constantly being asked to interpret the song's admittedly obscure lyrics.
McLean started singing the "Weird Al" parody of his own song during concerts after that song came out.
R.E.M. is trying their best to pretend that "Shiny Happy People" does not exist. The song was not included on the group's best-of despite being one of their highest charting hits, and the band never plays the song in concert. Michael Stipe has openly admitted that he hates the song and refuses to discuss it in interviews.
"Shiny Happy People" has since finally appeared on an official R.E.M. compilation, albiet their farewell release before retiring, "Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011", though the song could be the 'part garbage' part.
Anton Bruckner composed a symphony that he was so disillusioned with that he didn't see fit to assign it a number, and simply fled "gilt nicht" ("doesn't count") on the score. It was later known as the Symphony No. 0.
Paul McCartney seems to have disowned "Spies Like Us", his Top Ten recording from the film of the same name. The song has not appeared on any of the numerous best-ofs Paul has released. To date, the song's only appearance on a McCartney album of any sort is the CD reissue of Press to Play, one of his rarest and least sought-for albums.
This could simply be bad timing. McCartney has yet to release a compilation that includes material past 1984, and "Spies Like Us" came out in 1985.
The song also does not appear on the film's soundtrack album (though to be fair, Varese Sarabande [which specialises in score albums anyway, not song sets] could hardly have been expected to be able to license one of the most famous artists on the planet back in 1985 - or indeed today, Sting and Bryan Adams' presence on the Racing Stripes album notwithstanding).
Vanessa Carlton was sick of only being known for the traveling piano in her music video for "A Thousand Miles", so she had the video for "Nolita Fairytale" start with the piano getting destroyed by a passing taxi.
While it wasn't commercially successful at first, Weezer's Pinkerton gradually developed a large cult following and is still the favorite album of many of their fans. However, after the band returned from a lengthy hiatus in 2001, Rivers Cuomo took to disowning it due to its Creator Breakdown fueled lyrical content and initial commercial failure, refusing to perform any of the material live, and comparing it to "getting really drunk at a party and spilling your guts in front of everyone and feeling incredibly great and cathartic about it, and then waking up the next morning and realizing what a complete fool you made of yourself". In more recent interviews he seems to have more positive things to say about it though, and a song or two from it will still make setlists.
Besides the movie example already mentioned, KISS tries to forget the existence of the Concept AlbumMusic from "The Elder". One of the songs was included in the MTV Unplugged by request of the fans. The band tried playing some of the others in recent years... only to discover they had long forgotten the lyrics.
Leslie Fish's Star Trekfilk "Banned From Argo", about a rowdy Enterprise shore leave, proved very popular over the years both with its original lyrics and with the many, many rewrites others have done to the same tune. At this point, Leslie absolutely will not play it, nor will she abide others playing it or any of the rewrites. On her website, she states that this is her song that she's the least proud of.
Petula Clark was not the biggest fan of one of her big American hits, "My Love." She does perform it from time to time at concerts, though, usually as part of a medley of '60s hits or in a different style.
And be careful in mentioning "Boom Bang-A-Bang" or "I'm A Tiger" to Lulu.
Camille Saint-Saëns thought that his Carnival of the Animals would be so popular that it would make him a one hit wonder and thus ruin his standing as a serious classical musician. he only allowed one movement (The Swan) to be published in his lifetime. He consented for it to be published after his death, and not only did it prove extremely popular, but also gained widespread critical praise for its genius. Today, Saint-Saëns is a classical one hit wonder, known for virtually nothing else (unless you are a classical music aficionado). You probably know at least some of it, even if you think you don't: Many parts of it, particularly The Aquarium movement are now Standard Snippets.
Not quite true; in 1977 he had a #3 hit in Britain with the organ theme from the final movement of his 3rd Symphony. It was disguised as If I Had Words by Scott Fitzgerald and Yvonne Keeley. The song appears, somewhat acoustically modified, over the credits of the film Babe giving it a huge international audience.
And "Danse Macabre" is also well known, even to the general audience.
Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother got to number 1 in the UK album charts and was taken on tour with a full brass section. But, as the 1970s progressed, the band went off the title piece entirely. Their public statements on it (see the Other Wiki) indicate that they consider it badly done, meaningless and pretentious. They have also stated that during that period (between the departure of Syd Barrett and the completion of Meddle) they had no idea of what they were doing or where they were going. Roger Waters has stated that he wouldn't perform it again even for a million pounds. However, it is still quite popular with the fans. David Gilmour's attitude towards the suite has since warmed, and in 2008 he guested on a performance of the suite by a Pink Floyd tribute band, the suite's co-songwriter Ron Geesin and an orchestra.
Pink Floyd have also suffered varying levels of this with "Money", the hit single from The Dark Side of the Moon, Roger Waters being most affected. It wasn't for any of the usual reasons, more that it was symptomatic of a major change in the relationship with the fans. Prior to Dark Side of the Moon, the audience would keep quiet during the quiet pieces and applaud at the end. After the huge success of the album, their vastly increased audiences were a lot louder and rowdier, and spent a lot of time shouting requests to play "Money". (This ultimately led to the incident on the Animals tour when Roger Waters spat on a particularly loud and rowdy fan. And the fan liked it.)
David Gilmour hated nearly all of 1983's The Final Cut, partly because some of the tracks on that album were rejected songs from The Wall and party because Roger had all but taken over at that point. He liked several of them though, and included 'Fletcher Memorial Home' on their self-picked greatest hits double-album.
Air have expressed displeasure with "Pocket Symphony", blaming their work on Charlotte Gainsbourg's debut for taking up all of their creative effort.
a-ha dislikes what is possibly their most well-known song, "Take On Me." Magne Furuholmen stated, "We've done better songs. It's great to be recognized, shame it's 'Take On Me.'"
Simple Minds never liked "Don't You Forget About Me." They dislike it even more now. In fact in the original recording Jim Kerr intentionally slurred his vocal in parts because he hated some of the lyrics ("I'll be around, dancin' you know it baby" for instance).
In recent years Jim has come to appreciate the song, mainly because he loves the crowd reaction it gets and because he has since rerecorded the song to his liking (For instance the Special Mix by Hu-Mate which appears on Live And Rare).
To lesser extent, Simple Minds have never been fond of their debut album, "Life In A Day." Because they felt It didn't really capture their sound, coupled with how poorly it charted, they recorded the "Real To Real Cacophony" album very soon after as a way to make up for it. It was even less successful.
While 853-5937 was one of Squeeze's biggest U.S. hits, both Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook (the band's only constant members and songwriters) hated the song and prevented it from being on any compilations.
Jeff Lynne, leader of Electric Light Orchestra, came to detest the music he wrote for the movie Xanadu, due to how the music was used. He seems to have lightened up about it, though, as he covered Xanadu's theme for the compilation album Flashback.
Sir Mix A Lot, who wrote Baby Got Back, has admitted to being incredibly annoyed by the song, as he has re-written it at least 3 times for different shows and has virtually eclipsed the rest of his career.
Iron Maiden hasn't played any song from No Prayer for the Dying since Bruce Dickinson's departure in 1993, other than "Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter" (and this one hasn't appeared since 2003!). Likewise, the only track from Fear of the Dark that survived in setlists was the title track (Bruce's not-very-popular replacement sung another from that album during his tenure).
On the subject of the 'not-very popular replacement' (Blaze Bayley), you're unlikely to hear many songs from his albums The X Factor or Virtual XI.
Steve Harris also despises the first two albums that the band released. They still play songs from them, but that's not to say they won't call it the "Jurassic period" or something else along those lines.
Meat Loaf, for over 20 years, refused to perform the song "For Crying Out Loud", even when taking audience requests. In 2003 he sang it on his Live from Melbourne album, introducing it by saying he hadn't wanted to perform it for years, his current band hadn't practiced it, and he was out of practice with it. His reasoning has never been mentioned in any interviews. Also, he refuses to sing "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" if it's requested, but does sing it when he feels like it.
Singer-songwriter Mandy Moore regrets her teenage Idol Singer years, and has said that she will provide refunds to anyone who bought her first two albums. Her music nowadays is indie folk-pop.
Apparently she actually did refund someone's money for the album So Real when they called her bluff on a radio show.
Kelly Clarkson has been complaining about the studio including the song "Already Gone" on her album All I Ever Wanted, because the final cut ended up sounding like "Halo" by Beyonce. Both songs were written by the same songwriter (Ryan Tedder) and 'have the same backing track.
David Johansen, lead singer for seminal proto-punk band New York Dolls, recorded the highly popular pop tune "Hot Hot Hot", under the pseudonym "Buster Poindexter". He refers to the song as "the bane of my life"; because of the way that it has so overshadowed all the work he has done before and since, eclipsing an otherwise substantial musical career.
Latin singer Ricky Martin hates "Livin' La Vida Loca." Whenever he performs it now, he does it in a different style.
Gareth Campesinos!, singer and songwriter for Los Campesinos!! has stated that he despises "We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives" and "You! Me! Dancing!" even though they are respectively the band's biggest (and so far only) hits.
He still enjoys performing "You! Me! Dancing!", and especially since he's begun singing the opening verse of Pavement's "Box Elder" during the build up, but the band hasn't played "We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives" in years.
God help you if you happen to say the word "Misfits" within earshot of Glenn Danzig. There is a very real possibility of being physically assaulted.
Until 2004 that is; these days he sometimes plays mini-Misfits sets with Doyle, unsuccessfully tried to reform the band with Jerry Only, and let the 90s version of the band with Michale Graves open for his own band.
"Dance with the Devil" by Cozy Powell. "I only cut "Dance with the Devil" for a laugh, but then it escalated until I felt I was losing credibility..." It led to him quitting music and going into motor racing full time for a few months.
Hawkwind (and particularly its writer, vocalist Bob Calvert) never had a problem with their hit single Silver Machine, but a fair bit of ongoing tension arose over Ian "Lemmy" Kilminster (bass, backing vocal) taking over the lead vocal on account of him having the best voice for that particular song.
Former Hot Hot Heat member Dustin Hawthorne once said of the band's biggest hit, Middle of Nowhere, "I hate ('Middle of Nowhere') and I wish it was never written. I can't deny that it definitely did something good for our career, for sure. But, to me, it's adult contemporary. And it's kind of funny to me, because I grew up playing punk and here I am playing this jackass-sounding song."
The Lemonheads' cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs Robinson": It was a single due to Executive Meddling and became one of their biggest hits, but even at the time it came out they refused to play it live. They've since done live performances of the entire It's A Shame About Ray album and left it off (though it was technically tacked onto that album as a bonus track to begin with).
Ska band Madness really don't like their 6th album "Mad Not Mad", with advertisements for their upcoming twentieth anniversary editions of their old albums implying that they're not going to re-release it, instead deciding to re-release the album "The Madness" which only four out of the seven original members actually contributed too.
Though in the end, "Mad Not Mad" was indeed included in the reissue program.
They also have a dislike for their single "Sorry" and consider it a mistake.
Even though it's one of their biggest hits and the song that got them rolling in the US, Depeche Mode hasn't played "People Are People" live since 1988 because lead songwriter Martin Gore thinks the lyrics are too straightforward.
Also, they've renounced "It's Called a Heart" and "What's Your Name?" as the worst songs they ever recorded.
Additionally, DM have all but disowned A Broken Frame, their 1982 sophomore effort, which they consider to be the worst album they've ever released. It was the only record not represented on their 2004 remix compilation, and has been completely absent from the band's live sets since 1986, save for an acoustic version of "Leave in Silence", which surfaced at a few shows on their 2006 tour. They've also refused to include their Narm-tacular videos from this era ("The Meaning of Love", "See You", "Leave in Silence") on video releases (though, interestingly, they are available on the band's website).
Matthew Good regrets ever writing "Rico". It's often requested at shows, and his animosity towards it is well known, to the point where one of the Matthew Good fan sites sells a shirt with 'RICO' inside the red 'no' symbol. Matt posted a picture of himself wearing the shirt on his Flickr account.
One of Oingo Boingo's best-known songs, "Weird Science", (the theme song of the film and TV series of the same name) was actually despised by the band, who rarely (if ever) performed the song live. Supposedly, the song as it appears on the album was an unfinished version; the band was still working on a final composition when record executives misinterpreted their latest take as the official recording.
Boy George has shown irritation at the Culture Club song "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?". With a few exceptions aside, he refuses to perform the song live on his solo shows.
Was this before or after his legal problems made this song a Hilarious in Hindsight moment for him?
Eminem became so sick of "My Name Is" that after a while, he would only play snippets of it at his concerts - often stopping the song to declare that he was sick of it.
That probably explains the following lyrics
I've created a monster 'Cause nobody wants to see Marshall no more They want Shady, I'm chopped liver!
In "Not Afraid", the first single from his Recovery album has the lyrics "Let's be honest, that last Relapse CD was "ehhhh" / Perhaps I ran them accents into the ground".
Also on Recovery, in "Talkin' 2 Myself", he states that "Those last two albums didn't count / Encore I was on drugs, Relapse I was flushing them out".
British band Killing Joke started with a hard-edged sound in the late 70s, but incorporated synthpop and dance music elements through the 80s. This culminated with synthesizer-driven albums "Brighter than 1000 Suns" in 1986, and 1988's Outside the Gate (a highly controversial release, often regarded by fans as a solo project by singer/keyboardist Jaz Coleman). After some down time, the band reformed with a harder than ever before industrial sound. Still performing today, they don't speak of their 1986 or 1988 releases and have reportedly never since performed any of the material from those two albums.
Is there a Creator Backlash sub-trope for rock bands who were mesmerized in a field of synthesizer poppies, only to later distance themselves somehow from it? Bands such as Killing Joke, Rush, Ministry or Neil Young?
Jo O'Meara, formerly of the pop group S Club 7, went through a stage of wanting to be disassociated with the band and its squeaky-clean image, referring to their music as "total crap." Since then, however, she's reunited with former bandmates Bradley and Paul to perform the group's music on tour.
Helloween refuse to play any songs from the albums Pink Bubbles Go Ape and Chameleon, both of which were released after Kai Hansen left the band, but before Michael Weikath got fed up with Michael Kiske and kicked him out of the band. Fortunately, the fans don't want them to play any songs from these albums.
Speaking of Kiske, he openly hates metal (despite being one of the most iconic voices of Power Metal) and only produces light acoustic music these days. He will, however, appear as a guest on some power metal albums, particularly for Gamma Ray and Avantasia.
Alice Cooper never performs any of the songs off his 1982 album Zipper Catches Skin or 1983 album DaDa live. Both albums were recorded during a period of particularly heavy alcohol abuse on his part and he allegedly has no memory of making them. It's a shame as there are a couple of gems buried in there.
Gerard Way, the frontman of My Chemical Romance has expressed disdain for their first album, and as such, songs from it are rarely played live. He has also stated that he doesn't want to write songs like that anymore because he doesn't want his daughter to perceive him as a "whiny victim."
"Weird Al" Yankovic doesn't like his debut album, mainly because it was rushed and recorded in a very short time. He once said he wishes he could go back and re-record it.
He also doesn't have strong feelings for "Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch", which was pushed onto him by execs to do a Cyndi Lauper parody.
Sergei Rachmaninoff reportedly hated his Prelude in C sharp minor. Harpo Marx has a story in his autobiography about moving into the apartment next door to Rachmaninoff, being driven crazy by his constant piano practice, and having the management be too much in awe of Rachmaninoff to do anything about it. His solution? Constantly repeat the first four notes of the Prelude in C sharp minor on his harp at maximum volume, and wait for Rachmaninoff to ask for a different apartment because he can't stand to live next to "that mad harpist".
In an interview, Rachmaninoff once said that his favorite performance of the C-sharp minor prelude was Duke Ellington's. Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you realize.... Duke Ellington never played the C-sharp minor prelude.
Tchaikovsky reportedly hated The Nutcracker, which is quite possibly his best known composition.
After Lifehouse had a hit with "Hanging by a Moment", it was common at that time for the members of the band to express their anger in interviews about how everyone would leave right after they played that song. Since then, they've had a number of other hits so it didn't happen much longer, but the song is now always near the end of their sets.
Charlie Simpson, leader of the British post-hardcore band Fightstar, would like to pretend he was never a member of the boy band Busted. He did make an exception in 2010 to vigorously deny that he would be joining his ex-bandmates for a forthcoming reunion.
Outside of some Beethoven covers, Vanilla Fudge isn't too fond of their experimental second album, The Beat Goes On, a project force fed by producer George "Shadow" Morton. Bassist Tim Bogert has even gone so far as calling it "the album that killed the band".
Anthony Kiedis, lead vocalist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers doesn't like "The Greeting Song" very much - it only exists because Rick Rubin told him to write a song about girls and cars.
Elvis Presley had a well-documented dislike for many of the songs he was required to record during his movie contract (and for most of the films, too). The book "Elvis: The Illustrated Record" quotes him as once saying during a recording session "What can you do with shit like this?" and refusing an audience request to perform "Viva Las Vegas" during one of his Vegas concerts. Indeed, except for a few exceptions, most notably songs from Blue Hawaii such as "Can't Help Falling in Love" and several songs from his 1950s-era films, Presley generally refused to perform movie songs during his live concerts. He also tended to shuffle off most of his 1950s hits either in medley form or in very truncated, almost joking fashion ("Hound Dog" being the prime example), though this is less likely due to distaste for them as it was a desire to focus on more current music.
The members of Autopsy had mixed success with the band, so they reformed into Hardcore Punk band Abcess, just as their early material was being Vindicated by History. They were less than pleased when all people wanted to talk to them about was the band they just left, causing them to take shots at their old material.
Timo Tolkki expressed in an interview his dislike towards the self-titled album for Stratovarius.
David Bowiedoesn't think well of 1984's Tonight and especially 1987's Never Let Me Down, which followed in the stylistic footsteps of Let's Dance, his biggest-selling album. Never Let Me Down's supporting Glass Spider Tour turned out to be the only time he performed songs from it live. "Loving the Alien" (Tonight) and "Time Will Crawl" (Never Let Me Down) are apparent exceptions, since the former and a rerecording of the latter made his compilation iSelect; the former also appeared in a stripped-down arrangement on the Reality Tour.
And then the line that repeats over the coda, "Mama always said / To get things done / You better not mess with Major Tom", also seem to express resentment over the veneration of "Space Oddity" within his oeuvre.
Although it was released on an EP, the lead track of which was 'Bad Days', Space's record company sent CDs of their cover of 'We Gotta Get Out Of This Place' to radio stations, and it ended up being the song that featured in a car advert, got played on the radio and on TV, and had a video made for it. The band were not pleased and felt that the record company had manipulated them. 'Dark Clouds' also incurred Creator Backlash, probably because it came out around the time Jamie Murphy was having a nervous breakdown and Tommy Scott had lost his voice, plus Tommy sees it as being 'too wacky'. Before they split up, they played a garage rock version of 'Dark Clouds' at a couple of their gigs.
blur, particularly Graham Coxon, are not particularly keen on The Great Escape, the album which served as a rival piece to Oasis' (What's The Story) Morning Glory. Damon Albarn said it was 'messy' and one of what he considered to be the only bad albums Blur had done, and 'Country House' became an embarrassment. It probably doesn't help that the album is associated with the Oasis rivalry and the burgeoning 'lad' culture of the time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they decided to go in a more lo-fi direction for the follow-up, Blur. (That being said, they did play some songs from it at their more recent comeback gigs, including "Country House".)
Lauryn Hill doesn't particularly like her songs anymore, especially the ones from The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. During performances she often perfoms unrecognizable remixes that are either sped up too much, too loud, or both.
Given his taste for the weird, it's not surprising that Captain Beefheart disowned his 1974 albums Unconditionally Guaranteed and Bluejeans And Moonbeams, his two least experimental albums. While he was no stranger to conventional compositions, he felt that the resulting albums were too conventional.
In fact, these albums were blatant sellouts that Beefheart was sure would attract girls and money, but it turned out that the only people who bought them were already fans, who didn't like them. When the albums got bad reviews he suddenly started saying people should return those albums and he'd refund them their money.
Jason Martin of Starflyer 59 can't stand to listen to his first album, Silver, anymore.
Christina Aguilera has all but forgotten her Bionic album (2010). No tour, two singles....
Despite being a fan favorite, "Runaway" has been called by the band Linkin Park as "their worst song" and the band has even gone so far as to retire the song from their concert sets. Frontman and co-lead singer Chester Bennington has shown disdain for the song "One Step Closer" as well.
The Rolling Stones with 1967's Between The Buttons(UK version). One interview has Mick Jagger refer to the album as "rubbish," with the exception of "Backstreet Girl."
Bob Seger refuses to re-release a lot of his early work, which is a pity because the studio version of "Turn the Page" off of Back in '72 is really good.
Fountains of Wayne, the band behind the hit single "Stacy's Mom", have expressed dislike for the song because out of all their songs in all of their albums, the one tongue in cheek song they ever did makes it big. In order to deter attention away from the song, they've stopped, or rarely ever play it live. The fandom tends to agree with them on this notion, arguing that if it weren't for Stacy's Mom, the band would have made it huge by this point.
Prior to "Stacy's Mom", they released a cover of "...Baby One More Time" as a B-Side to a promo single - when it started unexpectedly getting airplay instead of the A-Side, they quickly had the single pulled out of print (though they also put an mp3 of the cover up on their official site to make up for it). They didn't exactly dislike the song, they just thought they were in danger of having their big breakthrough be a novelty cover that they couldn't really follow up. "...Baby One More Time" finally saw official CD release again about seven years later, as part of the B-Side compilation Out Of State Plates
The Foo Fighters have resented their fourth album, One by One, which due to its Troubled Production they consider rushed and mostly subpar. Also, Dave Grohl on the band name:
If I had taken this career thing seriously, I would have thought of something else, as it’s the worst fucking band name in the world.
Lita Roza had a UK number one hit in 1953 with "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window", but her Creator Backlash began before she'd even recorded it - she hated the song so much that she would only, and very reluctantly, agree to do one take, and then refused to sing it ever again.
The members of Christian Rock band Audio Adrenaline, only two or three albums into their career, were rather quick to distance themselves from their first album, going so far as to say they wished they could burn all existing copies of it. They would also collectively groan whenever someone brought up their song "Jesus & the California Kid".
Sandie Shaw hated "Puppet On A String" for decades, although it was a massive hit for her in addition to being Britain's first Eurovision winner - she did have less difficulty with the song in another arrangement 40 years later.
"Ode to Joy" has been popular ever since it was first written by Friedrich Schiller in 1785, but fifteen years after its publication he wrote a letter to his friend Körner saying he regarded the ode as a failure, calling it "detached from reality" and "of value maybe to us two, but not for the world, nor for the art of poetry".
Hair Metal band Warrant are best known for the song "Cherry Pie". But the late lead singer of the band, Jani Lane, went on record as saying that he hates the song (probably because it was written in the men's room in 15 minutes after the label head called and said they needed a song about sex on the album.
Geddy Lee of Rush has been quite critical of the song "Tai Shan" from the Hold Your Fire record. Other songs the band has grown tired of are simply not played live any longer.
John Stainer is mostly remembered for his oratorio The Crucifixion, especially the chorus God So Loved the World. Towards the end of his life he came to dislike both.
Max Bruchs came to despise the Scots Rhapsody (nicknamed by violinists the 'scratch rapidy')
Even at the time of its release, Ozzy Osbourne made no bones about publicly disliking Speak of the Devil, since he had only done it because his contract required a double live album that would include a lot of his Sabbath classics (and perhaps also because most of it came from shows recorded when Brad Gillis of Night Ranger was filling in after Randy Rhoads' untimely death, which had left Ozzy in a lousy mood that doubtless led to even greater self-medication on his part than usual). His versions actually blew away those his former bandmates had cut on Live Evil, but since it went out of print in 2002 he has not seen fit to allow its rerelease in any form, nor does he even include it in his official discography on his website.
At one show of his, Eric Burdon began the arpeggios of "House of the Rising Sun" to great audience applause. After it died down, he turned to the mike and shouted "I hate this fucking song!" Which didn't stop him from doing an inspired, passionate rendition of it.
Doris Day called "Que Sera Sera", "a forgettable children's song."
The Pixies rarely play "Here Comes Your Man," arguably their most commercial song, at concerts, and declined an invitation to perform it on The Arsenio Hall Show, only agreeing to perform if they were allowed to play the decidedly more abrasive "Tame."
Andrew McMahon of Jacks Mannequin and Something Corporate hates performing the nearly 10-minute long ballad "Konstantine" but obliges because it's the song that gets the greatest fan reaction during his shows.
Twisted Sister have unofficially written Love Is For Suckers out of their discography. Released in 1987, the album was originally meant to be a solo record for singer Dee Snider, with backup from friends in other bands, but the label insisted it be a full-on Twisted Sister album. The other members of Twisted Sister aren't actually playing on the album, but they did play a few songs in the subsequent tour. However, the situation lead to the band disbanding afterward, and they never played those songs again upon their 2001 reunion.
Michael Jackson never listened to his own songs. In interviews he said he preferred listening to classical music or Disney songs.
Frank Zappa resented the fad that was created around his Black Sheep Hit "Valley Girl" and never released it on single, nor performed it live. It's only available on his album "Ship Arriving To Late To Save A Drowning Witch" (1982).
Not exactly a creator backlash, as a co-creator backlash, but Zappa never re-released "An Evening With Wild Man Fischer" (1968), a LP he produced for singer Wild Man Fischer. Fischer suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and shortly after the release of his debut record he threw an object at Zappa's baby daughter. He missed, but Zappa terminated their friendship there and then. To this day this record is not even available on CD!
Metallica has openly admitted to not much liking "...And Justice For All", feeling they (especially Kirk Hammett) were trying too hard to be taken seriously as musicians (both musically and lyrically) with the album. This was one of the reasons why the band opted for a lighter and more radio-friendly style during The Nineties and also why only one song (the ironically titled "One") is frequently played live.
James Hetfield also regrets the band's fashion choices during the "Load" years, feeling they were trying too hard to look like U2. He also dislikes the cover art for the two Load albums.
Dave Mustaine of Megadeth openly dislikes the album "Risk", often saying that the album was entirely the result of Executive Meddling. Fortunately for him, most of his fans are in complete agreement.
He's also criticized "Youthanasia", stating that he didn't like the production and the way some of the songs were written (ie. some of its faster songs should've been slower, some of its slower songs should've been faster, etc.). Actually, Mustaine seems pretty aversive towards pretty much everything between "Countdown To Extinction" and "The System Has Failed."
Bruno Mars claimed in a recent podcast that he hates 'The Lazy Song', he's ashamed that he wrote it, and he won't be performing it live anytime soon.
Imani Coppola is not a fan of probably her biggest hit, "Legend of a Cowgirl", though it's mostly due to troubles she had with her label regarding the song. She supposedly hasn't performed it live since 1998.
If you talk to Hank Williams III, do not ever mention his debut album Risin' Outlaw. He's stated in interviews he can stand one or two songs on it and that's it. He considers his real debut to be Lovesick, Broke & Driftin'.
To this day Sammy Hagar is practically alone in disliking Van Halen's video for "Right Now". He wanted it to be less of a concept and more of a straightforward interpretation of the lyrics, since he had worked hard on them and wanted listeners to hear them. In fact, he was so angry that he refused to sing most of the lyrics in the video, even when the titles say "right now, we should pay attention to the lyrics." The director liked that take anyway and kept it.
No Doubt have made a official statement apoligising for their questionable video to "Looking Hot" for it's politically incorrect undertones. It's actually been deleted from their VEVO channel and all subsequent videos of it deleted for a rather stereotypical portrayal of Native Americans.
Fred Durst was so embarrassed by the video for "Take A Look Around" that he banned it in the US.
Theater
Henrik Ibsen was not happy about having to change the ending of A Dolls House. The term he used was "barbaric atrocity". Ironically, due to changing values, the original ending is now perfectly acceptable. The redo is something of a Writer Cop Out. He also did not react well when feminists began lauding him for the play's support of their movement, which he denied.
A similar thing happened with Pygmalion, which higher ups wanted to change the ending so that Eliza and Higgins to get married in the end so it could have a standard happy ending rather than letting Eliza leave Higgins to marry Freddy. Needless to say, George Bernard Shaw would not be happy about the musical adaptation.
The Broadway flop 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue by Leonard Bernstein and Alan Jay Lerner was Bernstein's last and least successful musical; he was so ashamed of it that he didn't let it be recorded in his lifetime. As with Saint-Saëns and "Carnival of the Animals," one number escaped the ban: "Take Care of This House." Years after Bernstein's death, a concert version was issued titled A White House Cantata.
Love Life, a vaguely similar (and somewhat more successful) musical Alan Jay Lerner wrote with Kurt Weill, could not be revived in Lerner's lifetime because of his personal disdain for it.
Older Than Radio: Gilbert and Sullivan really came to resent their trademark comic operettas, claiming they would have liked to have been remembered for their serious works, too.
Video Games
Factor 5, the developers of the Rogue Squadron series, reportedly got sick of making them by the time they finished the third entry. While working on Lair, someone on the staff made a public comment about being glad that they didn't have to make X-Wings or yet another rehash of Hoth. Lair didn't do so hot.
Something Awful forumers who run particularly popular Lets Plays tend to get antsy when they become notorious enough for Tropers to make a trope page for them or their LP(s) and start Gushing about them.
Will Wright defended the changes in SimCity Societies, saying that the series had gotten too complex, and that he enjoyed each one less and less. That didn't go over well.
Keiji Inafune, who played a large role in the Onimusha and Dead Rising franchises, has gone on record say that he absolutely hates his job and wants nothing more than to retire. He also constantly rants about how the Japanese gaming industry is in serious decline.
Mega Man 3, despite being a contender for Magnum Opus of the series, is stated by Inafune to be his least favorite in the series, due to the fact that it was rushed.
Masahiro Sakurai has said that he regrets aiming Super Smash Bros Melee so strongly towards the hardcore gamer crowd, making it inaccessible to newer fans, and calling it a mistake he wouldn't repeat again. Given that most tourney players favor Melee over Brawl (or only prefer heavily-modded versions of Brawl that are specifically designed to make it like Melee), he successfully followed through on this.
Both Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto and director Eiji Aonuma have expressed their regrets in the production of The Legend Of Zelda Twilight Princess. They don't dislike the game at all, but feel that it never turned out the way they had envisioned it. Miyamoto simply stated that he felt it was "missing something", and Aonuma felt that he didn't create the game that was intended to be "120% of what The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was".
Miyamoto wasn't exactly too fond of his involvement in Star Fox 64 either, as stated in an interview found in the official Player's Guide. Again, he didn't hate it, but felt it wasn't what he'd have liked it to be.
Miyamoto isn't fond of F-Zero GX's direction. He stated that he thought gamers were tired of F-Zero, because he feels that it hadn't evolved sufficiently from F-Zero X.
...which turned out, ironically, to be a lie. There are TWO references to cake, but they're subtle, easily missed and nowhere near as in-your-face as the original references. Apart from that, there are no more cake jokes, even to the point of removing cake icons from existing test chambers that re-appear in the second game.
Following their departure from the Crash Bandicoot series, original developers Naughty Dog have given mixed feelings towards other developers' attempts at recreating the franchise. Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells states that "It's a little bit like watching your daughter do porn". On the other hand, character designer Charles Zembillas actually liked Crash's redesign at the hands of Radical Entertainment, actually desiring further involvement in the series while co creator Andy Gavin at the very least praises Crash Bash for staying true to the original games.
Chris Avellone, one of the original creators of Fallout is known to be openly hateful of the more Black Comedy portions of the canon and the fact that games like Fallout New Vegas give the impression of a recovering world, claiming that the whole point of the series was to be a barren, post apocalyptic wasteland where death and anarchy reign and altuirism and all other good qualities are either dead or backfire horribly. He's vented his anger in the Fallout Bible, where he unceremoniously destroyed much of the lighthearted content of Fallout 2, and has threatened to do the same to New Vegas.
Sonic the Hedgehog's co-creator Yuji Naka (who has left Sega) has stated that he considers recent games in the series to not be as fun as earlier titles in the series. He says that the main reason he thinks so is that he feels the games have become too easy.
One of the main developers at Gearbox quit from not just the company, but the gaming industry as a whole out of disgust towards Borderlands getting much of its plot axed.
Computer Gaming World's preview of Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne included the phrase "a breathtaking, original ballet of death", which was promptly plastered over the boxart and every advertisement for the game in existence. The writer of said preview, in his "Scorched Earth" column some time after the game's release, expressed his dissatisfaction that Rockstar had taken a phrase from a preview and attempted to use it to sell people a finished game.
Noa was displeased over the response Elona Shooter got on Kongregate, and the people it brought to the main boards. Many of the people coming in after the first couple weeks would not have the patience to properly learn Elona controls and quirks.
Running With Scissors has all but disowned Postal III and now refuse to sell it. One has to wonder if this isn't due to the delays, the regenerating health and cover system, inclusion of DRM and many other things...
There is an easter egg in Fallout 2 which contains the text "Yes, we know Descent to Undermountain was crap." Both games were released by Interplay, of course.
Al Lowe, creator of Leisure Suit Larry was booted off Sierra some time after the release of Love For Sail. The next two games, Magna Cum Laude and Box Office Bustwere both made without his involvement. He was very grateful. Especially in this case of Box Office Bust.
Lowe's Website: Thank you, VU Games, for keeping me completely away from this latest disaster!
Shinji Mikamiapparently loathes being called the "father of Resident Evil". This was likely due to the fact that after the success of the first game in the series, Mikami was assigned as the producer of the series, which gave him fewer opportunities to work as a game director in subsequent projects, as he explains in this interview.
Yager Development hates the multiplayer mode for Spec Ops The Line, as it was included as part of a corporate checklist, goes against the themes in the game's campaign, and was made by a different studio. Cory Davis, the game's lead writer, has this to say about it:
It sheds a negative light on all of the meaningful things we did in the single-player experience. The multiplayer game's tone is entirely different, the game mechanics were raped to make it happen, and it was a waste of money. No one is playing it, and I don't even feel like it's part of the overall package — it's another game rammed onto the disk like a cancerous growth, threatening to destroy the best things about the experience that the team at Yager put their heart and souls into creating.
This ended up causing a small backlash as people pointed out how unprofessional it is.
Webcomics
Kittyhawk of Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki fame started out with a fairly popular webcomic called The Jar. Sometime around when she was having problems with her domain because of traffic, she took the whole website down. During the downtime between it and SGVY, she came to really, really hate The Jar and absolutely refused to put the archives back up. This seems to have faded recently due to her now selling it on CD format.
In-story example: Justin in Punch An' Pie submitted an absurd story about a bat with a gun to a publisher. They published it. People ate it up. Now he's one of the most popular writers around, and he's sorry he ever wrote that story.
Before Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw gained fame as a video game critic, he wrote several webcomics. In his words, they "came out of a dark time in his life from which he has determinedly moved on without a backward glance."
Moreover, just to make sure no-one would be fooled into thinking he cares about his old works, he has gone on to officially disown them, including every webcomic he ever made, every game made before The Trials of Odysseys Kent and every work of fiction he has written before the age of twenty, encouraging his readers to dispose of them in the nearest possible natural disaster should they ever get their hands on his old work.
This is the rule, not the exception, for virtually any Matt Wilson production (namely, High Score and its animated spin-off Bonus Stage) to date.
A humorous parody happens in an issue of Mac Hall. During a con recap in which about twenty webcomic artists are on stage at once, the others give non sequitur-esque answers (Sluggy Freelance was my grandma's nickname), Ian simply holds up a sign that has "YOUR MOM" on it.
Josh Lesnick seems to feel this way about his older webcomic Wendy, seeing as he's just recently taken the whole thing offline since it's already been there long enough in his opinion. The characters themselves, however, continue to live on in comics such as Girly and whatever22.
The main reason RPG World ended prematurely when it was on the verge of finishing. Creator Ian J. came to resent the direction he had taken the comic and in the end just flat out abandoned it. He did offer anyone interested to come finish it, but when the fans voiced their opinion he told them to "F** K OFF!" and retracted the offer. Leaving the series to rot with No Ending.
Rick Fortner and Rebecca Burg hate the original Job Hunting, the second story in their A Loonatic's Tale series. The final form was hastily edited with unfortunaterestrictions on the amount of weapons and violence (ie there couldn't be any) in order to make it fit a school assignment. They're currently drawing a remake, Rehired, which is the canon version. They use the original version as a barometer of peoples' ability to detect quality and/or speak frankly; anyone who says they liked the original Job Hunting lacks the capacity to offer meaningful criticism.
Bittersweet Candy Bowl, The author got rather fed up at the unsettling number of fan characters in the community and the amount of focus they got.
"Better Days was created when I was a very different person. I had very different views, values, and priorities, and I evolved as a person as I was doing Better Days over the course of six years. There's a lot in Better Days that I wouldn't include if I was doing it today. There's a lot of things that I wrote that I wouldn't have written that way, now. I don't like looking at the old pages. I don't like looking at the old art. It's embarrassing and bad in my eyes. I don't like lingering on the past. It's enough that I've left the archive in place, and find myself having to explain some of the themes and events depicted in Better Days, by a much younger, less mature creator, compared to who I am today."
It is no secret that Tim Buckley ultimately came to utterly despise the characters of Scott the Linux guy and his pet penguin, Ted. Not only has he effectively written them out of the comic, he's gone to increasingly severe lengths to ensure no one knows who they were or even remembers that they even existed, up to and including banning anyone who says that they do remember them or even mentions them in any way.
Recent Word Of God claims it's less despising Scott and more the fact that he was a one-note character that Buckley didn't know what to do with, beyond Linux jokes and his final The Reveal storyline.
James Kochalka discusses it with his son in thisAmerican Elf comic.
Shin-Goji has been slowly purging his website of connections to the K-Girls, which he initially introduced during a "darker period" of his life (before meeting his wife) as an attempt to boost traffic to his comic, culminating in his recent announcement of completely deleting all of their galleries from his server in favor of focusing on his own artistic efforts. Considering that almost all of the girls' creators had long disavowed them as Old Shame as well, this is not entirely surprising.
KC Green has expressed large dislike in recent years for his earlier webcomic Horribleville and his short-lived series Literally All I Do All Day. He says he made them at a time where he felt too negative about life. He also recently tweeted "i have one last copy of horrible ville and i want to set it on fire ".
Lewis Lovhaug has stated multiple times the early chapters of Lightbringer were not very good considering them to have poor artwork and wordy, opinionated, monologues. Later chapters he considers to be a big improvement.
David Willis has grown to really dislike his original webcomic Roomies!, sometimes the art, but mostly how much of a different person he is from then. Instead of distancing himself from it, he has chosen to republish it daily, often gleefully pointing out in the author's commentary how terrible certain elements are.
Web Original
Matt Wilson, creator of Bonus Stage, seems to hate his most famous creation, or at least, all of the fans. He had stated after the end of the series that he hardly, if ever, plays video games any more. Also, he is embarassed by the poor animation quality of many of the episodes, and doesn't find a lot of the jokes funny anymore.
McMaNGOS, creator of the "This Video Contains Win" YouTubeMemetic Mutation, has apparently now come to despise it, to the point of irreversibly replacing the audio with some random song that nobody knows of. This may have something to do with all the imitations it has spawned, and the fact that the fad was forced by McMaNGOS making sequels and demanding that people follow in his footsteps (Although some of them were pretty funny).
This tends to occur to a lot of YTP videos. Most poopers despise the "PINGAS", stating that it is overused and not funny anymore, and Stegblob has said that he only keeps the "Hotel Mario (nouns replaced with PINGAS)" video up because his fans love it so much. Lots of people have incredibly popular poops that they just made as a test or one of their older videos that are filled with things such as unoriginal humour, memes and poor editing. Often, they edit the video title to be something like, "THIS VIDEO SUCKS, STOP WATCHING IT" and block it with annotations.
Ironically audioswapping a video and plastering annotations over it has become a small fad too.
Alvin-Earthworm, creator of Super Mario Bros. Z, has been incredibly annoyed by fans constantly asking him to work on new episodes, to the point where he has completely stopped working on the series. He claims that it's not forever.
He wasn't lying. He's started making him again and most of his fans are listening, seeing as it seemed like they made him quit the internet.
He still updates his deviantART account, although you may wish to be cautious before observing it. The comments sections still partially consist of SMBZ fans asking for more.
He created a second account as well. His first post stated that so much as mentioning SMBZ on that account is a blockable offense.
Not the straightest example, but Brian Kendall has apparently a love/hate relationship with that one flash movie he made. Much of the "hate" part comes from the amount of effort he thought he could put more into this movie.
Serris, the creator of the Darwin's Soldiers universe hates the rebooted Furtopia RP. In fact he has this to say:
Serris: One of the characters is a Fur-dragon in a diaper! Scenes of diaper changing and baby care do not fucking belong in a dark high octane RP! And of course, it under-emphasized the role that the terrorists played in the invasion and gave too much spotlight to the rogue scientists.
In addition, he seems very loath to discuss the original RP, which originated in Furtopia.
John Solomon, the webmaster of the "Your Webcomic Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad" blog, came to loathe his own creation. He made it perfectly clear that he loathed fanboyism, even when it was his own, and was bothered by fans parroting his opinions. He finally deleted the blog entirely. When he learned that The Bad Webcomics Wiki had archived his reviews, he got a little peeved.
Troy Wagner and Joseph DeLage, the creators of Marble Hornets - better known as 'the guys who play J and Alex Kraile' - absolutely HATE the 'Gimme 20 Dollars' meme that spawned from a parody of one of their entires. It's now impossible to go into a Slender Man video without seeing at least one reference to that song in the comments. Troy and Joseph have said they refuse to acknowledge the meme in their videos, and have asked fans to stop referencing the joke to them in emails and responses.
The boys from Everyman Hybrid, however, don't seem to mind, and in fact referenced the meme in the episode One step forward, two steps back. (Although Jeff, the writer of the series, said this scene was written a lot earlier in the series and didn't know it would become so hated.)
It is not uncommon for creators of Abridged Series to grow dissatisfied with early episodes as their series progresses and they become better writers/editors/etc. Often they will remake their old episodes with updated voice acting and visuals, and sometimes the old episodes are completely rewritten.
Strong Bad: "You internet types ruined Trogdor! Just like you did zombies, pirates, ninjas, and Strong Bad! Er, wait, no. Yeah!"
Chuggaaconroy to Steve, and to his early Lets Plays, as he revealed in his Fifth Anniversary-video, stating that they suck pretty bad because, back then, he was so afraid to be himself.
Joel Vitch of rathergood.com, creator of the "Viking Kittens sing 'The Immigrant Song' by Led Zeppelin" flash video, became annoyed by the way the viking kittens became so much more famous than everything else he did put together. The original Viking Kittens/Immigrant Song video has been taken down from his website, and the video he made for Electrix Six's "Gay Bar" had the viking kittens removed and replaced with a hippo and a gorilla.
Brows Held High: Presenter Oancitizen once reviewed the film "The Girlfriend Experience", but later removed it from the site and apologized in a special commentary for the easy jokes he made about female prositution at the expense of the actresses in the film. To this day he claims he can no longer stand behind his review.
The one-shot sketch "Melvin: Brother of the Joker" was badly received; and Doug quickly realized the video was not all that well thought-out, so Doug later had the character Killed Off for Real during one of the site's donation drives.
The Let's Play of Bart's Nightmare he did as The Nostalgia Critic quickly became a target of this from Doug, with him admitting in the following week's review of James And The Giant Peach that he didn't like the video any more than his fans did. He even gets sent to jail for it (and one placed next to the State Home for the Ugly, no less). The Let's Play in general was later included as an entry in one of his "Top Nostalgic Fuck-ups" list.
Pan Pizza stated several times on his tumblr that he hated all of his videos that came before his MLP:FiM review.
The Cinema Snob: Brad Jones has admitted on Radiodrome that he doesn't like his early episodes in his basement, because he had to work under a time limit, was still searching for his style and his timing was way off too. Still, he has no plans of removing or doing them again.
Youtuber Filthy Frankresents the Harlem Shake fad, which he started in this video. It probably has something to do with how the fad became so inexplicably massive, which resulted in it getting tired and unfunnyextremely quickly.
Spoony starts his review of Final Fantasy XIII by apologizing for his negative review of Final Fantasy VIII. He says that even though he still thinks that Final Fantasy VIII is not a good game, he feels that it was better than later installments in the franchise and that he let his personal history with the game cloud his judgement. He also apologized for opening the review with a cheap gay joke and says that deserves flack for that.
MoBrosStudios regretted making his top 20 worst SpongeBob episodes videos due to how miserable they made him, how the videos attracted flamers and trolls, and how people started labeling him as a "Ranter". He even went as far as taking down his countdowns, his Atlantis SquarePantis review, and canceled his top ten best SpongeBob episodes video.
Western Animation
Chuck Jones grew to hate almost all of his pre-1948 cartoons (besides certain shorts like The Dover Boys), so much that he said if he had the choice he would have burned the negatives to all of them.
Many Warner Bros. animators grew to dislike much of their early work, especially the sappy Disney-like cartoons and Buddy cartoons they made from the mid-to-late 1930s.
Additionally several WB staff such as Frank Tashlin expressed dislike for Porky Pig, due to having less flexibility and humor value compared to zanier characters such as Bugs Bunny. According to animator Mike Fontanelli, this resentment still stands with many modern executives at Warner Bros. and is partly why the character is so sparsely used in revival features and merchandise.
Also of note is the esoteric Looney Tunes director Norm Mccabe; according to historian and animator Mark Kausler, in his later years, Norm was extremely modest about his time directing Looney Tunes shorts, dismissing them all as terrible—when a screening was held as ASIFA for his shorts along with him, it was painful for him to watch his own cartoons.
Chuck Jones also had a mixed opinion of his contribution to the Tom And Jerry series, claiming he didn't quite fully understand the characters' dynamic and would have likely done many things different if giving another chance.
Shamus Culhane disliked his sole Popeye cartoon "Popeye Meets William Tell"; in his autobiography, he likened the final product to "putting a bow on a wild boar"—apparently his attempt to bring the polished, disciplined approach of Disney animation into the more comical east coast style of animation Popeye used just didn't mix well, resulting in a very uneven, bizarre short, and this was quite frustrating to him. It may have also been because he never wanted to make a regular Popeye cartoon in the first place, instead wanting to make a short centered around Wimpy, which was vetoed by the Fleischers.
Culhane was also not proud of how his animation on Fleischer's Gullivers Travels was ruined by sloppy inkers and bad in-between work, and that he would have quit if it wasn't for his contract. He also expressed disappointment in how Mr. Bug Goes to Town turned out, believing the film didn't live up to its full potential.
Culhane also despised working on the Hearst Studio Krazy Kat theatrical shorts that he did inking work on. His humble feelings on them are as follows;
"The films were atrocious, the worst crap you can imagine. They never used the characters. Offisa Pup rarely appeared, Ignatz Mouse was not in love with Krazy note This is a mistake on Culhane's part, as it was the other way around in the comics; they never used the desert landscapes. The staff just batted the stuff out as fast as they could for something like 750$ apiece."
Max Fleischer considered Mr. Bug Goes to Town to be a failure, and refused to adknowledge the film as one of his achievements in a 1950s interview—although it may have been because it was the film that contributed to destroying Fleischer Studios and getting him booted out; the fact that he and David Fleischer had a terrible falling out while they were making the film probably didn't help matters either.
He also hated the Made-For-TV Out of the Inkwell cartoons, and was horrified when he first watched them.
Strange as it sounds, some sources claim that Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera hated Scooby-Doo, and only kept the show running because of how insanely popular it was.
Hugh Harman of the Harman And Ising claimed late in his life that he grew to hate all but three of the shorts he made—"The Old Mill Pond", "Blue Danube", and "Peace on Earth".
Ian Pearson and Gavin Blair of ReBoot fame were once famous for the computer animation in the Dire StraitsMoney For Nothing music video. They were proud of their work... at the time, but they despised that they had the suffix title of "Those guys who did Money for Nothing." They showed their feelings in an episode of ReBoot, where two look-alikes for the CGI movers from the video audition at Enzo's birthday party, only to get sandbags dropped on them from high offstage.
Donald F. Glut was one of the few members of The Transformers staff who openly expressed distaste for the series, lambasting its quality as actual art (including the episodes he wrote) and claiming that he only worked on it for the money.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone don't seem particularly proud of the early seasons of South Park, which had the highest ratings of the show's run, but came before its metamorphosis into a satire on current events and pop culture.
They weren't happy with the was "A Million Little Fibers" turned out, feeling the two subplots of the episode didn't work together because it was "weirdness on top of weirdness". They have stated if they could go back and redo any episode, it would be this one.
"The Principal and the Pauper," which retconned Principal Skinner's past, saying instead he had assumed the life of the "real" Skinner and then brushed these revelations under the rug in a blatant reset button. Both Groening and Skinner voice actor Harry Shearer have publicly criticized the episode. The later "Behind the Laughter" episode referred to this one as "gimmicky" and "nonsensical."
"A Star Is Burns," a crossover with The Criticforced upon the show by the network. Groening removed his name from the episode in protest and doesn't appear on the DVD commentary for the episode.
Groening also expresses embarrassment for the Tracey Ulmann shorts for their crudeness. He and the staff were also so appalled by the original attempt at the pilot of the original series "Some Enchanted Evening" (due to it's similar cruder, more abstract animation) that they had it reanimated (the original cut is shown on DVD with commentary from the staff, in which none of them have a single nice thing to say about it between them).
An in-universe example: Homer wrote Flanders a hate song. Said song eventually became an in-universe meme. It's popularity rose to the point where even Homer himself had enough
Disney director Wilfred Jackson was so ashamed of his first directorial effort, a Mickey Mouse short called "The Castaway", that he vowed never to make a film that didn't feel like a Disney picture again.
Walt Disney (the man) hated the 1935 Silly Symphonies short "The Golden Touch" after he finished it he never directed a short again. According to Jack Kinney's autobiography, he allegedly blasted an animator over a mistake and the animator shot back that he was the one who directed The Golden Touch. Walt stormed out—but came back later and angrily warned him to never, ever mention the cartoon again.
Walt also had some dislike of Goofy, as mentioned in Neal Gabler's biography on Walt. According to Gabler, Walt "threaten[ed] constantly to terminate [the Goofy series of shorts] before relenting, largely to provide work for his animators." The dislike most likely stemmed from a bitter falling out that Walt had with Goofy's voice actor Pinto Colvig in the late 1930s; after Disney and Colvig reconciled in the early 1950s there was evidence that Walt had warmed up to the character, even dedicating an episode to him on the Wonderful World of Color television show. It should be noted, however, that Gabler's book cites no source for the claim of Walt hating Goofy.
There is also an unsubstantiated rumor that Walt hated Donald Duck; however, according to "Of Mice And Magic", many of the staff such as director Jack Hannah really did hate working on Donald Duck shorts.
Thurop Van Orman HATED a handful of episodes from the second season of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. So he added a Laugh Track to them, along with a "drawn in front of a live audience" gag.
The Bananaman cartoon series was hated by virtually every cast member that starred in it, as well as Steve Bright, who wrote the Bananaman comic strip. To a lesser extent this also applies to the strip's original artist, John Geering, who liked the series overall but wasn't fond of how his characters had been redesigned.
Tex Avery expressed a dislike for his character Screwy Squirrel, even going so far as to kill him off for real at the end of Screwy's fifth and final short. In a BBC documentary one former animator once told Avery he sent him letters with drawings of Screwy Squirrel on them in the hope that his hero would be more prone to open and read them. As it turned out, Avery simply threw each letter with Screwy's face on it in the trash can!
An in-universe example from Rocko's Modern Life: Ralph Bighead has Wacky Deli created so that he will be released from his contract in order to become a real artist. It doesn't work.
John Kricfalusi of Ren and Stimpy fame has warned his fans not to study his cartoons from the original series. He summed it up saying "For one thing that we did right, there was a million of mistakes". However, when using examples of a well-constructed story and good dialogue, he uses the cartoon "Stimpy's Invention" quite a lot.
He was so embarassed for having directed the "Nurse Stimpy" episode due to the heavy amount of editing it went through as well as how badly drawn it turned out, he ended up crediting himself as "Raymond Spum" at the title card.
He also doesn't like the Adult Party Cartoon episode "Fire Dogs II" for its slow pacing and abysmal timing, although he thought the story and characterizations were fine.
One seems to get that impression watching the 3rd Family GuyStar Wars specialIt's A Trap! with Stewie quickly mentioning they were going to do Return of the Jedi and Peter sighing and saying "Let's get this over with." followed by the opening scroll turning into a massive rant about how they (they being Seth MacFarlane and the rest of the crew) never wanted to do this nor Something Something Something Dark Side and only did so so Seth could do other projects without them (them being 20th Century Fox) complaining. Given that Family Guy does a lot of throwaway lines, it can be hard to tell they really meant it, at least until you listen to their DVD commentaries; turns out they meant every word of it.
Episodes of Family Guy use tons of Self-Deprecation gags about the show or other works the creators are responsible for (the Star Wars specials also include several jibes to Seth Green's Robot Chicken). Granted given the overall tone of such gags (and the fact they are expressed by less than sound individuals in the show) it may also count as Take That, Critics!.
Phil Vischer - upon giving an interview regarding the series Jelly Telly - mentioned that he now considers his earlier series, Veggie Tales, as something of a failure because it stressed basic morals while largely downplaying the Christian beliefs behind those morals; Vischer says that Jelly Telly was created to rectify this problem.
Though the Awdrys co operated a lot with early seasons of Thomas And Friends, they voiced some dislike for some of the show's original stories, due to the unrealistic plot points occasionally used (particularly the episode "Henry's Forest"). Wilbert Awdry in particular wrote letters of disgust to series writers David Mitton and Britt Allcroft, accusing them of becoming "big headed" with his work. Christopher Awdry also resented having to write new installments of The Railway Series with Thomas as the main character to tie in with the show's popularity. He wrote "More From Thomas The Tank Engine" solely to give the show more material for episodes, and was rather disatisfied with it.
Lauren Faust also came to dislike the "Equal Fights" episode of The Powerpuff Girls, feeling that she had tried too hard to incorporate adult-oriented subject matter (namely how to distinguish genuine feminism from Straw Feminists) into a children's show in a way that didn't do it justice.
Miscellaneous
Vincent Connare, designer of the "Comic Sans" typeface, sympathizes with its detractors. Interestingly, he "credits" the lettering on Watchmen (done by artist Dave Gibbons) with part of the inspiration for the font. Dave Gibbons is... conflicted about it.
Fan Art naturally gathers more popularity than original art because of the fans of the respective series. This could mean that a single good piece of fanart can be the single most popular item in a user's entire gallery. Reactions to this vary from indifference, to bitterness, to internet drama.
There's at least one example of an artist being rather dissapointed that they got a Daily Deviation... on a joke piece they made ABOUT Daily Deviations. Understandable in that they had so many examples of attractive, interesting art in their journal that had always been overlooked.
Also, Stamps - little things (made to look like postage stamps), which usually have something like a quote, or a refernce to a show, or a particular stance on something (you name it, there's probably a stamp for it), which generally get a lot more favourites and comments than any other work in someone's gallery.
Moderately-popular deviantART cartoonist BrokenTeapot initially used to draw comics and characters involving Fetish-Fuel driven material, mostly related to Hypnofetishism as either his own pieces or fan-commissions. Somewhere along the line he has since become ashamed of them in general, criticized the attraction and attention he had gotten from said fetishes, and went on to draw almost predominantly video game-related parody one-page comics. Later, he would begin a Castlevania-inspired spoof called "Nosfera" which become relatively popular. Soon after eventually finishing the ongoing comic, he would go on to write a surprising post about how it "sucked" and stated he would begin doing it over. He's currently in the process of doing just this.
This is also often the case for YouTube users who upload an extremely popular fad video that took no effort, only for it to overshadow their more elaborate videos:
Dom Fera, of Lazer Collection fame. The series often completely overshadows the rest of his work. He expressed this sentiment in Lazer Collection 4. That said, he doesn't hate the Lazer Collection, he just thought it was ridiculous that people expected him to put out 4 so soon after 3.
Illusionist David Copperfield is reportedly not happy with his 10th TV special "The Bermuda Triangle." On a DVD commentary he mentioned that he didn't like the final illusion (to be fair it is VERY hokey) and that it came "during a very rough part of my career." However, the special did feature one of Copperfield's signature tricks...The Death Saw.
Albert Einstein considered the cosmological constant term he added to his theory of general relativity to be his "biggest blunder", as he put it in in an attempt to make his theory consistent with a static universe. Shortly after, Edwin Hubble published observations that the universe was in fact expanding, in accordance with the original theory of general relativity… However, as of circa 2000, a nonzero cosmological constant has become part of the standard model for cosmology, as there are stars that are older than the age of the universe as computed using original general relativity (if expansion is accelerating, then it was previously slower, and it would therefore have taken a longer time than predicted by original general relativity for the universe to expand to its present size).
Spen King, the designer of the Range Rover, said in an interview in 2004 that his creations had become "oversized toys for pretentious city slickers" and that people who drive 4x4s in town were "pompous and stupid". He added that his creations were "never intended as a status symbol but later incarnations of my design seem to be intended for that purpose".
The late Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie (also known as Ras Tafari Makonnen) disliked the eccentric Jamaican religion of Rastafarianism, which worship him as a god. He did not create the religion and was a strong Ethiopian Orthodox Christian. He famously once implored the prime minister of Jamaica to "help these people" during a visit.
Cosplayers—particularly those who make their own costumes—do this quite often. It's not uncommon for such cosplayers to look back at their older cosplays and go, "what the hell is this?!", even if others find these cosplays to be impressive anyway. Doesn't help that they'll probably have photos of their cosplays floating around on the Internet.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6. They even created a website dedicated to getting people to drop it.
Surrealist artist Rene Magritte once titled a painting of a pretty blue sky with clouds◊ "The Curse". Scholars have debated what kind of "curse" may have prompted that title, but some believe that it refers to Magritte being thoroughly sick of how his other works featuring pretty blue skies with clouds were the ones that were most popular.
Vince Lombardi once said "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." He later said "I wish I'd never said the thing. I meant the effort... I meant having a goal... I sure didn't mean for people to crush human values and morality."
