Ok, and all this time I thought Gage Skidmore was a "fake" name like Alan Smithee[1] that photographers who didn't want to dilute their own brand used to get their work out. That it is a real person, and has such a wide swatch of candidate pictures, is pretty cool.
The film's creation set off a chain of events which would lead the Directors Guild of America to officially discontinue the Alan Smithee credit in 2000. Its plot (about a director attempting to disown a film) eventually, and ironically, described the film's own production; director Arthur Hiller requested that his name be removed after witnessing the final cut of the film by the studio.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee