Nicholas Meyer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nicholas Meyer (born December 24, 1945 in New York City, USA) is a film writer, producer, director and novelist best known for his involvement in the Star Trek films. He is also well known as the director for the landmark 1983 TV-Movie The Day After, for which he was nominated for a Best Director Emmy Award. In 1977, Meyer was nominated for an Adapted Screenplay Academy Award for adapting his own novel, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, to the screen.
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[edit] Star Trek Films
Meyer, along with writer/producer Harve Bennett, is one of two people credited with re-vitalizing and perhaps saving the Star Trek franchise after the problems of the first film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, almost caused Paramount Pictures to end the series. Paramount had been unhappy with the creative direction of the first film, as well as the cost overruns and production problems. Bennett, a reliable television producer was brought in to help get the films back on track, and this is where Meyer enters the picture.
Introduced to Bennett by a friend at Paramount, Meyer was brought in as a potential director for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but immediately also became involved in re-writing the draft scripts for the film, which no one had yet been happy with. He impressed Trek's actors and producers by delivering a much improved draft in only 12 days. In fact, the reason he is uncredited as a writer on the film is because the draft had to be completed so quickly, he agreed to forgo the negotiation of any sort of contract or credit in order to ensure he could complete the draft in the needed time frame. He went on to direct the film and his stylistic touches, particularly giving the film an extremely Naval feel, created a lasting impression on Star Trek, and those influences can be seen in every subsequent Star Trek production. Meyer and Bennett together created a film that was extremely engaging while also being cost-efficient and avoiding the production fiascos of the first film. The Wrath of Khan went on to be a monumental success at the box office, and is considered by many to be the best Star Trek film to date.
Meyer subsequently went on to co-write the screenplay for the fourth Star Trek film, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home along with Bennett. For that film, Bennett wrote the first and fourth acts which center on the action in the 23rd century and Meyer wrote the second and third acts which take place in 1986 San Francisco. Meyer has stated that one of the most enjoyable aspects of working on this film was getting the chance to re-use elements that he had been forced to discard from his earlier film, Time After Time. Star Trek IV proved to be a massive box office success, and stands to the present day as the most successful of the Star Trek films. It is also notable in that it managed to achieve mainstream crossover success, winning praise from general moviegoers as well as science fiction and Star Trek devotees.
In 1991, Meyer again returned to the Star Trek franchise for the sixth film in the series, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. He developed the story with Leonard Nimoy and co-wrote the screenplay with longtime friend and assistant Denny Martin Flynn. He directed the picture, which was the final film to feature the entire classic Star Trek cast. This film was again a major success at the box office.
Meyer's Star Trek films (II, IV, and VI) were essential in establishing the famous Star Trek legend that the even-numbered films are uniformly better than the odd-numbered films, a theory which seemed to hold true until the tenth film, Star Trek: Nemesis was poorly received by critics and fans alike and turned in a dismal box office performance.
[edit] Non-Trek Work
In addition to his work on Star Trek, Meyer has written several novels, and has written and/or directed several other films.
Meyer wrote three Sherlock Holmes novels: The West End Horror, The Canary Trainer, and The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. The latter was Meyer's most famous Holmes novel and the project for which he was best known prior to his Star Trek involvement. It was also adapted into a 1976 film, directed by Herbert Ross, for which Meyer wrote the screenplay.
One of Meyer's best known non-theatrical film works was the 1983 made-for-TV movie The Day After, depicting a nuclear attack on America. Meyer had decided not to do any TV work, but changed his mind after reading the script.
Meyer also penned a revisionist version of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine titled Time After Time, which Meyer published under a pseudonym and later adapted into a motion picture of the same name, which he directed. This film is perhaps Meyer's most famous non-Trek film effort.
[edit] 21st Century Work
Meyer teamed up with film producer Martin Scorsese in 2006 to write the screen play for Scosese's adaptation of the Edmund Morris biography of Theodore Roosevelt, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, which won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize. Leonardo DiCaprio who worked with Scorsese on Gangs of New York, The Aviator and The Departed is currently slated to play Roosevelt in this movie. This movie which will trace the early life of Roosevelt, originally a weak and asthematic young boy, born to privilege, but dedicated to personal achievement, political reform and the heroic ideal.
