Happy Sad Confused - Nicholas Meyer

Episode Date: September 8, 2016

Nicholas Meyer is a novelist, a screenwriter, a director, and most importantly to Trekkies, the man perhaps most responsible for resurrecting Star Trek in the 80s. The director of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" reminisces with Josh about his life, influences, and all things Trek, including his long-awaited return to the franchise as a writer on "Star Trek: Discovery". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey guys, and welcome to another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. I am Josh Horowitz. Welcome to my podcast. Thanks for tuning in, as always, guys. I always say tuning in Sammy. I need to, like, stop myself. No, it's part of your charm. Really?

By using antiquated phrases that nobody else uses? Yeah. You were not working the microphone. I'm sorry. It's the new mics. We have new mic stands. I don't even know. You have to sit up very straight.

Well, I think we're going to very soon move through this wall that I'm gesturing to that people can't see into an actual podcast studio to record these introses. What do you mean out of the sewer where we normally record it? Recur my office is sewer? That's very rude. So hopefully the professional quality of the audio at least, not the content. The content will remain shitty and amateur hour. If not get worse.

Probably. But the audio quality I think will improve, which is a nice thing. And yeah, but there's some new bells and whistles coming. soon to Happy Say I Confused, but that's for the future. Right now, I should say that this week's episode is a kind of a personal love of mind in that it's a Star Trek episode. It's a very Star Trek-centric episode, and Star Trek is something that I grew up obsessed with.

Yes, I went to Star Trek conventions. I know it's shocking. I didn't know that. Sit down. You're already sitting down. Are you shocked at all? No. I love Star Trek.

And the guest this week is a filmmaker, a writer and director by the name of Nicholas Meyer. Now, if you like Star Trek or if you love Star Trek, you definitely know who Nicholas Meyer is because he's arguably the filmmaker that kind of resuscitated Star Trek back in the 80s. Star Trek for context had, you know, went off the air. They made a Star Trek the motion picture, which made a lot of money but was not really well received. It was kind of really a stiff, dry movie, frankly. And then this guy, Nicholas Meyer, comes in. young filmmaker, one film under his belt called Time After Time,

another good movie I recommend, and directed Star Trek 2, The Rath of Khan. He also, frankly, and he'll tell the story, he basically wrote the movie, but didn't get credit for a variety of reasons. And Star Trek 2 remains, I think, by most people's estimation, the best of the Star Trek movies. What do you think?

Absolutely. No brainer. No brainer. Star Trek 2, The Rath of Khan. I watched it again recently, is just a purely entertaining movie. And it works, I think, also, frankly, if you're not even a Star Trek fan. It was so good that they, you know, JJ Abrams kind of remade it in a way in Star Trek into darkness.

Benedict Cumberbatch did his con, et cetera. So Nicholas Meyer, all of which to say, Nicholas Meyer is a really, really talented and interesting guy. He's, I was telling you before, he's a born-in-bred New Yorker. Love that. I love that.

He's, and had a very interesting career in that, like, Beyonce. Star Trek, and he contributed to three different Star Trek films. He directed two of them. He co-wrote on another one. It's also, as I said, he directed a really interesting movie called Time After Time, which is super entertaining. He did a bunch of these, like, stories, whether in novels or in film, where he kind of threw together different characters from literature or real life. So time after time is about H.G. Wells, meeting Jack the Ripper in kind of a thriller. It's really good. You should see it. So it's got Malcolm...

I have homework. Malcolm McDowell. Love. Great. David Warner, do you know who David Warner is? You would recognize him. He's a great character actor, and he's a really scary, Jack the Ripper, and Mary Steenbergen. Oh.

And this is the movie that Mary Steenbergin and Malcolm McDowell met and fell in love. And they got married. I think they had a kid. Yeah. Didn't last. I mean, the kid lasted, but not. Stark. A kid didn't last.

No, you think it's a director, too, actually. Anywho. Also is a filmmaker. responsible for, among other things. He directed the day after, which was like this, I remember when I was a kid, it was this TV movie about like a nuclear holocaust, and it was like, I think it remains like the most watched TV movie ever. Your favorite movie.

Super funny. Super fun. No, but all of which is to say, Nicholas Myers are a super interesting guy responsible for a lot of stuff that was important to me growing up as a film fan, as a film geek, as a Star Trek geek and he was in town for Star Trek 50th celebration. So there was a giant thing at the Jacob Javitt Center over last weekend. And they actually asked me to moderate this Q&A with him before a big screening of Star Trek 2. So I basically spent like half the day with him. He came here for the podcast. Your heart burst. It was kind of fun. And it was like, um...

Did you ask him all the burning questions? There were some burning questions asked. You'll get some, some burning questions asked. There's also a little hint. He's a little hint. He He doesn't, I mean, he's not able to spill much, but it's exciting in that he has returned 25 years after his last contribution to Star Trek. He is a writer and consulting producer on the new Star Trek TV show. Oh, baby. I know. So he's hard at work on that right now. Star Trek Discovery is coming to the airwaves, I believe, January next year. And I think they have some big announcements coming soon, too. The word on the street is that the cast is going to be announced soon. And again, for any Star Trek fan, the fact that it's coming back to TV. where obviously had a was birthed and really belongs is really exciting and the fact that Nicholas Meyer is a part of it is awesome so that's the Nicholas Meyer preamble I think this conversation works for Star Trek fans but also he's a he's a very erudite and yeah I feel like I have to use words like that talking about him because he's a he's a super smart guy and a lot of literary references etc that like I pretended to understand but I think for any writer

director, film fan, TV fan, this conversation will hopefully be very entertaining. What else to say? I love that his mom calls during it. Yeah, I think I kept that in there. Yeah, his mom, who, I mean, he's 70 years old, so you can do the math, his mom's...

I really, that really... And it seemed like a conversation I would have with my mom. Like, it was very, like, quintessential, like, mom call. So, very sweet. And, yeah, so... And then, yeah, as we tape this,

I'm about to jet off to the Toronto Film Festival You're going to go cross the border Crossing the border Your Canadian accent Crossing the border Crossing the border And so at the next episode of Happy Second Fused If All Goes Going to Plan

will be kind of a special episode taped so special From Toronto with a bunch of really cool people that I don't want to mention yet because you never know. But some really cool folks that I'm talking to there. So look out for that and go see lots of movies.

It's a good time. The good movie season is starting. I was going to say, I feel like it's starting to get like, because the summer was not so good. Summer wasn't the best. But I've seen a lot of, like I'm screening a lot of movies right now. And there's a lot of stuff at Toronto that I'm really excited to see. So I think we're in for some good things.

And even this week, I haven't seen Sully yet, But Sully, as we tape, the Sully opens on Friday. Conteist Wood always delivers. Tom Hanks always delivers. And then I would mention one new release that opens this week that I saw at Sundance that I think is worth your time. It's Other People, starring Molly Shannon. And it's directed by a guy named Chris Kelly, who's, I think he's the new headwriter at S&L. And it's produced by Adam Scott, former Happy Seek-Confused guest.

and um shout out shout out but it's good it's a it's kind of like a dromedy I mean it sounds kind of like by the numbers in that like it's about Molly Shannon playing a mom who's suffering from cancer and her kid comes home etc but it's

but it's well done and funny and heartfelt and Molly is awesome in it I'm calling her Molly as if I know her but like she's no not really but she's she's great and um you know hopefully she's one of those kind of performances that hopefully, like, lets her do other cool things.

I hope so. I love Molly Shannon. She's the best. She's the best. She's the best. Shout out to Molly Shannon. The Nicholas Meyer and Adam Scott. This is all love on the podcast today.

So that's the preamble for this week's show. As always, hit me up on Twitter, Joshua Horowitz. I feel like I haven't said that enough lately. Let me know what kind of guests you want to hear. Remember to rate and subscribe. I don't say that enough. R&S. On iTunes.

That does. make a difference, guys, it would mean a lot to me and to Sammy, right? Yeah, it really would. Aw. Any social media offerings you want to give up? No, Sammy Heller. Let me know your favorite, something you learned on Happy Side Confused this week. One to grow on.

Yeah, a more you know a moment that you had this week while you were listening. And now, hopefully you get something out of this. I know I did. Here's my conversation with a filmmaker, writer, super smart dude, Mr. Nicholas Meyer. It's like a master class. Welcome to Masterclass with Nicholas Meyer.

This could be more casual, sir. There's no official introduction. Oh no, you've fallen to sleep already. Nicholas Meyer has fallen to sleep in my office. There's no introduction? There's no introduction. We just like start talking and that's it. Like human beings.

Are we talking now? I think we're recording. This is. the gold this this is that the actual you're okay you're being podcasted so um so okay so okay so i was going to do my talking dog joke but no it's not too late no there are several of them we'd have okay we'll get we'll get to those um thank you so much for coming to my office on a relatively quiet uh day in lower manhattan um it's good to see you sir it's good to meet you thank you we're spending a lot of quality time together because as we take this um in a few hours

we're going to be screening Star Trek 2 at this ginormous Star Trek convention at Jacob Javits. I can't wait to see how it comes out. I put it over it. I think Spock dies at the end. Oh, no. But it's honestly a great thrill to have you here because, you know, as you can tell, I've just moved into this office, so I'm still putting things together.

But, like, I am certainly someone that was the right age for when you came into your own as a writer-director and your films I've seen many, many times, so this is a rare treat. Thank you. So, first of all, can we just do a little background? I mean, I believe you grew up here in the city, yes? Yeah, I was born on 66 at York, a New York hospital, and you can see the plaque. There you go.

If you've had enough to drink. And you spent your formative years here? Yeah, I went to PS-183, then I went to the Ethical Culture School, then I went to the Fieldston School in Riverdale. Very nice. I'm a born in a New Yorker myself, on the west side. So we're like... We can still be friends. We can still talk, right? And so what did your parents do? And was there... My father was a psychoanalyst, and my mother was a concert pianist.

A lot of... So that begs the question, I guess, what the... I mean, was arts kind of a big part of your childhood? Was there a lot of theater? It was a total part. It was a total part. I was spoon-fed everything. I was taken to the ballet and the opera and plays on and off Broadway and lots of movies and music was omnipresent my mother practiced the piano eight hours a day in fact my crib when I was a child was under the piano which I think is why I'm a leg man now did you um what were the formative sort of viewing experiences of your childhood whether TV or film or the ones that stick with you to this day when you think back to the stuff that really well it's interesting that you that you say this because

my father, the shrink, once said that I was a sort of poster child for something called the counterphobic experience. And counterphobia is where the object feared turns into the object loved. And he gave me two examples of this, and one of these had to do with my love of ships, which began with a counterphobic experience. I was in my mother's arms standing underneath the forward funnel of the Queen Mary. as we were on our way to Europe. It was like, I was two years old. And the whistle on that thing went off.

And I don't know if you've ever heard one of those whistles, but you could hear it all over New York. And I jumped a mile. And ever since then, I've been infatuated with boats and the number of times I wound up crossing the Atlantic on various ocean liners, even as an adult, I just couldn't get enough. And when you get to Star Trek,

and it's really all about ships, It's just, so that was a counterphobic experience. And the other one was the first movie that I ever saw. We did not originally have a television. And I was taken around the corner to the Cinema One to see, or maybe it was the baronet or the coronet. Laurence Olivier in a movie called The Beggars Opera. The Beggars Opera, which dates from 1728, is really the first musical. Right.

And later Brecht and Kurt Vial remade it as something called the Three Penny or the Thrupney Opera. But it originally, and Peter Brooke still alive, I think when he was 23 years old, directed this movie, which may not be a very good movie, I don't know, because I ran out screaming terrified in the middle of the movie because they were going to hang Captain McKeith. And the fact that it all had music, far from making it a less vivid or real experience, only served to make it more real, which is really what opera does anyway.

Opera's like life on LSD or something. And eventually I became infatuated with movies, with that movie, and with Lawrence L. Olivier with that actor. I can probably turn this now. That's all good, yeah. So, yeah, those are counterphobic experiences, and they resulted in my lifelong love of movies and ships. Those are two examples. What did you imagine? What was the first inkling of what you wanted to do when you were a kid? I mean, were you dreaming of being a writer, being in the arts at all, or was there

other dreams before that? Oh, I think I wanted to be president and I wanted to be a fireman and I can't, you I had the usual things. I never decided when somebody says, when did you want to be a writer, I've never decided any such thing. Something I always did. I was always scribbling. Originally, I think I used to make up stories

and my father would write them down for me. And then when I was about five or six or something, he said, here, I'm tired of doing this. Write your own. And I've basically been scribbling ever since. And as far as movies were concerned, I was totally in love with movies. I was obsessed with Jules Verne. I think I bonded with the Nautilus in Disney's 20, which I still think is Disney's best movie.

But that became the mothership when I think I was accidentally left in the theater all day and saw it about 20 times. And then when the movie verse... version of around the world in 80 days came out. I was taken for my birthday to see this. I don't know if you ever saw this around the world in 80 days. The Mike Todd said it was a fantastic, fantastic movie. And it was a roadshow picture.

It was a hard ticket. And there was a program book, which I still have, which you could buy for $2. It was a hardcover book about the making of the movie. and in it was an article that said you two can make a motion picture no previous experience necessary at the heart clearly

and this was about Mike Todd whose only movie this had been and he was killed later in a plane crash unfortunately but it was a sarcastic article all you need is 68,000 people in six countries and four million dollars and you can make a movie but I was 11 years old and I didn't get the sarcasm part

I just thought, hey, you two can make a motion picture. How old were you? That was about 11. Yeah. And having seen this movie and having had it's like a religious experience and my father had the same experience and I know that he had it because he came out and immediately went to the box office to buy another set of tickets to this thing. so I said to my father I said pop I want to I want to make a movie and not being the sharpest knife in the drawer the movie that I wanted to make was the movie I just seen I wanted to be Phileas Fogg and my best friend who grew up to edit my films incidentally played past part two and my father who was really a sort of an artist Monquet he

he was a terrific pianist in his own right. Sure. You know, the definition of a psychoanalyst is a Jewish doctor who can't stand the sight of blood. And so he fell in with this scheme, with alacrity, and for the next five years, over weekends, school vacations, summer holidays, family trips to wherever. we took this 8mm wind-up pole revere or revere camera yeah um and roped in a lot of parents and a lot of kids and made this movie your own version of you bet it's an hour and 10 minutes long um and uh it's it really puts the other one to shame clearly yeah how's your performance people you have to first of all give up your previous notions

of what great acting is. You redefined great acting in your own way. It's not since Chaplin in City Lights, I think, has there been such a... And the funny thing was, okay, we filmed it over five years. We started filming by the time I was about 12 or 13, because it took a year to

get our ducks in a row. And we filmed out of sequence the way you wind up filming movies because whatever's most convenient. So I, like, grew bigger and smaller over the course of the next five years. In some scenes, you know, I'm 16 years old and other things, I'm like 12 and change or something. It reminds me of this recent, I haven't seen this film yet. I don't

if you've heard of it. There's this, um, but there's a lost art shot for shot kind of remake that some kids made over the course of, I think, like a decade. I was pioneering this whole idea. I mean, I'm serious. Obviously, that was, I was very early in doing that, and I'm sure their movie is much better than my movie, um, because they probably have a lot more resources. at their disposal than I did. But I do think I was probably first in there, me and Steven Spielberg, in making our own movies when we were kids.

I mean, you know, those formative experiences, I think for any die-hard film fan, like you or I, like growing up, it's hard to match those experiences as we grow older, but do you find that you still can get the rush of excitement from going to see a movie in recent times that you had when you were a kid? Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah, I think anytime anybody sort of commits to having an artistic experience, and I'm not limiting it to film, when you go to a play, when you go to the ballet, when you go to the opera, no one's going to have a bad time. Sure. You go with a sense of tremendous anticipation and expectation, and when the house lights dim and you reach into your popcorn or not as the occasion demands or allows, you're ready for something wonderful to happen. And usually, I should add, you can tell within about two minutes

whether the people doing this thing know what they're doing or they don't. You know, I've seen productions of La Bohem that sucked from, when the curtain rose, you go, no, you don't know how to do this. Or movies where you're just gripped from the get-go. I just saw Hell in High Water. Oh, I've heard. It's great. It hasn't seen it. Yeah. A fantastic movie. And there are a lot of good ones. Most of them don't come out of Hollywood, but they're there. Well, there's nothing I love more than, like, going to see... I see a lot of movies for my job and for pleasure, but, like, being in... Feeling like you're being held by the hand of, like, a great filmmaker that knows where to put the camera and knows how to tell the story.

I feel that every time I see a Quentin Tarantino movie, like, you know, some are brilliant, some are just very good. but from the first scene, you can see a clear vision. You see somebody that knows what they want to tell you, the story they want to tell. Well, it's interesting this whole idea about knowing whether you're in good hands or in any hands at all. Many years ago, I met with Stanley Donan, who wanted to make a musical out of the 7% solution.

Oh, wow. And I wasn't quite sure how we could do this, but he wound up coming to have dinner at our house. And my daughters, who were absolutely fixated on all his movies, were sitting there staring because there he was. And my oldest daughter had said to me, she'd come back from college a couple of months earlier, and she said, pop, I have a bone to pick with you.

You showed me Gene Kelly, but you never showed me Fred Astaire. And having shown me Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly looks awful self-conscious up there by comparison. Fred Astaire, it's just sort of organic. It just seems to be happening. And so I said to her while we were playing Scrabble with Stan Lee, Donna. Yes, I played Scrabble with him. And I said, ask him. Ask him. And she goes, no, no, I couldn't ask him. Just see what, because he directed them both. See what he said.

And she goes, Mr. Donnan, he goes, Stan. and she goes, stand. Well, once you're playing scrawl with somebody, you're allowed to use their. So she says, Stan, and she enunciates her thesis. And he said, well, prefacing my answer by reminding you that Gene Kelly was my friend, and we came out to Hollywood together. He said, I have to say, I think you're right, among the artistic distinctions that you can draw are between artists.

And he's not saying that one is better than another. artists who never let you forget that you're experiencing them and artists who are the great invisibles. Right. So he said, when you watch Marlon Brando, you are never permitted

to forget that you are experiencing Marlon Brando when you are watching Federico Felini. You are not permitted to forget it's Felini. On the other hand, when you look at bicycle thief and you wonder, where's the director?

Where is it? It's invisible, but it's also perfect. And it is simply there. The camera just happens to be there. And it's not like, you know, some directors, you use Tarantino as an example, who do not, you know, Ale Guinness. Sure. You know, there. And Fred Astaire, it's just happening. And you can't see it happening. It's just happened. When you watch Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy. You're not seeing Terry Malloy. You're seeing Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy. Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski. You're not totally 100% in it. I mean, both are enjoyable. Absolutely.

Absolutely. I mean, do you have a preference? Do you want to be lost and forget as much as you can that you're watching someone direct or act? For me, story is king. And I don't want to be outside the story. Right.

On the other hand, there's no way you could tear me away from anything that Marlon Brando is doing. Or Jack Nicholson or whatever. I mean, the people that are a little bigger than performance in a way. But the most amazing stuff I've seen is like watching Alec Guinness. Alec Guinness is just, and I'm not talking about Alec Guinness and fucking Star Wars either. I'm talking about tunes of glory. I'm talking the Bridget on the Roy. I'm talking the man in the white suit or lady killers.

Lady killers? Perfection. Perfection. Or what about kind hearts and carnets? Which, you know, what does he play? Eight people? Right. So you're, okay, so backtracking in terms of your circuitous route to becoming a writer, director of film. And it was kind of a circuitous kind of route, right? Because, I mean, you obviously, I guess your first, you know, accomplishment, as it were, that got you on the map was as a novelist. Correct to say? Well, it's, yeah, it's certainly what I did in my first. spare time in the sense that I was writing movies, I was writing movies for television.

And then the Writers Guild went on strike, and we weren't allowed to write screenplays. And the woman with whom I was living at the time said, well, now you can write that book you keep talking about. And the book that I evidently kept talking about was my novel in which Sherlock Holmes met and joined forces with Sigmund Freud while undergoing a cocaine withdrawal cure. After the book came out, people thought I was a cokehead. And I said, you're obviously not reading the book. Because having researched this drug, I was like, not going to touch this with a 10-foot pole. Anyway, so the book, which I wrote for my own enjoyment and arguably hers, you know, put me on the map big time is it was a bestseller on the New York Times list for 40 weeks, and there was no one more

surprised than Mrs. Myers' oldest. Was your obsession infatuation with Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes, something that came out very early and has it sustained? Are you still as enraptured by those stories to this day? The stories are wonderful. I discovered them what when I was about 11 or 12 years old. I guess my dad showed them to me. And there are 60, 56 short stories and four novellas. And at the end of them, there's no more. And so a lot of people, I'm not the first, have taken it upon themselves to write their own, you know, further adventures. I've actually done it now three times. Right. And it's a sort of feel-good undertaking. Um, and no, I've, I've not lost my affection, but I'm a real purist. There's almost no Sherlock Holmes movies that I've ever seen that I haven't despised.

Really? Yeah. I never liked the Basil Rathbone Holmes. I liked him as Holmes, but I never understood taking it out of period. I never understood Watson played by Nigel Bruce as a buffoon. Right. I thought, that's too easy. Holmes is very vain. What he wants is not the admiration of a subnormal man. He wants the admiration of someone who's, you know, sort of regular. Jeremy Brett mystery back then. I grew up with those. I don't think I haven't seen them in decades now. Well, I find Jeremy Brett a little twitchy for my taste.

There was an actor named Ronald Howard who did a series on British television with another actor named H. Marion Crawford as Watson. And I think Ronald Howard is Leslie Howard's son. Oh, wow. And I liked those. But what are the Sherlock Holmes movies that I've really, really liked? I loved the one with Michael Cain and Ben Kingsley Call Without a Clue, where Sherlock was a dummy, and Watson was the smart one.

I thought I was hysterical. And I love the Billy Wilder, the private life of Sherlock Holmes. What's your take on the Benedict Cumberbatch, Stephen Martin. I love those. Do you? Yeah, I was very surprised by how much I love Benedict Cumberbatch as sure. I thought that was great. So were you on set?

Were you much, when it was turned into a film, and you wrote the screenplay for that film Oscar nominated, I believe, for that as well? Yes, yes. Were you involved in the production very much? Yeah, I was on set because I knew I was going to direct after that. So I wanted to watch, from soup to nuts, see somebody directing a movie, so I would know what to do. So, yeah, I guess that was my question, is by the time after time came, which was your directing debut, correct, did you feel like you knew how to direct?

Do you feel like you're ready to direct? I still don't feel like I know how to direct. You're always learning, which is someone said, do the things you're scared to do. And when I can work up the nerve, that's what I do. No, I didn't know what I was doing. And I think the film probably would have been an even better film if I had known what I was doing. But as it was, there are enough things in it that work, starting with the script and starting with the performances, that today it's been turned into a television series. Which I know you're not necessarily so thrilled with, I would imagine.

I haven't seen it. So I'm very keen to look at it, and I suppose it's a big compliment to have your movie turned into a television series. Have you gone back and looked at time after time in recent years? Oh, sure. You know, the funny thing about looking at your own movies, it's like showing home movies of your life. And all you can see are all the things you did wrong, the shots you didn't get, the time you didn't go close enough, the day the actor yelled at you on the set, all that stuff. And I can think of these examples, which are not to do with me, but I remember being at BAFTA when I lived in London, and they interviewed David Lean, and I was sitting in the fourth row, and the moderator or the interviewer says to him, he said, I love the moment in the bridge on the River Kwai when the... Doctor says, madness, madness.

And David Lean says, I hate that moment. And the whole audience goes, you hate that moment. Why do you hate that moment? He says, because the moment we finish the close-up of James Donald, the producer, whom he was on the tip of his tongue to call him a kike, Sam Spiegel. But he didn't. He said, but that cheap producer put James. Donald on a flight back to London, and it's a double who walks away after the line.

And David Lean didn't like the way the double swings his arms, so he doesn't like that moment. And then by the same token, I was watching on television an AFI tribute to Willie Weiler, and Weiler was sitting there, and Betty Davis was supposed to be delivering a speech about how great he was. Mind you, they made something like four movies together, and they had some torrid affair. But no, she got into an argument over a line reading in, I don't know if you've ever seen the letter. I haven't. It's a good picture. It's a Somerset mom story, and she plays a murderess.

And she started to go on about the argument they had over a line reading in the letter while they're on TV. It seems like an opportune moment to do it. And she got angry and angry. She goes, and I know I'm right. So it's like that. And the last example I'll give, because I just love these things. I met Paul Henry, and they met him. Somebody introduced him to me or me to him on the pavement, on the sidewalk,

outside the Motion Picture Academy in California. And I thought, well, this is pretty exciting. And I said, you know, I have to tell you. that when you tell the band to play La Marseillaise in that movie, I fall completely to pieces. And he says, I hate that moment. And I go, what, what? And he said, yeah, because the moment I told the band to play La Marseillaise,

they all go like this, and their heads swivel right. And I go to Michael Cortiz, the director. I say, where are they looking? He says, oh, we'll cut to a shot. of, you know, Rick, and he'll give him the high sign that it's okay to play. And I said, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm Victor Lasley. I'm leader of the resistance in the free world, and I can't get the band at the ass end of

nowhere to play La Marseillaise without they check with a barkeep. It's ridiculous. And Curtis says you, but then, you know, bogey doesn't have anything to do. And this is not my problem with their bogey. This is on the sidewalk, and he's getting like angrier and angrier and angrier. The answer is long-winded as usual is, yeah, I've seen time after time again. And I've seen the 7% solution again. And for a long time, I just thought all I could see was the things wrong with the screenplay of the 7% solution.

Just got me crazy that it was the problems that I thought I had created. So I didn't see it for 20 years. And then I sort of got stuck at a screening where I thought. I thought I was going to walk out, but it was pissing rain or freezing, and I had no place to go. So I wound up sitting there and watching, and I thought, you know, this is the movie that the New York Times referred to as the most exhilarating entertainment of the film year. And you had a poster of it in your house. Did you never read the poster? It was a really good movie.

And all the things that I remembered as being, you know, defects, yeah, they were there, but they don't really matter. to the degree that they blew up in your perspective, given the time, at the time. Yeah, so, yeah. Which leads us chronologically to your involvement with Star Trek, which, like, it could be argued that you were not necessarily the most likely person to... I was the least likely person to be involved with Star Trek. I mean, you couldn't know what it was. Right.

Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, you couldn't avoid the TV series, I would think, but you weren't necessarily an aficionado. Well, I never watched a whole episode because I saw the guy with a point of years and I just kept going. I didn't know what it was. And when I was at the University of Iowa, and the show was on the air, I had a friend who was a graduate student in American history, and he used to take acid every day and watch it for like 54 days straight, at the end of which time his wife left him. And I did not do any of the acid or any of the watching, but I just witnessed that whole thing. And I thought, I don't know what this is. is and I don't know why they're in pajamas and I don't know why he has the funny ears and

no no so I didn't know it where it was so did it take much because I mean there's actually a really fascinating new kind of oral history book that's out that you I think you're one of the many that were interviewed for that it's also in my memoir I wrote a memoir which is called what's it called the view from the bridge right right memories of Star Trek and a life in Hollywood Viking penguin, whatever, in which this whole stuff is, all the stuff is recounted. But it is fascinating. You can read the book or give me $2 off the top and we'll forget the whole thing. Or you can just listen to this podcast.

Okay. No, listen to the podcast, then read the book. Find the book. But to talk, at least in brief about it, it is fascinating in that it's coming off of this ginormous, you know, Robert Wise film, this esteemed director who made a gorgeous, a gorgeous film that left some cold. It works for some to different degrees, whatever. financially a huge success, and yet then they make a movie, they greenlight a movie at like a fraction of the budget, and you have very little time to make it, essentially, to get it done.

There's a bunch of scripts that were written, that weren't working, and in the end, correct me from wrong, you essentially wrote your own screenplay in two weeks. 12 days, 12 days. What happened was how I got involved in all this. was that a friend of mine, a childhood friend, who was then an executive at Paramount, was over one night flipping burgers at my house, and I was holding out for a movie that I wanted to do

that nobody wanted to make. And she said, Nicky, if you want to learn how to direct, this was after time, after time. So I had one movie under my belt. She said, you should direct, not just sit up here, you know, holding your breath for something that may or may not happen, why don't you come down and talk to Harve Bennett, who's in charge of producing the new Star Trek movie?

And I said, is that the one about the guy with the point of ears? And she said, don't be such a snob. I think he would like him. I think he would like you. Why don't you go down and have that talk? So, you know, it's the sort of thing that if your mother had said this to you, might be puncher in the gut. But because it was a contemporary, I went down,

and I did indeed like Harv Bennett very much. And they showed me the movie, and they also showed me some of the episodes. And I found myself getting stoked. There was something pleasant about this that I had not anticipated, something it reminded me of that I couldn't put my finger on, but made me happy.

And then later I realized, With me, it's always realizing whatever it is later, that it reminded me of these books that I used to read when I was 12. It's about the same time I was plowing through Sherlock, was the Captain Horatio Hornblower novels of C.S. Forrester. And so I thought, oh, and that's about an English sea captain during the Napoleonic Wars, and he has a girl in every port. And that seemed good also to me at the time. And so I thought, okay, this is hornblower in outer space. And then I got kind of excited about it. And he said that draft five of the script was coming in.

So I sat around, and then I looked up, and it was like a month later or something. And there was no draft five, and I called up Harve, and I said, you know, what happened? and he said, oh, I can't send this to you, it's not good. What he actually said was my tits in a ringer, which I'd never heard before. It doesn't sound good, though. It does not sound good. So I said, well, what about draft four or draft three? And he said, kid, I was always kid.

You don't understand. These are just five different attempts to get a second Star Trek movie. Right. much different kind of storylines in each of them. They were all different. And I know they were all different because I said, why don't you send them up? And in those days, you didn't hit send, a truck would arrive, a van with all this pile of trees. And so I sat there. I'm a very slow reader. And I read through all these drafts. And then I made a meeting with him and I said, here's, what about if we make a

a list of all the things that we like, any of the things we like in these five drafts. It could be a major plot, it could be a subplot, it could be a sequence, could be a scene, could be a character, could be a line of dialogue, I don't care. And then I'll try to write a new screenplay that incorporates as many of these things as possible. and he and his producing partner Robert Salon were sitting in my house and they didn't seem very happy with my idea and I thought it was a good idea and I said, what's wrong with that plan?

Why can't we do that? And I had the legal pet, everything. And they said, well, the problem is that if we don't have a screenplay in 12 days, then ILM, which is the special effects house that's contracted to do the shots, said they can't guarantee. delivery of the shots in time for the opening of the movie.

I said, what opening of the movie? And they said, well, the movie opens June, whatever it was. It does? You book the movie into a theater and you don't have a movie? Welcome to the franchise culture, yeah. Well, I don't think there was a franchise culture. Then it was just like distribution culture. And I've, anyway, long story short, I said, okay, okay, okay.

I can do this in 12 days if we start now, right now. And they said, well, we couldn't even make your deal in 12 days. And I said, well, forget about my deal. I'm not talking about my directing deal, but I'm just saying, if we don't have a script, there's going to be no movie. So are we on or off? Come on. So we picked, you know, Genesis, Kirk meets his son, Khan,

Lieutenant Savick came in there somewhere. I'm sure there's other things that we picked. And then I just went to work with my sort of hornblower overlay on the whole thing. I don't remember anything about those 12 days except how my back was out by the end of it because it was typing. And as I was writing, I began to understand what the themes were that were sort of inherent or implaus. in this narrative and those things were

as near as I could tell friendship, old age and death. That's what this movie was going to be about. And no one was paying any attention. I had really sort of total autonomy doing what I was doing and that's sort of

how it came out and no writing credit yet. No there was no writing. I didn't even put in for a writing credit. And then, and later, one of the sidebars to this that was really unexpectedly rewarding to me was that when they did the DVD of Star Trek, and they interviewed me to do it, and I told them the story that I just told you, and the word came back, well, we can't put any of that on the DVD.

And I said, why not? And it was all about Paramount being afraid of getting in Dutch with the Writers Guild. And I said, well, then just take me out of it entirely. If I can't tell the story of how this happened, then I don't want to be a part of it. And my friend at the Paramount DVD said, that's what I hoped you would say. Now I have ammunition. And that's where this clause comes from that's on all DVDs now. The opinions and views expressed in this.

You know, DVD are not the responsibility of Paramount, Warner, Fox, Universal, you name it. And that changed all those articles or whatever you want to call them, segments. And from puff pieces into oral histories. Which are invaluable to any aspiring filmmaker or something down with myself. And it doesn't necessarily mean that everything you hear is true. But at least it's not censored. It's not censored. It's different people's version of what happened with them vis-a-vis their participation in a given movie.

and I'm very proud that that clause was the result of my intransigence. One question about Kahn, and we're going to talk more at length about this tonight at the screening, but I'm curious. I mean, I watched it again recently, and I've watched it literally dozens of times. It's such an entertaining film it remains so today. It's Montau-Bahn's performance, which is just amazing. When you were writing that in those 12 days, how did you know he still had to be? that in him because he was making Fantasy Island at the time and like on paper like I mean I don't

know that's just it's 180 degrees from what he was doing day to day and hadn't done for years were you that's a very interesting question and it's interesting for a lot of reasons and believe it or not I've never been asked that question I've been asked a lot of things about Montalban he was a lovely lovely man and he was the only actor that I didn't get to rehearse with, because I like to rehearse. Not over-rehears, not too much, but enough so that we all know kind of what's in the ballpark, because that frees you up once you're on set to do stuff. Right. But he was still filming Fantasy Island. I would be lying to you if I said that while I was writing this, I was giving any thought to

what he had or didn't have in him. I think that we, memory plays us false. I'm giving you my memories, but my memories are not always accurate, and I found this out. This is a sidebar, but what the hell? People said to me, did you have dealings with Gene Roddenberry when you did The Wrath of Conner? And I said, well, I don't think so.

I think I met him, and that was about it because he was not involved with the film. And then I was shown on a visit to the University of Iowa where my papers reside. There was a big Star Trek exhibit. And there were all these memoranda, single space typed and rather vehement, not to say, vitriolic exchanges between me and Jean Roddenberry, that I'd completely blocked out. So I was giving a wrong answer or an inaccurate answer to that question for many years. So when I tell you now that I don't think that I gave much thought to whether Montelbaum could or could not, I'd never seen Fantasy Island, so I was certainly not prejudiced by it.

I suppose if you're going off of what you see in Space Seed and, you know, it's not good. More than that, I've seen all his other movies. This was a great actor. When you see, was that border crossing where he plays, this was a, this was a, He was a fantastic actor, and like most actors wasted in roles that were not worthy of him, or you're doing garbage or something. But you can see some movies where he's really terrific, and I was certainly familiar with those movies, and I was not familiar with Fantasy Island other than, you know, posters of him in the suit, and the other man saying the plane and the plane, that was all I knew. So, no, I had no... I mean, for him it must have been Manor from Heaven to get that script and see.

see those lines and see this kind of, I mean, I mean, again. Well, his stories about it were that he said, well, I read the script and he said, and I saw that I was not in the movie very much. And this, you know, worried me a little. And then I saw, then I realized, he said, when I am not there, they are always talking about me. Exactly. So he said, okay. But it was funny because the first time I, we got to work on this thing was the first day that he shot. and we shot the scene in the botany bay where he has like a six-page soliloquy

about why he's so pissed off at James T. Kirk. And since my main experience was directing theater and I always thought how, and I, even on time after time, I thought, how sad that we're always saying cut. It's coitus interrupt us while the actor is working up ahead of steam and I said, okay, stop, let's now go for the close. I thought, this is weird. What if we could all do it in one take

and let him just really, you know, work up ahead of steam? So I devised this thing where the camera was sort of dancing around him. It was like 23 marks he had to hit. And he comes on stage in full drag, the whole thing. And the question that everybody asks, you know, was that his real chest? I have to say, yes. That is his real chest. It was a guy in great shape, and there he was.

And he was letter perfect, and he hit every mark when I showed him where it was, everything, except that he screamed the whole thing at the top of his lungs, and the whole crew, everybody's standing around. And I, this is only the second movie I ever made, and I thought, what if I can I talk to him about something or is he going to hit me because I didn't really know

you know and the question that somebody once said that the the question all actors want to know about the director is is he crazy am I going to survive do I have to pull the boat over the mountain

and so Montelban very courtly very beautifully mannered very elegant guy and we had met and we'd had lunch that's all we'd had and I gave him a copy of Moby Dick and I said here read this it's the whole thing

and so now we're walking away I said let's go into your trailer and you know talk about interpretation and so he goes he nods, ooh sit down

and I said to him you know Lawrence Olivier once said that an actor should never show an audience his top because once you show them your top they know you've got no place else to go and he looked at me and he said ah you're going to direct me this is good

I don't know what I'm doing up there I need direction Amazing. And that was the beginning of this collaboration. And he was very smart. So all he had to do was put the beginning of a thought in his head, and he would take it and run with it. So I remember saying to him, I said, you know, here's the thing.

If you're a crazy person, you never really have to raise your voice. Because people just don't know what you're going to do next. So we had this great collaboration. He would, you know, look at me and say, Nick, is it okay if I raise the eyebrow? And I would say, yeah, it's not too high. And he does, and this collaboration does thread that needle very well. And it's hammy without being too over the top. And it's on the level for me of, like, Hannibal Lecter.

It's like, it's that. He's just genuinely scary. It's a fantastic performance. There are a few great psychotics on screen, obviously Hannibal Lecter. I would argue that one of the best is Robert Walker and strangers on a train. Unbelievable. And I had not thought of Conn in that number, but yeah. What I said watching him in that scene, I said to him later, I said, you should be playing Lear.

And he made some disparaging remark about his accent. I said, it's not going to matter. You articulate perfectly, you can understand every word, that's the role you should play. And it's very sad that he didn't. But Khan, I suppose, in some ways, is as close as he came. It's also kind of ironic in that the next Star Trek collaboration was on Star Trek 4, which you are one of the writers on, a film that basically doesn't have a villain. It does, but the villain is unseen.

Well, okay, so talk to me about that. Is that challenging for you as a director not to have kind of the, the personification of evil in the form of someone like Khan, and it's a little more esoteric, a little more amorphous, and something like Voyage Home? Well, I didn't direct four, it should be pointed out. I wrote most of it. I wrote all those scenes on Earth.

Somebody asked me on one of the Star Trek albums, DVDs, was, you know, we were discussing about who were the greatest villains. And I said the greatest villain is in Star Trek 4, and that's us. And it's an unseen villain, but if the whales are extinct, it's our fault. We're destroying ourselves. And I think as far as villains and movies, I don't believe there's rules. I don't think there's a three-act structure. I don't think you can learn this out of a book on screen.

writing and there's no formula to this. And when you get into formulas, you get into very risky but also sort of predictable territory. An English sonnet has a form. There's an A, B, A, B, C, D, C, P. There's quatrains and how it works and resolves and the propositions. And symphonies have a form. But I don't think drama has a form so much as a series of ideas. What is the major dramatic question that the audience stays to hear the answer for? Do you have to have a villain? Do you have to have a three-act-year? You don't have to have shit.

All you have to do, Henry James said that the least demand that you can make of a work of art is that it be interesting. and the most demand is that it be moving. Star Trek 4, I would argue, is interesting. It's also moving. It's also funny. And if the villain doesn't come on stage, so what? It'll come on stage later when you're opening the refrigerator. You go, who's the bad guy in this movie? Well, all roads lead to Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with a lead pipe.

Does writing get easier? No. Is it frustrating? Is it enjoyable? When it's going well, it's really enjoyable. And time passes and you look up and you don't know where you've been. But you've been someplace in a state of flow. You know, in Plato,

Socrates is told by the Oracle at Delphi that he's, the wisest man in Greece, and he thinks, that can't be right. And all I have to do is find someone wiser than me, and I'll disprove that. And he talks to all segments of Greek society, and he said, and finally I got around to the poets, and I think we can take him to mean artists in general. And I thought, surely, these people who have written and sculpted and so insightfully, about the human condition will prove to be wiser than I.

And he said, I found out that this was so not true, that these were the stupidest people of the whole bunch that I spoke to. They were really like children. They were, it was all nonsense, except when they were doing their art. And then they went into a kind of trance during which they took dictation from God,

and this they call inspiration and writing when it's going really well you know it maybe it's a little pretentious to say you're taking dictation from God but you're in a state of flow it's an altered state of some kind when it's a lot of times

it isn't it takes a while to get there and sometimes you never get there and you have to do it anyway because you're on deadline or whatever, and you're pulling rabbits out of hats, and you don't even have the hat. And it's like pulling teeth instead of rabbits. But ever since I was a kid, I was a storyteller.

I just tell stories, and it never mattered to me, whether it was a happy story or a sad story or a story in the past, a story in the present, or in the future. What Polonius says, historical, pastoral, Astral, tragical, tragical, comedic, or whatever. It's just so long as it was a good story. And somebody said to me, what's your definition of a good story?

And I said, a good story is a story is that once you hear it, you understand why somebody wanted to tell it to you. This is not rocket science. It's been 25 years since you've worked on Trek, and everyone's very excited that you're a part of this new Brian Fuller created Star Trek Discovery. My question is not actually related to the new series, which I know you can talk very little about if you all. I would have to kill you.

It's okay. I'll take one for the team. But in the last 25 years, have you been approached on other Trek projects? Have you ever said, really? That's surprising to me. Is it surprising to you? Well, to the degree that I've ever given it thought, I suppose it's surprised. But maybe nobody wants.

wanted to seem reliant, no pun intended, on me, which I could also understand. And it should be said in this podcast that this is Brian Fuller's show. This is not my show. I am part of a team that, you know, we're all doing the best we can, and music will save it. is the um so he has said that it is one of the things that's making this show unique is that it is from the perspective of someone other than the captain in fact he said it's number one it's the presumably the first officer um oh saved by saved by the phone see it's Brian fuller calling to say stop talking do you need to take that sir no I'm not taking it so I guess my question is does that altered perspective give this kind of a something unique something unique something

unique that we haven't seen in trek before. Well, let's hope so, because if all we're doing is retreading other versions of the same thing, I think that would be tedious. No, I think there are two things that he's got hold of that make this substantively different, and the idea that it isn't from the captain's point of view is one of those things. In that writer's room, as it were, do you feel like you have, have a specific role that's different than what others bring to the table in terms of like what you can contribute to this show, what your expertise is, as opposed to someone else's?

I don't think that's how it works. I think I'm just part of this group. Yeah. And has it been fun and exciting to come, go back to Star Trek? I mean, you also aren't shackled by writing preexisting characters, which is kind of cool. You don't have to write our vision of what Kirk and Spock is, et cetera. is a fun experience. I have not been in a lot of writers' rooms. I've been in a few. I wrote the first two episodes of

the Medici, Masters of Florence, with Dustin Hoffman, which will wind up on American television. And I also have been working on I did an episode of a show called Crossing

Lines. And I've done something else where I've been in the room. And so I'm getting used to that whole idea. The thing that I have to get used to is that movies from big studios, a lot of times are not movies that I have any interest in seeing anymore. There's sort of wind-up toys or something. And I can't do that.

And most of the most interesting work, I'm sure we're all agreed, is now being done on television, largely cable or streaming or whatever, where the writing is happening. So in that sense, it is a very welcome and challenging change. You want to stay young. Just keep scaring yourself and trying to do things that you've never done before. So I like being in the room,

and I'm certainly not the eminence gris that I might style myself before going to sleep. I don't get that in the room. Have you reconciled, or did it take reconciling over the years, kind of your association with Trek? Because, I mean, these films, you know, dominate our conversation, but there's a lot of work we haven't even gotten to that has nothing to do with Star Trek, obviously. The day after?

The day after, which is still, I think, the most watched movie ever made for television. Which affected me and many as a kid myself. Changed American nuclear policy, changed the mind of the president of the United States about a winnable nuclear war. That's something of an accomplishment. It's probably the most worthwhile thing I got to do with my life so far. I don't know if I can change President Trump's mind about anything. Oh, God, don't even say the words.

But is it something that's taken some reconciling that, like, you are so associated with this iconic franchise, sometimes to the detriment of the other work that's maybe ignored? Yes, it's something I've had to get used. to. And the other examples I use are Arthur Conan Doyle, whose historical novels like the White Company and Rodney Stone and stuff, are really rather terrific books in which he put a tremendous amount of effort and research. And he really threw himself into it as opposed to the home stories, which he could dash off in about a week. And yet it is for the home stories that people persist in mainly

remembering him. Many some people remember for the lost world, but mainly. And then there's Arthur Sullivan who was supposedly the English Mendelssohn,

the shining white hope of British music but whose fame rests on the light operettas that he wrote with Gilbert. And I think you have to

try to sort of deal with a good grace. You're not going to get me to knock Star Trek. I'm grateful that I'm a part of something. I do hope that yeah, people will watch the 7% solution or time after time

or look at the day after if you can bear it. But I'm not here to gripe about being what's the respected or remembered

because of the Star Trek stuff absolutely not a lot of worthy work to look at I know from past interviews maybe you wouldn't point people towards company business which we didn't even get to because I love a good Gene Hackman story and I know he's I mean he's arguably my favorite actor but I know from talking to many

filmmakers over the years was not necessarily the most easiest man to deal with for the likes of you or even Wes Anderson or many great filmmakers. He's just... Wait, the notoriously loquacious Nicholas Meyer has fallen silent. Hmm.

Okay, well, we'll leave it on that tantalizing silence. And I'll just say, thank you for your time today, and thank you for the great work you've contributed over the years, and I'm so happy we're going to see more of it on Star Trek Discovery. Well, I hope you do.

Thank you. Michael. Hey, Tom. You want to tell him? Or you want me to tell him? No, no, no. I got this. People out there.

People, lean in. Get close. Get close. Listen, here's the deal. We have big news. We got monumental news. We got snack tackling news. After a brief hiatus, my good friend,

Michael Liam Black, and I are coming back. My good friend, Tom Kavanaugh and I are coming back to do what we do best. What we were put on this earth to do? To pick a snack. To eat a snack. And to rate a snack. Typically. Emotionally?

Spiritually. Mates is back. Mike and Tom eat snacks. Is back. A podcast for anyone with a mouth. With a mouth. Available wherever you get your podcasts.