Paramount had put a number on the success of this summer’s “reboot Star Trek” XI would have been an immediate indication of how valuable franchise that has become.
These 11 issues have raised more than $ 1 billion in the country since 1979, including $ 256 million for the new. It’s a success story that would never have happened if the Nicholas Meyer did not get on board for 1982 “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” when the future of the series was in doubt.
Memories of Meyer on the direction of “Khan” and 1991 “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” and co-authored in 1986 “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” are among the best chapters in “The view from the bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a life in Hollywood, “just published by Viking.
It is a reading that the participation of all the best for his insights into the direction of “The Day After”, which aired November 20, 1983, on ABC and clearly was a fictional nuclear attack on Kansas. Meyer also writes about the adaptation of his bestselling book “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution”, which was nominated for an Oscar in 1977 and making his directorial debut with Time 1979 “After Time”.
When it was suggested that without him would never have been a “Star Trek” film franchise, Meyer responded: “I would think so. I am, as recognized in the book, the vanity of wanting to think so. But Not I’m 100% sure. ”
Why not? “How many more scripts were prepared to put money to try to get a second film ’Star Trek’ if he had done had not worked?” Paramount had been willing to keep spending, he added, would eventually come to something.
Meyer, a childhood friend of Karen Moore, then a Paramount executive, suggested that, because I wanted to be satisfied by direct Harve Bennett, who was producing the split second characteristic of “Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek” television.
“That was a kind of love at first sight. I really do not know what ’Star Trek’ is. I could have hung around to know, I guess, if I had not liked much.”
After speaking, Meyer saw the connection between “Star Trek” and the novels of CS Forrester on the English sea captain Horatio Hornblower. After having enjoyed the books as a teenager, Meyer understands “Star Trek” was really just Hornblower in space.
When Hornblower shared his idea with William Shatner, Meyer recalled, Captain Kirk knew exactly what he meant.
Shatner (Meyer): “Well, that’s what we always said it was Gene.
Not everything went as smoothly for him with Shatner, who called the script – rewritten by Meyer, who did not get a credit – a disaster. The trick to solve Shatner unhappiness about how the script dealt with Kirk was that “when in fact broken down into manageable chunks, which was asking was not as difficult or extraordinary. In fact, probably 36 hours or something for me to turn round “.
Meyer also writes about the unhappiness of Bennett after realizing his mistake in appointing himself executive producer of the film and making his producer Robert Sallin. Bennett came from television, where the executive producers who run the program and knew it was not the same with movies.
Bennett Meyer asked what to do about it.
Meyer (Bennett): “Let’s go with what you said, and at the end of the day, if you do good work, everyone will know who is your movie.”
Meanwhile, Meyer discovered that his assistant then Paramount distribution chief Frank Mancuso had changed its extended title of the movie “The Undiscovered Country” to “Revenge of Khan.”
“Since the movie is ultimately concerned with the death of one of his characters as Hamlet refers to” The Undiscovered Country “as where they go after his death, I thought it was a pretty smart idea.
In what Meyer calls “a surreal phone conversation,” Mancuso said from New York that “was just trying to do the best for the film – at which time I wondered if George Lucas, who was then making a film called ’The Revenge of the Jedi, would be quite satisfied with the title. ”
Lucas, whose “Indiana Jones” with Steven Spielberg was at Paramount was not happy with the similar title. But Lucas decided that the Jedi really were not seeking revenge anyway and renamed his film “Return of the Jedi”.
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