Nicholas Meyer (Writer)

About Nicholas Meyer

A smart, witty and capable engineer of mainstream entertainments, Nicholas Meyer began his career as a Hollywood publicist before turning to literary pursuits and a popular novelist, screenwriter and director. Meyer made his TV debut as a writer (and earned an Emmy nomination) with "The Night That Panicked America" (ABC, 1975), a recreation of the Orson Welles' famed Mercury Theater radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" on Halloween in 1938.

Seguing into features, e wrote the screen adaptation of his best-selling latter-day Sherlock Holmes novel "The Seven Percent Solution" (1977) and made his directorial debut with the charming and clever "Time After Time" (1979), which pitted a time-traveling H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowall) against an equally displaced Jack the Ripper (David Warner) in contemporary San Francisco.

He next directed the superior sequel "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" (1982), improving the film fortunes of Gene Roddenberry's venerable sci-fi series by throwing off the leaden, F/X-heavy trappings of the first "Trek" film by grafting the saga's pulp adventure inspirations with its high minded tradition of sci-fi parable. Adding a jaunty Horatio Hornblower-esque nautical aura to the crew of the starship Enterprise and forcing the heroic and seemingly indestructible space lothario Captain (now Admiral) James T. Kirk to face turing 50 (and the fruits of one of his old dalliances), Meyer also peppered the dialogue of William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Deforrest Kelly and archvillain Ricardo Montalban with references to Dickens, Melville and Shakespeare. The end result was a rolicking adventure with as effective sense of gravitas that remains the most popular and critically regarded of the franchise's many instalments.

Returning to televison, Meyer's highly touted "The Day After" (ABC, 1983), a striking if somewhat overwrought TV-movie depicting post-nuclear holocaust "life", sparked months of controversy both before and after the broadcast. His next effort, the over-eager social worker comedy "Volunteers" (1985) which Meyer directed but did not write, achieved little of lasting interest except perhaps to introduce up-and-comer Tom Hanks--reuniting less successfully with his "Splash" co-star John Candy--to his future wife, co-star Rita Wilson.

Although he chose to skip participating in the third "Star Trek" sequel in 1984 (primarily because the film's whole point was to undo the death of Mr. Spock, the finest moment of "Khan" and the studio secured Nimoy by offering him the directorial duties), Meyer provided the very witty screenplay for the franchise's more comedic-minded and crowd-pleasing "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" (1986), a major box office hit of its day, and he co-wrote and directed "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" (1991), the loose and lively swansong of the original TV cast which, in typical Meyer fashion, was littered with pithy literary allusions (Roger Ebert suggested the subtitle should be "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations"). His non-"Trek" efforts of that same era included the little-seen "The Deceivers" (1988), with Pierce Brosnan against India's Thugee sect of the 1800s; and the CIA thriller "Company Business" (1991) starring Gene Hackman, an effective outing which he also wrote. Meyer also tackled writing duties on "Sommersby" (1993), the Americanized remake of the "The Return of Martin Guerre" starring Jodie Foster and Richard Gere--less fresh and effective than its source material but still an entertaining film; and he co-authored "Voices" (which had only festival screenings in 1995), based on the life of British critic Philip Heseltine.

In 1997 Meyer adapted Gerold Seymour's book "The Informant" into a midly entertaining IRA-themed legal thriller directed by Jim McBride, and he contributed to the script of DreamWork's entree into animated film "The Prince of Egypt" (1998). After helming the telepic "Vendetta" (1999)--the true-life tale of the largest lynching in American history in New Orleans of the 1890s--and taking an executive producer credit on the Arnold Schwarzenegger dud "Collateral Damage" (2002), Meyer tackled the screenplay for director Robert Benton's film adapation of Phillip Roth's bestseller "The Human Stain" (2003) starring Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman. The film did a journeyman job of capturing Roth's ambitious and complex story, though it lacked some of the passion and palpable anger of the source material.