This Labor Day weekend the Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills is running a Star Trek movies marathon for the six films with the original crew, shown in 70MM. There will be discussions after each film with stars and creatives from each film, including the director (and uncredited writer) of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Nicholas Meyer. In addition to getting an update on his Star Trek: Khan – Ceti Alpha V audio drama podcast (see previous article) TrekMovie had a chance to talk to Nick in depth about the making of Star Trek II, why it endures, Trek’s connections to Sherlock Holmes (including his new novel Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell) and much more.
After 42 years, are you no longer surprised that we’re still talking about Wrath of Khan?
No, I’m surprised. Artists are not the best judges of their own work. We also know that art goes in and out of fashion. Things may be considered deathless at one time, and then they vanish into obscurity, or the reverse is true. Le Sacre du printemps [The Rite of Spring] created a riot when it premiered in 1913 and less than 30 years later, it’s the soundtrack to Fantasia, and nobody finds anything wrong with it… So when you ask me about The Wrath of Khan, I am pleasantly flabbergasted every day that that movie is still around and giving pleasure and moving people. That’s beyond anything that I could have ever anticipated.
As you note, the art of movies has changed over the last four decades. So what do you see as the enduring qualities of Star Trek II that work with modern audiences?
I’ll answer you in a different way. I have a theory which may be slightly counterintuitive to what I was saying a minute ago. And don’t take this the wrong way as sort of self-inflating, but I think all great art has one thing in common, and that’s the “great” part it. The fact that it does stand the test of time, that it does not grow old, but at the end, things that are terrific always seem to come back. Bach has never gone out of fashion. Shakespeare has never gone out of fashion. I don’t compare myself to Shakespeare. I don’t compare myself to Bach, but I suspect that there are some timeless qualities involved in Khan and I can’t say I was aware of what they were or even of putting them there, but it’s just like the dog whistle or something. It landed on a frequency that no one seems to be able to resist. I can only be happy that I was part of it.
The movie has become so iconic, it even got a nice nod in the new movie Deadpool & Wolverine – a quick homage to the Spock death scene. Had you heard about that?
[Laughs] No. That’s nice to hear.
Khan Noonien Sigh is held up as one of cinema’s greatest villains, yet he and the hero – Kirk – are never in the same room together. When you were making the film, was that ever a concern?
Well, I don’t know how good I am at analyzing my own stuff. I do know that they wanted to have a mano a mano, a fight between Kirk and Khan. And I said, “Well, they tried that in ‘Space Seed’ and it looked phony and stupid to me.” Khan is a superman. Kirk wouldn’t stand a chance against him. It just seemed kind of corny… So I resisted the idea of this mano a mano shootout, or whatever it was supposed to be, in favor of cribbing from one of my favorite movies, The Enemy Below which is a World War II duel between a destroyer and a U-boat, and Robert Mitchum, who’s the captain of the destroyer, and Curd Jürgens, who is the captain of the U-boat, they never meet. It’s just their weapons that meet.
For the Fine Arts movie marathon, they are showing the Trek movies in 70 millimeter. How do you feel your Star Trek movies benefit from the big screen experience?
I think movies are more fun when they’re big. I think we go to the movies, I go to the movies to sort of lose myself in something that is larger than me, not smaller. And even if I have wide screen in my house, it isn’t as much fun as having the popcorn and sitting with a lot of people. You don’t know them, they don’t know you, and you are having an experience that is simultaneously personal and intimate, but also collective. And you are looking at what is larger than life, and 70 mil is definitely larger than life! That’s the fun of it.
Let’s go back to 1982, what was it like when you first saw Khan on a big screen with an audience? Were you nervous, excited? All of that?
Well, I was exhausted by that time because the amount of delays in getting the movie going. As you may already know, I wrote what became the screenplay of the movie in 12 days, We were so far behind. There wasn’t time to draw up contracts. And I said to Harve [Bennett] and Bob Sallin, his co producer, “Look, if you want the movie, we got to make up our minds now.” We had five other screenplays which had no relationship to each other… and ILM, which was the special effects house, said they couldn’t guarantee delivery of the shots in time for the June opening, unless they had it within 12 days. This was only the second movie I directed, and I said, “What June opening? … You booked the movie into theaters, and there’s no movie?” And they said, “Well, I that’s the way it’s always done.” New one on me, but then everything was a new one on me. So it was all done at a breakneck pace. I was shooting in the day and editing all night. The first screening was at what’s now called the Sherry Lansing Theater at Paramount, which is their little theater which held about 400 people. We had no idea how this thing was going to play, and it went through the roof.
Was that just Paramount people?
No. People roped up. It was the first – That’s my recollection. I’ve discovered that my memory is good, but it’s not perfect. For example, people asked me for years have what was my interaction with Gene Roddenberry. And I said, well, you met him. You had to shake his hand and so forth, but he wasn’t part of making the movie, which was certainly true. But when I went back to my alma mater, the University of Iowa in Iowa City, I went to the library where they have all my papers, and I was stunned to see an exchange of memoranda between me and Gene Roddenberry that I had totally blocked out. Once I read them, I understand why I blocked them. It was very toxic, very venomous. He hated the script. I guess I didn’t know any better, so I was intemperate. I responded intemperately. And I had just blocked all memory of this.
So my memory is not perfect, but my memory tells me that it was a general audience. It was not Paramount people who were at that. What I remember is the reconciliation scene between Kirk and his son received applause. And I had argued with some of the executives about that scene and insisted that it remain. After the screening was over, I saw one of these execs, and he said, “Yeah, yeah, I know what I’m supposed to say, but I still don’t think it works.” And I remembered saying, “Well, it doesn’t matter what you think, just what they think, we’re of it now.” So the scene stays in. I think a lot of fathers and sons connect to this movie, because it is about fathers and sons, among the other things that it’s about.
Speaking of sons, Wrath of Khan is in a double bill with For The Love of Spock with Adam Nimoy speaking. Can you talk a little bit about working with Leonard Nimoy and the importance of his contribution to Star Trek II?
Well, I’m not sure quite how to answer that question. What I can remember about Leonard on this movie, and I worked with him three times because I did [Star Trek] II, IV (as a writer), and VI. And Leonard didn’t want to do [Wrath of Khan]. He did the movie because Harve Bennett promised him a great death scene, which I then had to write. So I remember that very vividly. I also remember I never had to direct Leonard as Spock. He knew cold what that was all about. I worked a lot with Ricardo Montalban, who was a very great actor, but he said to me, “I don’t know what I’m doing up there, so, help me.”… And I directed Bill [Shatner]. But I did not direct Leonard. He didn’t need it. He just knew. He paid me a great compliment. He said I knew how to write Spock. In a way, I sort of modeled it a lot on Sherlock Holmes. And I write Sherlock Holmes novels. And if you know how to write Sherlock, then you’ll know how to write Spock because they’re very similar. And in fact, in Star Trek VI, I had Spock claim descent from Sherlock.
Director Nicholas Meyer on the Star Trek II set with Leonard Nimoy (Paramount Pictures)
You happen to have a brand-new Holmes book, Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell. For for this one you are moving the action into World War I era, what can readers expect?
Well, Holmes and Watson, who are no longer young – Holmes is 66 – are dispatched to America. They have to cross the Atlantic and dodge German U-boats, because Holmes has learned that there is a German plan to defeat England. Remember that America is not in the war as of 1916 and there is a German plan to win the war in 12 weeks and it involves starving England by blockading the island with a submarine fleet. But they don’t know the details of the plan, and they are dispatched to America in search of a mysterious coded telegram that was routed through the German Embassy in Washington. And the telegram was sent by German Foreign Minister Zimmermann, and there’s actually two non-fiction books about it, because most of this whole novel is all true. I didn’t have to make up much.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of your first Holmes novel. This is now your sixth, what keeps bringing you back to Holmes?
And I just fished writing the seventh!… Well, I only write them when I get an idea that seems to be worthy of a Holmes story. I have gone 20 years without writing one. 1974 was The Seven-Per-Cent Solution –where Sherlock meets Sigmund Freud and undergoes a cocaine withdrawal cure. The second one, which was written very shortly thereafter, because they said, “Oh, this was such a hit.” It was 40 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. So I did The West End Horror, which was Holmes in the theater world. And that was a best seller in 1976. And then I was doing movies, but in 1992 a movie deal that I had been working on for a year fell apart, and I had to make money. So I did The Canary Trainer, which is Sherlock Holmes and the Phantom of the Opera. And then I didn’t do anything for another bunch of years, until I became interested in the most famous and vicious hoax of all time, the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which people like Vladimir Putin are still fond of quoting, and that’s the hoax that was put out about the minutes of a secret meeting of Jews plotting to take over the world. And that was like 10 years just thinking about that [for The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols]. After that was Holmes in Egypt in 1911 and that’s called The Return of the Pharaoh.
You talked about blocking out your exchanges with Roddenberry. Do you ever envision what it would have been like to have exchanges with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?
You know, it’s very seldom that I’m asked a question I’ve never heard before, and you just asked it. And the answer comes instantly to mind, because when the American actor William Gillette bought the rights to turn Sherlock Holmes into a play, he sent telegram to to Doyle for his adaptation and said, “May I marry Holmes?,” meaning have him get married in the in in the play. Doyle cabled back, “You may marry him, or murder him, or do what you like with him.” Doyle had very ambivalent relations with Sherlock Holmes. He tried at least twice to kill him off… but even on some unconscious level, he must have felt ambivalent about killing him, because they never produced the body. And so when Holmes comes back, it’s like, “Yes, I didn’t wind up in the in the waterfall.”
Doyle identified with him, for sure. Holmes and Doyle bank at the same bank, and they’re offered knighthoods in the same year. Doyle wanted to turn his down because he thought it would make him an establishment patsy, but his mother said he had to accept as to not offend the crown. Holmes turns his down without a backward glance. So, I think Doyle wouldn’t care. He said about Holmes, “He takes my mind from better things.”… Artists frequently get pissed off because they’re recognized for the wrong thing. In my obituary, upcoming, is it going to say “Star Trek” and how do I feel about that? And the answer is: I’m happy if I’m remembered for something. So I’m not going to bitch and moan that these movies seem to have made a lot of people happy. I think that’s great. That’s the point of art, is you’re supposed to make people laugh and or cry, preferably both. And if I’ve done that, I feel lucky.
New Holmes book and tour
Nicholas Meyer’s sixth Sherlock Holmes novel Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell arrived on Tuesday, August 27, kicking off a nationwide book tour where he will be doing readings from the book along with discussions. The thirteen-stop takes him to cities across the USA, returning to LA for an event on Monday, September 30th. More details at nicholas-meyer.com.
Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell is available now at Amazon in hardcover, Kindle eBook, Audio CD, and Audible.
Meyer at Labor Day weekend 70MM TOS movies marathon in Beverly Hills
Nicholas Meyer will be one of the Star Trek vets appearing during a special Star Trek screening series at the historic Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills, CA. They will be showing the TOS era movies in Super 70MM starting on Friday, August 30st, wrapping up on Sunday, September 1st. Other luminaries lined up for the event include actresses Robin Curtis (Saavik) and Catherine Hicks (Dr. Gillian Taylor), executive producer Ralph Winter, producer Steven-Charles Jaffe and composer Cliff Eidelman. Leonard Nimoy’s son will also appear to discuss his film For the Love of Spock.
Tickets are available on the Fine Arts Theatre website, fineartstheatrebh.com and on the Fine Arts App available on Google Play Store and the Apple App store, as well as at fandango.com and atomtickets.com. Free Parking is available at the Beverly Hills City Garage, 321 South La Cienega Boulevard.
Keep up with news for the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
