Acclaimed Director Nicholas Meyer Talks Influencing The Nuclear Forces Treaty & "The Highest Rated Television Movie Of All Time"

January 17, 2023
00:00 52:26
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Nicholas Meyer is an award-winning author, screenwriter and director. His body of creative work in publishing, film and television spans more than five decades.

Meyer’s most recent Sherlock Holmes novel, The Return of the Pharaoh from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D. was published by Minotaur Books in November 2021.

He’s the author of seven previous novels, including The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1975), a Doyle pastiche in which Sherlock Holmes met Sigmund Freud. The novel sold more than two million copies, stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for forty weeks, and won the British Gold Dagger award from the British Crime Writers’ Association. Two years later, Meyer received an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay of the eponymous film, which starred Nicol Williamson, Robert Duvall, Alan Arkin, Vanessa Redgrave and Laurence Olivier.

Meyer made his directing debut in 1979 with a film he wrote, Time After Time, starring Malcolm McDowell, Mary Steenburgen and David Warner. He went on to direct Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Other directing credits include Volunteers (Tom Hanks, 1986), The Deceivers (Pierce Brosnan, 1988), Company Business, (Gene Hackman, 1991), Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country (Christopher Plummer, 1992) and the HBO film, Vendetta (Christopher Walken, 1999). His screenplays include Sommersby (Richard Gere and Jody Foster, 1993) and contributions to Fatal Attraction (1987) and Dreamworks’ Prince of Egypt (1998).

His other books include Target Practice, which was nominated for an Edgar Award, and three other Holmes pastiches, The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols (2019), The West End Horror (a New York Times bestseller) and The Canary Trainer; as well as Confessions of a Homing Pigeon. Meyer’s memoir, The View from the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood, was published in 2009.

Meyer directed ABC’s The Day After (1983), which remains the single most-watched television film ever made (100 million people in one night) and was nominated for fourteen Emmys. Additional work includes a two-part miniseries, Houdini (Adrien Brody, 2014) based on his father, Bernard C. Meyer’s biography. He is the co-creator of the Netflix series Medici—Masters of Florence, starring Dustin Hoffman, and worked on STAR TREK: Discovery for CBS Access.

For more information, go to his website here: https://www.nicholas-meyer.com/

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His fascination with history is in the story of our existence and how it is told. Keeping the tradition of storytelling alive in Eyewitness History is what drives him.
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