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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Even on Star Trek everyone's human., September 5, 2009
This review is from: The View From the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood (Hardcover)
The View from the Bridge is the most interesting book about how movies get made I've ever read. Nicholas Meyer talks about the art and the commerce both, and shows how each influences the other.
The way Nicholas Meyer became a screenwriter and movie director in the 1970s was similar to Michael Crichton. Meyer parlayed a screenplay based on his own bestselling detective-adventure novel about Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud ( The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D. (Norton Paperback)) into a chance to direct another of his screenplays ( Time After Time) about the time-traveling H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper. After that Meyer began the tradition of making "good" even-numbered Star Trek movies by directing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Even though Meyer makes it clear he understands making movies like Star Trek is a business (he never would have gotten into what he at first considered ludicrous space opera if not for the money), he never once in this book uses the word "franchise." His films are stories, and he wants audiences to relate to them as tales about real people (as William Shatner said, even on Star Trek everyone is human), not as interchangeable portions of a video game.
The fact that the title of Meyer's memoir alludes to a play by Arthur Miller as well as the bridge of the starship Enterprise proves he means it when he says he intends his work to be art. He characterizes himself as not a creator but a re-creator of stories. This doesn't sound like false modesty because there's very little modesty in the rest of the book.
But no one thinks less of Francis Ford Coppola as a film artist because he made movies from a pulp novel about the mafia or from a book about Africa on high school English reading lists that usually goes unread.
Meyer's early films are his best--The Seven-Per-Cent Solution with Nicol Williamson and Robert Duvall, Time After Time with Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, with Ricardo Montalban, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. His early TV work is also good--The Night That Panicked America, about Orson Welles's War of the Worlds broadcast, and The Day After, a TV movie staring Jason Robards about the horrific effects of nuclear war that became part of the national debate surrounding the Reagan administration's military policies.
Nicholas Meyer is still making films about real people. I hope he gets to make his Don Quixote.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
To explore the strange new world of Hollywood, September 4, 2009
This review is from: The View From the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood (Hardcover)
I have to admit that when I get a book I scan through it first and initially I was disappointed since I assumed this would be a book mainly about Startrek and giving all the inside gossip about who did and said what. If that's what you are looking for avoid this book; but then you would be missing a fabulous voyage into how films come into existence.
Nicholas Meyer directed or was involved with the Startrek II, IV and VI films. He also is responsible for many other highly regarded films such as The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Time After Time, and The Day After. You begin to realize how refreshing it is not to have a story filled with nasty gossip as you become engrossed in the details of how a motion picture is made; the scripts, the storyboards, the music- how it fits and helps . There is much to learn here, and it is written in an easy, entertaining way. He describes the differences between an American unit and an European one and how e mail and computers have changed the creation of movies. There is a marvelous comparison of successful stories (including the Startrek series) and Horatio Hornblower. This is really a successful voyage in the undiscovered country of making films.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How A Writer - And Director - Is Made, January 2, 2010
Many great books of the past two-hundred years fall into a category described by the German word 'bildungsroman' - that is, a coming of age tale documenting the maturing of a protagonist through loss and struggle with the eventual realization of success, rarely unalloyed.
Reading Nicholas Meyer's (very) contemporary autobiography, I was frequently reminded of one of these classic stories; here's a man who by his own admission was a mediocre student (though with exceptional, recognized gifts) who lost a parent at an early age, journeyed into a strange world where he had few personal contacts - and invented himself as the hero of his own story much as he created popular fiction. (For those who don't remember, Meyer's "The Seven Percent Solution" - which he wrote while still in his mid-twenties - spent many months on the New York Times bestseller list before it was made into a critically acclaimed and commercially successful motion picture.)
Yes, he's best known for his "Star Trek" films (generally acknowledged as the most popular features in the franchise) but as "The View From The Bridge" reveals, his work is as distinguished by its variety as its quality ("Sommersby" - his re-interpretation of the 'Martin Guerre' story - and his adaptation of Philip Roth's "The Human Stain" being just two examples.)
Not surprisingly, Meyer's narrative is as compelling as one might expect from the man behind all these motion pictures - and while there's much to be enjoyed by those looking for inside Hollywood (and inside 'Star Trek) anecdotes, this book will be fascinating to anyone interested in how a fine craftsman gains proficiency in his chosen field (albeit that in Mr. Meyer's field, millions of dollars are routinely at stake).
Well-done!
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