Quentin Tarantino’s first novel is clearly not the stuff of a first time writer, and it has plenty to say. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the twice Academy Award-winning writer taking another look at his grandiose mix of Hollywood fairy tale, historical pop culture nostalgia trip, and the wish-fulfillment fantasy dream. Tarantino is well-read and it shows. He’s sat with many a filmmaker from the 1960s era and it also shows. The novel, not a true novelization but something far superior, is his attempt at writing in the Elmore Leonard style. The result is a novel ten times as good as his giant-sized movie. His two Oscars for screenwriting should have clued us in. The book is available in two editions: one a pulp-style paperback, and the other a color photograph-filled hardcover that feels a lot like a Blu-ray with extra special features, including many deleted scenes. If you like pulp crime, and loved or merely liked the movie, you’ll want to give this a read. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is available now here at Amazon.
We’re back today with the second part of my interview with Nicholas Meyer, director, screenwriter, and storyteller, as we celebrate the 35th anniversary of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and its return to theaters next month as part of the Fathom Events series. Meyer directed Star Trek II and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and he was a screenwriter on both movies as well as Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. He chatted with me about his films and more this past week. If you missed part one of the interview, check it out here.
CB: You’ve written words spoken on-screen by Lawrence Olivier (The Seven-Per-Cent Solution), David Warner (Time After Time, Star Trek VI), and Christopher Plummer (Star Trek VI). Are there any other great actors you maybe fantasize, or would like to write, dialogue for?
NM: I’ve also worked with Jason Robards and John Lithgow (both in The Day After). I’ve worked with some really wonderful actors. Fantasizing about working with actors is interesting. When I listened to the Chandos recording of the music from Henry V–the Olivier film with Christopher Plummer reciting or acting out the various Shakespeare vocal parts–I thought, “Wow, I’d really love to work with this man.” And I wrote the part of Chang in Star Trek VI specifically for him. That’s the first time I’ve ever written for an actor other than the Star Trek cast. I said to my casting director Mary Jo Slater, “Whatever you do, don’t come back without him. Because there’s no movie unless it’s him.” It would take me longer than this conversation to rustle around in my brain other actors I’d love to work with–Benedict Cumberbatch–sure, of course.
Nicholas Meyer directing the production crew, with Christopher Plummer as General Chang, on the Klingon courtroom set of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
CB: Your Time After Time co-star Malcolm McDowell joined Star Trek in the seventh movie in the series, Star Trek Generations, after you were no longer with the franchise, and it always seemed to me to be an obvious choice to get him into the Star Trek universe. Did he ever contact you about taking on a Star Trek role?
NM: No… we never discussed it. David Warner, who actually has been in two Star Trek movies (as Chancellor Gorkon in The Undiscovered Country and St. John Talbot in Star Trek V: The Final Fronter), was the great post-war Hamlet with the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company), and I think Malcolm at one point was a spear carrier in that company at the time when David was this huge star. In Time After Time they used to kid each other about those times. Something about carrying a pack of cigarettes under your costume.
CB: You have said you see yourself first as a writer and have been writing and telling stories since you were five years old. Are you as excited today to sit down and craft a story as you were in 1982?
NM: I think when I get going the answer is yes, and if it’s going well the answer is yes, and the hours can go by and I look up and it’s a week later. But as I’ve gotten older, the process of actually starting, of facing what used to be a blank page, which is now a blank screen, having done it again and again and again… Most of the stuff I’ve written has never been produced. Most of the stuff I’ve written for books I’m happy to say has been published, but I haven’t written that many books. But most of my screenplays–including probably my best screenplays–have never been done. So as you get older and you embark on this again and again and again there is a kind of a weariness of picking up the yoke and putting it on your shoulders. That said, getting paid for telling stories beats work any day.
On the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Engineering set, that’s Catherine E. Coulson (later Twin Peaks’ Log Lady) with the camera, director Nicholas Meyer (in Starfleet captain’s jacket) and James Doohan as Scotty, filming the emotional finale.
CB: In your memoir The View From the Bridge, you mentioned some of your best ideas or solutions when writing come while doing laundry, while in the tub, or even building a model boat. What was your biggest revelation and strangest place you found it?
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan–a member of that fabled Class of 1982’s “best summer of movies”–turned 35 this year, and to celebrate, the film is returning to theaters as part of the Fathom Events series. It has been said the film’s director and screenplay writer Nicholas Meyer saved Star Trek. Meyer was well-known as the author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and its screenplay, which earned him an Oscar nomination, and for directing and writing the screenplay for the fan-favorite, time travel thriller, Time After Time. After the lukewarm response at the box office to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, executive producer Harve Bennett tapped Meyer to take the franchise in a bold, new direction, and the result, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, became the best reviewed film of the franchise and a classic among all science fiction. Many details about Meyer’s work have been recounted in Allan Asherman’s The Making of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Meyer’s own memoir, The View from the Bridge. Meyer has also shared a trove of his thoughts and work on the film in director commentaries accompanying the film’s various home releases. He’s not quite finished with Star Trek yet–he’s back again as a writer and producer on the new series, Star Trek: Discovery, premiering next month.
I was ecstatic to interview Nicholas Meyer this past week and listen to him reminisce as director and screenwriter of The Wrath of Khan for the approaching anniversary theatrical release, and ask him questions I’ve had for years about his long writing career. Meyer sees himself first as a storyteller. In addition to The Wrath of Khan, he wrote the screenplay for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and he directed and wrote the screenplay for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. I think you’ll discover—or rediscover—that in Meyer’s selections of leading stage and screen actors like Christopher Plummer, Meyer provided gravitas to the Star Trek universe, and by infusing classical literature into the voices of characters from the likes of Shakespeare, Doyle, and Melville, he elevated Star Trek’s story beyond mere popular science fiction. Everything that would come after The Wrath of Khan in the Star Trek franchise exists as a direct result of Meyer’s success on that film.
Director Nicholas Meyer observing final detail work as Ricardo Montalban’s headwrap is applied, filming the first appearance of Khan in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
CB: Welcome to borg.com. Thanks for chatting with me and borg.com readers today and congratulations on the 35th anniversary of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
NM: Thank you so much. It’s a real pleasant surprise—As Kirk said to Scotty, “That’ll be a pleasant surprise.”
CB: Let’s talk about Ricardo Montalban as Khan. I have always loved this line: “I’ll chase him ‘round the Moons of Nibia and ‘round the Antares Maelstrom and ‘round Perdition’s flames.” When you write something like that, do you know that you’ve got it, and when you see Montalban saying it and it appears on the screen, do you get any satisfaction of seeing that all come together?
NM: Absolutely! I have to say, first of all, I didn’t write it. Herman Melville wrote it. I substituted a few planets or something. This is all Ahab. I just cribbed it. I remember with some satisfaction what I took to be at the time my cleverness (which turns out to be the curse of Kirk: “I patted myself on the back for my cleverness”). It wasn’t until I saw Ricardo actually do it that I got goosebumps, and thought, “Holy cow. This is wonderful!” And I said to him actually at some point during the movie, “You really should be playing Lear.” He sort of looks like Lear–with a big set of pecs. Because he has been on stage, he was on Broadway, he did legit plays. He was very touched, I think, that I had told him this, and he made some disparaging remark about his Hispanic accent. I said, “That’s all bullshit. You enunciate perfectly. You could do this.” I think Khan was as close as he ever got to doing it.
