The View from the Bridge by Nicholas Meyer

Author:Nicholas Meyer [Meyer, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Post mortem

As the years passed I was pleased, proud, and always surprised and touched to see the film continue to garner affection and respect from critics and audiences. It was a long time before I saw The Wrath of Khan again. The occasion was a twentieth-anniversary screening in 2002 at the new, wonderfully appointed Paramount Theater on the lot, which—no coincidence—was also the occasion to launch the special DVD edition. In the intervening years, Kirstie Alley had become a television star. Gayne Rescher, Bill Dornisch, Joe Jennings, Bibi Besch and Merritt Butrick (mother and son in the film), and art director Mike Minor had all passed away (the latter two of a new and deadly scourge). The film had already appeared on DVD, but the studio was by now aware of the whole ancillary arena known as “special features,” to which I had somewhat reluctantly contributed. I had not wished to do the “director’s commentary” (I can think of nothing worse than trying to watch a movie with someone yammering in my ear throughout), but I sold out when I was offered DVDs from the Paramount catalog to jump-start my own collection.

When I was interviewed for a separate feature concerning the origins of the film and my contribution to them, I narrated the events surrounding the screenplay as I have recounted them here. Paramount’s lawyers became alarmed, and the DVD producers were told they could not use parts of the story that might appear to put Paramount in jeopardy with the Writers Guild. I, in turn, responded that if they didn’t include the truth, I would back out of the project entirely. In the end a compromise was reached and I was responsible for a clause that is now standard in all studio DVDs, the disclaimer that states that the studio is in no way responsible for any of the content or comments made by people appearing in the interviews on the disc. It is hard to overstate the importance of this clause: It enables those supplementary DVD segments to be more than mere puff pieces but a valuable form of oral history. People can tell their differing, multiple versions and perceptions of the truth (as Rashomon tries to explain), in all their fascinating variety, without the studio worrying about the consequences.

That night the Paramount Theater was full to overflowing with friends and fans. Ricardo Montalban was the guest of honor. There were speeches, including a brief one by me. (Brief because, who wants speeches in a movie theater?) Then Star Trek II in its DVD format was projected on the huge screen with incredible fidelity, and I had a chance to sit back and try to be objective about the movie, just another member of the audience.

Mindful that I had long ago surrendered all proprietary authority over the film (all artists, as I’ve claimed, lose that authority when their creations go out into the wide world), and mindful that my opinion was no more or less “definitive” than anyone else’s, I decided that The Wrath of Khan was a pretty good film.

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