Quotes by Nicholas Meyer - Page 1

Audiences may be stupid, but they are never wrong.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Audience
May
Stupid
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I think all my Star Trek movies are very earthbound.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Star Trek Movie
Stars
Thinking
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Sure you can; the only question is whether you do it well.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
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I'm mainly interested in people trying to figure s#!t out.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Figures
People
Trying
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I never gave my career much strategic thought. Maybe I should have.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Careers
Should
Should Have
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The first thing that put me on the map was my Sherlock Holmes novel.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Firsts
Holmes
Maps
First Thing
Map
Sherlock
Sherlock Holmes
The First Thing
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There are movies I've made that I think no celebrations are in order.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Celebration
Order
Thinking
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Art and commerce are not irreconciliable, they are inextricably intertwined.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Art
Commerce
Intertwined
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Leo Tolstoy said the purpose of art is to teach you to love life. And that's what I want.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Art
Love Life
Purpose
Copy Quote
Art doesn't just happen by accident. It is about pulling out new tricks and trying new things.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Art
New Things
Pulling
Tricks
Trying
Accident
Happen
Copy Quote
Movie studios, Hollywood studios, by and large are not making the kind of movies that I go to see.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Hollywood
Hollywood Studios
Kind
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What I want any genre to do, what I want any work of art to do, is to illuminate the human condition.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Art
Genre
Want
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The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It's a collaborative adventure.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Travel
Adventure
Conductor
Orchestra
Symphony
Director
Collaborative
Symphony Orchestra
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There are moments in one's life where you look back and you say, 'Well, I wish I had done this differently.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Done
Looks
Wish
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We were extremely prescient in that we predicted the Soviet coup before it happened. That was kind of amazing.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Coups
Kind
Soviet
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In fact, we've entered a world which is arguably much more dangerous than [being] eyeball to eyeball with the USSR.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Eyeballs
Facts
World
Copy Quote
An actor is someone who pretends to be somebody else. A movie star is somebody who pretends that somebody else is them.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Movie Star
Star
Pretends
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No rock and roll ensemble, however inspired, can deliver the kind of musical variety obtainable with the resources of 110 instruments.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Musical
Rock And Roll
Rocks
Copy Quote
Actors will change their face, will change their hair, will change their voice, will disappear into the role. A movie star doesn't disappear.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Disappear
Hair
Movie Star
Stars
Voice
Copy Quote
A screenplay is not a finished product; a novel is. A screenplay is a blueprint for something - for a building that will most likely never be built.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Blueprints
Building
Novel
Blueprint
Finished Product
Likely
Product
Screenplay
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I'm not really interested in the exploding car or endless sort of dystopian fantasies and superheroes. None of that... that doesn't interest me very much.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Car
Fantasy
Superhero
Copy Quote
Schools and libraries are the twin cornerstones of a civilized society. Libraries are only good if people use them, like books only exist when someone reads them.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Book
Civilized
Civilized Society
People
School
Good Society People
Exist
Twin
Libraries
Reads
Schools
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I was always a filmmaker before I was anything else. If I was always anything, I was a storyteller, and it never really made much of a difference to me what medium I worked in.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Inspiring
Movie
Differences
Made
Always Me Anything
Anything Else
Me Always Never
Medium
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What’s the difference between and actor and a movie star. An actor is someone who pretends to be somebody else. A movie star is somebody who pretends that somebody else is them.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Actors
Differences
Stars
Copy Quote
Having done, you know, science fiction, I didn't want to get trapped in science fiction. So my eclecticism was my only conscious choice. I didn't want to find myself in a niche that I couldn't get out of.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Choices
Done
Fiction
Copy Quote
As a writer, you have control of the words you put on the page. But once that manuscript leaves your hand, you give control to the reader. As a director, you are limited by everything: weather, budget, and egos.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Giving
Hands
Reader
Weather
Budget
Egos
Leaves
Manuscript
Page
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The naive thing I suppose is simply that we thought, in the words of Francis Fukuyama, that we had reached the end of history and we were entering a brave new world minus the Soviet Union where everything was going to be peaches and cream.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Brave New World
Entering
Unions
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If you look at the heroes of antiquity and myth, they all have flaws. It's something that they have to overcome; their flaws are something that they have to act in spite of. The challenge is not to defy your fate, but to endure it. That is heroic.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Challenges
Fate
Hero
Copy Quote
First of all, I should preface this by the observation that artists are not the best judges of what they've done and the word definitive does not belong, in my opinion, in any conversation about art. When somebody says it's the "definitive" something, I'm always recoiling.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Art
Doe
Judging
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The truth is that I used to read J.J. bedtime stories. He came up to me at the FOX commissary about four years ago and he said, "Do you remember what you gave me for my Barmitzvah?" I said no. He said, "You gave me the annotated Sherlock Holmes and my son is reading it now." It was the gift that kept on giving.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Reading
Son
Years
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When you read a history or biography you are entitled to imagine that it is as accurate as the authors can make it. That research has gone into it and we say "This is a history of the civil war, this is a biography of Lincoln" whatever. But you don't make any such supposition when you say "This is a historical novel."
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
War
Gone
Historical Novels
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Once you decide that you're going to have the death of Spock, then how does that affect the other people? Why is it there? I got a lot of stick from a lot of people from the very beginning about the idea of killing Spock. Somebody said, "You can't kill him." And I said, "Sure you can; the only question is whether you do it well."
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Dying
Ideas
People
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My father's book is about is about a number of things, but about Houdini's rage to not be a failure like his father, and it's also about converting X-rated material, namely bondage, into family friendly safe fare, which is what he did. It's also about death and resurrection, and rising to live again another day when everyone thinks you're dead.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Book
Father
Thinking
Copy Quote
I wrote an article not so long ago that was published in the Los Angeles Times, and I think I titled it "Movies vs. History." But I think they had another title for it. I got sort of sick and tired of seeing movies that got picked apart by people because they had taken dramatic or poetic license and I said "These people don't understand the distinctions."
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Taken
Thinking
Tired
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I think that the reason that people are so up in arms about movies that have historical inaccuracies is because now that we've trashed our education institutions beyond repair, people fear that the only people are getting their histories is through the movies, so the elephant in the room is that no one wants to talk about why we're so passionately obsessed with accuracy.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Elephants
People
Thinking
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But you have to understand what that really did is that it opened these DVDs to be sources of oral history instead of puff pieces for the studio, because people involved with them being in fear of being sued by somebody, so it became another form of movie history. I mean I didn't plan it, but I'm proud that it happened. Which is probably why they didn't interview me for this DVD.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Dvds
Mean
People
Copy Quote
So the Lincoln movie gets trashed because Connecticut voted for the amendment - not to mention how the people in Connecticut feel - but there's a lot of that. And I think it precedes from a fundamental misunderstanding of cinema. They are entertainment. And I'd like to say that entertainment isn't a synonym for disposable or mindless or stupid. Hamlet? Pretty entertaining from where I come from.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
People
Stupid
Thinking
Copy Quote
With a historical novel you know that liberties are being taken. Since Walter Scott, we know that poetic license, dramatic license, that events been conflated and that liberties have been taken, characters ditto, dates rearranged. But people don't seem to understand that movies are fictions, they are dramatizations, at least historical movies, and we should accord the moviemakers some of the same understanding and latitude. When you go to a movie you know it's a dramatization and not history.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Character
Poetic License
Taken
Copy Quote
Roddenberry had his own utopian vision about he perfectibility of man, and I never really believed that. And I don’t think the show demonstrates that. I think it is about gunboat diplomacy. In the final analysis, the Enterprise fires. They’re always shooting and bringing civilization, and coming to worlds where they don’t approve of tyrannical enterprises – no pun intended – and they substitute their own quote unquote enlightened version of how society is supposed to work, which is essentially American.
Nicholas Meyer / Screenwriter
Men
Fire
Thinking
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Nicholas Meyer Quotes - Page 1

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