In 1982, just after I had arrived in Los Angeles and was walking down Hollywood Blvd., I was handed two free tickets to a preview of what turned out to be Wrath Of Khan hosted by Nicholas Meyer on the Paramount lot. It was dazzling to be on a real studio lot.
I've always wondered about the "No Smoking" sign on the bridge in TWOK. In TNG, Troi told Mark Twain smoking was something humanity had left behind, but in Picard, Rios smoked cigars. God, I'm a nerd.
Pretty sure Terry Matalas has a smoking fetish. It’s really bizarre to see smoking in Trek, and that wasn’t the only character in Picard who smoked liked a chimney.
Yes …smoking in Trek, I hated it in the new shows and in STV, not only was it dumb and in Rios’s case stereotypical It caused dozens of continuity errors
Meyer is my favourite director. I love his style of storytelling and especially his sense of humour. An absolutely fascinating and intellectual filmmaker.
It's amazing that, for a much lower budget, Meyer was able to deliver a film that is grittier and more realistic, more brilliant visually, with more relatable, more humorous characters than The Motion Picture.
Concerning Kirk and Khan not meeting to fight hand-to-hand: Having them fight it out on their ships levels the playing field. Kirk is an excellent traction on board a ship and has more experience. Khan only has hours to read or study space combat.
The cinematography and design on TWOK was excellent and often overlooked in the praise for this film - everything felt *real*. Even the station sets - nothing was too pristine. Subsequent outings had that look of being filmed on sets, other than the location shoots of Trek IV. I love Trek III, but that set look keeps taking me out of fully enjoying it. Somehow, even Trek V's location shoots managed to look extremely artificial. TWOK and TMP are also the best spaceships ever looked in Trek, and the shots were far more dynamic than TMP. While Roddenberry hated the more militaristic design elements, they worked - better, I'd suggest, than the lounge-look of TNG. Budget is no replacement for sheer talent working at their passionate best.
Cinematographer here. VistaVision is NOT Scope, it uses flat spherical lenses. You're confusing VistaVision with the 2.76:1 Ultra Panavision 70 format. VistaVision is more 1.85:1. It's just a really large film frame. Because of this, as you said, it can be DOWN-PRINTED to 35mm Scope without losing any quality.
You are correct about Vistavision, as stated on another comment here too. Wrath of Khan was shot in anamorphic cinemascope, but all the effects by ILM were done with VistaVision and then cropped to the 2.35 from the 1.85 Vistavision, higher resolution.
No one smokes on the International Space Station. Only top professionals are given the chance to go there. No one on a starship would ever dream of smoking. Those signs were a mistake.
@@sonnyboo At the time of the film's release it was reported that Meyer felt that people would still be smoking in the 23rd century so the signs were necessary.
@@SECRETARIATguy224 Hi. Did Meyer think that, for 1966, Star Trek was campy? Or was it from a 1982 perspective? There were actual, deliberate campy shows in 1966: Batman and the second season of Lost in Space. Star Trek was Shakespeare compared to these - as referenced by Meyer in his original title. I stand by my original statement. Thanks.
@@DrZacksCafe Hello. Your opinion that it wasn't campy or cheesy for it's time is an opinion I respect [and share, by the way], but it's irrelevant. It's also irrelevant whether the original series was or was not _actually_ campy or cheesy. The only thing that matters is that if Meyer _didn't_ feel that the original series was campy and cheesy, the film Star Trek 2 wouldn't be the film it became.
@@SECRETARIATguy224 Thanks for sharing. I’m glad Meyer made STII. In fact, when he was announced as director, Time After Time was my all time favourite movie. It’s still up there, in fact. Teen movie experiences are intense and live long and proper in memory. Glad we agree that TOS was not campy. Cheers.
What annoys me about this interview is the more or less erroneous (and really rather exaggerated, and therefore hyperbolic) opening statement, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture was an enormous disappointment for fans and for the box office." In fact, that's not entirely accurate. Yes, many fans were disappointed by ST:TMP because they were naturally expecting the colorful 1960s era aesthetics of the Original Series, with its often action packed (or sometimes even humorous) morality play story content that largely focused on the show's vivid characters, but not everyone disliked the movie quite as intensely as the interviewer so casually asserts. Yes, it's accurate to say that the film was disappointing in a number of ways, but (and this is THE major point) ST:TMP was NOT a commercial failure at the box office. If it had been, Star Trek II would have never been greenlighted by Paramount. Yes, the movie went way, way over budget, but it was Paramount's decision to not only rush it into production, but also to repeatedly raise the initial budget of roughly 10 million US dollars (which eventually increased four fold) so that the movie could be finished and delivered on time for its overly ambitious early December 1979 release date (which it just barely made as it was). I would posit that ST:TMP actually suffered from pretty much the same thing that the original 1964 TV pilot for Star Trek (The Cage) did, in that it's storyline eventually ended up coming off as rather bloodless and overly "cerebral," which is why its much vaunted creator, Gene Roddenberry, was demoted by Paramount when the decision was made to do a second pilot (which, surprise, surpise, surprise, actually sold!). With all due respect to the now larger than life "Great Bird of the Galaxy" (who didn't even create the Klingons, [who were dreamed up by showrunner Gene Coon], and who hated most, if not all, of the beloved comedic original episodes [most of which Coon wrote in Roddenberry's absence]), but if ST:TMP was a "motionless picture," maybe it's because its creator had a bit too much control over the final product. In the final analysis, there are many factors to take into account when arguing how "disappointing" ST:TMP supposedly was/is, because there's also the fact that legendary director Robert Wise knew very little about Star Trek before agreeing to make the film. But then again, Nicholas Meyer was no fan of the Original Series (or science fiction in general) either. Yet, on a dramatically reduced budget, and without much in the way of input from Roddenberry (who reportedly despised the ST:TWOK script and had absolutely no compunction whatsoever about letting the young director know it), Meyer somehow managed to craft THE greatest Star Trek movie ever made, bar none. At any rate, the interview is actually quite good. Director Meyer is always fun to listen to, and the interviewer does a reasonably good job of asking pertinent questions. The needlessly flippant intro however... is a bit over the top, and really not all that accurate to begin with. In fact, after so immediately having my ears assaulted with the interviewer's arguably more or less false opening statement, I was just about to click 'unlike' and delete the video from my previously viewed list altogether. But then I thought, well, let's see what Nicholas Meyer actually has to say. So I did, and I'm glad I did. But that sloppy, sadly off the cuff introductory verbiage about the very first Star Trek feature film, THE one that (arguably) made it possible for the franchise to continue at all... uh... yuck.
The original series was kinda cheezy most of the time. Not to say there weren't some episodes with good dialogue, but not with a maturity like Wrath of Khan where characters spoke with dignity and knee deep in middle age level conversation.
@@sonnyboo "SPOCK: How compact your bodies are. And what a variety of senses you have. This thing you call language though, most remarkable. You depend on it for so very much. But is any one of you really its master? But most of all, the aloneness. You are so alone. You live out your lives in this shell of flesh. Self-contained, separate. How lonely you are. How terribly lonely."
![ค้าง (STILL) - GEMINI [ OFFICIAL MV ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ftxx3hk5vkU/mqdefault.jpg)
In 1982, just after I had arrived in Los Angeles and was walking down Hollywood Blvd., I was handed two free tickets to a preview of what turned out to be Wrath Of Khan hosted by Nicholas Meyer on the Paramount lot. It was dazzling to be on a real studio lot.
That sounds incredible!
I've always wondered about the "No Smoking" sign on the bridge in TWOK. In TNG, Troi told Mark Twain smoking was something humanity had left behind, but in Picard, Rios smoked cigars. God, I'm a nerd.
I'm pretty nerdy myself.
Pretty sure Terry Matalas has a smoking fetish. It’s really bizarre to see smoking in Trek, and that wasn’t the only character in Picard who smoked liked a chimney.
Yes …smoking in Trek, I hated it in the new shows and in STV, not only was it dumb and in Rios’s case stereotypical It caused dozens of continuity errors
Meyer is my favourite director. I love his style of storytelling and especially his sense of humour. An absolutely fascinating and intellectual filmmaker.
I wish Star Trek Discovery had taken more "consultation" with him. He has a mastery of storytelling.
It's amazing that, for a much lower budget, Meyer was able to deliver a film that is grittier and more realistic, more brilliant visually, with more relatable, more humorous characters than The Motion Picture.
100% agree.
Nice work, you sussed out some new things about the film. Love Nicholas Meyer. Entertaining and informing. Well earned thumbs up.
Much appreciated!
excellent interview
Nice interview, good stuff👍
Glad you enjoyed it!
Great interview!
Thanks
in my top 5 as well
Great film.
Concerning Kirk and Khan not meeting to fight hand-to-hand:
Having them fight it out on their ships levels the playing field. Kirk is an excellent traction on board a ship and has more experience. Khan only has hours to read or study space combat.
So true.
The cinematography and design on TWOK was excellent and often overlooked in the praise for this film - everything felt *real*. Even the station sets - nothing was too pristine. Subsequent outings had that look of being filmed on sets, other than the location shoots of Trek IV. I love Trek III, but that set look keeps taking me out of fully enjoying it. Somehow, even Trek V's location shoots managed to look extremely artificial. TWOK and TMP are also the best spaceships ever looked in Trek, and the shots were far more dynamic than TMP. While Roddenberry hated the more militaristic design elements, they worked - better, I'd suggest, than the lounge-look of TNG.
Budget is no replacement for sheer talent working at their passionate best.
THIS. I agree with every word of this.
VistaVision takes 35mm film stock, 8 perfs to a frame (horizontal).
You are correct
Cinematographer here. VistaVision is NOT Scope, it uses flat spherical lenses. You're confusing VistaVision with the 2.76:1 Ultra Panavision 70 format. VistaVision is more 1.85:1. It's just a really large film frame. Because of this, as you said, it can be DOWN-PRINTED to 35mm Scope without losing any quality.
You are correct about Vistavision, as stated on another comment here too. Wrath of Khan was shot in anamorphic cinemascope, but all the effects by ILM were done with VistaVision and then cropped to the 2.35 from the 1.85 Vistavision, higher resolution.
No one smokes on the International Space Station. Only top professionals are given the chance to go there. No one on a starship would ever dream of smoking. Those signs were a mistake.
Or a joke....
@@sonnyboo At the time of the film's release it was reported that Meyer felt that people would still be smoking in the 23rd century so the signs were necessary.
Kind of annoyed with the repeated use of “campy” and “cheesy” to describe the original series. It was neither of these things for its time.
If Meyer had not felt that way about TOS, Star Trek 2 wouldn't have been the film that it became.
@@SECRETARIATguy224 Hi. Did Meyer think that, for 1966, Star Trek was campy? Or was it from a 1982 perspective? There were actual, deliberate campy shows in 1966: Batman and the second season of Lost in Space. Star Trek was Shakespeare compared to these - as referenced by Meyer in his original title. I stand by my original statement. Thanks.
@@DrZacksCafe Hello. Your opinion that it wasn't campy or cheesy for it's time is an opinion I respect [and share, by the way], but it's irrelevant. It's also irrelevant whether the original series was or was not _actually_ campy or cheesy. The only thing that matters is that if Meyer _didn't_ feel that the original series was campy and cheesy, the film Star Trek 2 wouldn't be the film it became.
@@SECRETARIATguy224 Thanks for sharing. I’m glad Meyer made STII. In fact, when he was announced as director, Time After Time was my all time favourite movie. It’s still up there, in fact. Teen movie experiences are intense and live long and proper in memory. Glad we agree that TOS was not campy. Cheers.
@@DrZacksCafe You're most welcome. Time After Time is fantastic!
The original series was not campy, and The Motion Picture was far from a box office disappointment.
That's the beauty of opinions, everyone can have one and it's entirely subjective.
What annoys me about this interview is the more or less erroneous (and really rather exaggerated, and therefore hyperbolic) opening statement, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture was an enormous disappointment for fans and for the box office." In fact, that's not entirely accurate. Yes, many fans were disappointed by ST:TMP because they were naturally expecting the colorful 1960s era aesthetics of the Original Series, with its often action packed (or sometimes even humorous) morality play story content that largely focused on the show's vivid characters, but not everyone disliked the movie quite as intensely as the interviewer so casually asserts.
Yes, it's accurate to say that the film was disappointing in a number of ways, but (and this is THE major point) ST:TMP was NOT a commercial failure at the box office. If it had been, Star Trek II would have never been greenlighted by Paramount. Yes, the movie went way, way over budget, but it was Paramount's decision to not only rush it into production, but also to repeatedly raise the initial budget of roughly 10 million US dollars (which eventually increased four fold) so that the movie could be finished and delivered on time for its overly ambitious early December 1979 release date (which it just barely made as it was).
I would posit that ST:TMP actually suffered from pretty much the same thing that the original 1964 TV pilot for Star Trek (The Cage) did, in that it's storyline eventually ended up coming off as rather bloodless and overly "cerebral," which is why its much vaunted creator, Gene Roddenberry, was demoted by Paramount when the decision was made to do a second pilot (which, surprise, surpise, surprise, actually sold!). With all due respect to the now larger than life "Great Bird of the Galaxy" (who didn't even create the Klingons, [who were dreamed up by showrunner Gene Coon], and who hated most, if not all, of the beloved comedic original episodes [most of which Coon wrote in Roddenberry's absence]), but if ST:TMP was a "motionless picture," maybe it's because its creator had a bit too much control over the final product.
In the final analysis, there are many factors to take into account when arguing how "disappointing" ST:TMP supposedly was/is, because there's also the fact that legendary director Robert Wise knew very little about Star Trek before agreeing to make the film. But then again, Nicholas Meyer was no fan of the Original Series (or science fiction in general) either. Yet, on a dramatically reduced budget, and without much in the way of input from Roddenberry (who reportedly despised the ST:TWOK script and had absolutely no compunction whatsoever about letting the young director know it), Meyer somehow managed to craft THE greatest Star Trek movie ever made, bar none.
At any rate, the interview is actually quite good. Director Meyer is always fun to listen to, and the interviewer does a reasonably good job of asking pertinent questions. The needlessly flippant intro however... is a bit over the top, and really not all that accurate to begin with. In fact, after so immediately having my ears assaulted with the interviewer's arguably more or less false opening statement, I was just about to click 'unlike' and delete the video from my previously viewed list altogether. But then I thought, well, let's see what Nicholas Meyer actually has to say. So I did, and I'm glad I did. But that sloppy, sadly off the cuff introductory verbiage about the very first Star Trek feature film, THE one that (arguably) made it possible for the franchise to continue at all... uh... yuck.
Thanks for watching!
There was no, "mature dialogue" in Star Trek previous to this film?
The original series was kinda cheezy most of the time. Not to say there weren't some episodes with good dialogue, but not with a maturity like Wrath of Khan where characters spoke with dignity and knee deep in middle age level conversation.
@@sonnyboo "SPOCK: How compact your bodies are. And what a variety of senses you have. This thing you call language though, most remarkable. You depend on it for so very much. But is any one of you really its master? But most of all, the aloneness. You are so alone. You live out your lives in this shell of flesh. Self-contained, separate. How lonely you are. How terribly lonely."
from the episode, "Is There is Truth no Beauty?"
@@landline00 Actually, that was Kollos speaking through Spock.
@@WillHoover5967 That doesn't make it any less eloquent.