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Nicholas Meyer Biography
 Nicholas
Meyer was born Christmas eve, 1945, in New York City. The son of Bernard
C. Meyer, a psychoanalyst, and Elly Kassman, a concert pianist, he attended
Fieldston High School in Riverdale and graduated from the University
of Iowa in 1968, having majored in theatre and film. During his four
years at Iowa, he wrote a record-breaking 400 film reviews for the Daily
Iowan.
After graduation, Meyer worked for Paramount Pictures’
publicity department in New York, eventually becoming the unit publicist
on the 1970 hit, Love Story, before writing a nonfiction account
of the filming, The Love Story Story, and taking off with the
proceeds to seek his fortune in Los Angeles.
Meyer’s teleplays for ABC’s Judge Dee
& Monastery Murders and CBS’s Night That Panicked
America launched his screenwriting career, though the WGA strike
of 1973 caused him to set aside screenwriting and try his hand at novels.
Meyer published Target Practice in March 1974
and won an Edgar nomination. It was followed four months later by his
Sherlock Holmes pastiche, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, which
remained on the New York Times Bestseller List for 40 weeks
and received the British Gold Dagger award for crime fiction. Meyer’s
screenplay for The Seven-Per-Cent Solution was nominated for
an Academy Award in 1976.
Meyer’s directing debut—from his own screenplay—occurred
in 1979 with Time After Time. This was followed by Star
Trek II—the Wrath of Khan (1982) and The Day After
(1983), ABC’s nuclear-themed movie, which remains the single most
watched television film ever made. Its controversial telecast drew more
than one hundred million viewers.
Subsequent Meyer novels include two other Holmes pastiches,
The West End Horror (1976), and The Canary Trainer
(1993), as well as Black Orchid (co-authored with UI graduate
Barry Jay Kaplan, 67MFA, 1977) and Confessions of a Homing Pigeon
(1981).
Other directing credits include Volunteers (1986),
The Deceivers (1988), Company Business (1991), Star
Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and the HBO film Vendetta,
(1999), starring Christopher Walken. Other screenplays include Sommersby
(1993), as well as co-writing chores on Fatal Attraction (1987)
and the animated feature Prince of Egypt (1998).
His script, The Informant, based on Gerald Seymour’s
novel, Field of Blood, won the PEN award for Best Teleplay,
1999.
Meyer has recently completed the screenplay for Roth’s
subsequent novella, The Dying Animal, and is currently adapting
Richard Russo’s novel, Straight Man, for the screen.
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