2012-06-14

Nicholas Meyer: A Good Film Needs to Leave Out to the Imagination

Nicholas Meyer, Jury Member of TV Film

Daily News: As a jury member of TV Film, what are your criteria for judging these films?
Nicholas Meyer: I\'m just an audience. I want to be involved in what I\'m seeing: Make me laugh, make me cry, make me want to know what happens next. The American writer Henry James said that the least demand that you can make of a work of art is that it is interesting, and the most demand is that it be moving.

Daily News: It seems that you attach more importance to the content of films. What about the production techniques of films?
Nicholas Meyer: I am not a very analytical person, so I only start to notice how the movie is made if I really don\'t like it. I really start to notice if the acting is not good, if the screenplay is not good, the photography is…. But if these things really work, then you don\'t really watch them. It\'s always easy to say why it\'s wonderful. It\'s not as easy to say that something was wrong. Another way to look at it, if something is wonderful, is you start to think later what was wonderful in order to take it apart.

Daily News: What is the trend of today\'s TV series and films? Are there any shocks that new media will bring to them?
Nicholas Meyer:It is my strong belief that one of the basic human events that is precious to the idea of theater is what I call "a group experience". When you go to see an opera, a play, a ballet, a film, it requires a commitment by you of time and money. Now what\'s happened is that with the coming of television, you are going to lose that experience.You see it by yourself, and you won\'t have to make any commitment to it. So, all the experience becomes increasingly diluted.
If I make a movie, I want someone to pay attention to it. Now you make them louder, and cut the movie to make it shorter, faster and faster, but it doesn\'t make it any better.

Daily News: Will the hot new film technologies like 3D have any negative effect on films?
Nicholas Meyer: All artistic media rely on leaving something out or omitting something. A painting does not move. Music has no intellectual content. Unless someone sings it, it is just sound. It\'s only when the painting meets your eye that it moves. So, art relies on provoking your imagination.The great exception is movies, because movies can do everything. And this is a problem.
In the beginning of movies, they were black and white and were silent. So your imagination had things to do. In 1927, they added sound. Then color. Now they are putting it in 3D. And the result is that we don\'t have anything to do. In America, we call it "eye candy." It\'s popular, but not good for you. They\'ve stopped our imaginations from contributing.
It\'s important to give some thought to how art works and how movies fit into that. When I direct a movie, I\'m always looking for what I can leave out to the imagination. What I worry and fear is that as movies leave less and less to the imagination, the audience becomes more and more passive.