Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Nick Meyer's dark Frank Lloyd Wright bio-script moves forward

Picked this up in the trades chatter recently:

Nick Meyer
, author of The View From the Bridge—and, oh yes: writer and/or director of the even-numbered TOS Trek films, which are included in the book—has penned a great script about a darkly bizarre 1910s chapter in the otherwise iconic American architecture giant, Frank Lloyd Wright. Here's the story start—and a comment from Nick below the fold:

by Megan Lehmann/Hollywood Reporter 12/5/11

Producers J. Todd Harris and Ed Bachrach are behind the film, about the fabled American architect, which was written by Nicholas Meyer. Veteran filmmaker Bruce Beresford has signed on to develop and direct Taliesin....
The title refers to the architect’s former home and studio in rural Spring Green, Wis., where the key events in the film take place. The rambling hillside compound, considered a masterpiece of Prairie-style architecture, was the focus of scandal as Wright built it for himself and his married mistress Martha "Mamah" Cheney. In 1914, while Wright was away, a domestic worker murdered Cheney, her two children and four others by locking them inside and setting fire to the building.

“It’s a very good script,” Beresford told The Hollywood Reporter. “It doesn’t cover his whole life, just a small section of it, and it doesn’t whitewash him into some sort of saint." ...

Meanwhile,  Nick told me briefly about his script:

"Someone once said that Great Men are seldom Good Men. The movie explores that proposition and also questions whether the "ordinary rules" apply to such people—and what is the difference between chance and comeuppance.

I think that's what it's about."

And I think this will be a whale of a flesh-and-blood revelation into what has been for decades just a dusty-pedestalled cultural icon. Fun, fun.

(Photo: Meyer at the Star Trek Day picket during the WGA strike, December 2007)

No comments: