classictrek:

Originally, Nicholas Meyer was hired as the screenwriter for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, working with his assistant Denny Martin Flynn over the then-nascent internet. Once the screenplay was turned in, Paramount began looking for a director; perhaps surprisingly, it was Meyer’s wife that pushed him to ask for the job. Paramount offered him the chair again, despite a string of commercial failures that he’d helmed after Star Trek II, including Volunteers and Company Business, a cold war thriller that was released just 8 weeks before Star Trek VI opened.

In one press interview, DeForest Kelley praised a particular aspect of Meyer’s direction: “He knows everybody’s lines in the script, and if somebody forgets a line, he doesn’t have to refer to the script at all, no matter what the line is. Even the speeches…whole speeches. If the actor isn’t present to do your close-up off camera, Nick can stand back there and recite the lines to you.”