Okay, time's past...and I was, indeed posting from (obviously) faulty memory (in retrospect, I can see exactly the timeline based on things happening in my life at the time and I find it amusing I turned them around).trevanian said:
Kryton said:
Never forget that prior to TWOK, Nick Meyer's only directorial experience had been in the (painfully) laughably putrid "The Day After" which was scientifically utterly inaccurate, dramatically a soap opera (at best), and visually (even for 1982 TV) amateurish and underwhelming.
Yet it was the "first 'serious' drama about a nuclear strike on US soil" made huge publicity. "Everyone" watched it 'cause of hype and it turned out to be, well... as utterly worthless as I just described.
IOW, Meyer was never a wunderkind (forgive the lack of umlaut). He just got kinda lucky a few times (The 7% Solution, Time After Time, TWOK, and, popularly, TUC, which I disagree with). But he didn't hit a triple or a home run with every at bat by any stretch.
Ignoring poster resumes for the moment, let's look at accurate information instead.
Meyer made DAY AFTER just AFTER TWOK, not before it. He made TIME AFTER TIME theatrically before TWOK, and directed a TV movie before that. He was only the writer of 7percent.
Perhaps you should look at the circumstances DAY AFTER was made under -- he was replacing another director (the guy who directed THE CAGE, btw) and was having to shoot about 12 pages per day. DAY AFTER didn't hold a candle in any way to the far superior TV show with Ed Flanders, SPECIAL REPORT, but he was making it under very trying circumstances.
Having said that, no matter WHAT the excuses are/were, THE DAY AFTER was utter dross on all levels. How and why he gets so much credit for that I'll never get.
Having said that, I couldn't agree more with you about SPECIAL REPORT. Even though it led to a few hokey FCC rules about broadcasting simulated news stories (
), the story and performances were top drawer compared to the Meyer TVM. (George Cukor was replaced halfway into production by Richard Fleming on GONE WITH WITH THE WIND. He never seemed to make many excuses for it. 
)
