By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: director Paul Aaron, who helmed A Different Story, A Force Of One (pictured above), Deadly Force and more.
The Unsung Auteurs column has certainly featured some little-known, under-appreciated creatives in its continuing run, but this week’s entrant Paul Aaron must be up there with the least high-profile of the bunch. There aren’t even any easily findable photographs of the man online, and standard web searches instead constantly yield ample information about Estonian racing driver Paul Aron and Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul, but practically nothing about this low-key theatre and film director who boasts a very small but interesting on-screen resume.
Paul Aaron was born in Hoosick Falls, New York in 1943 and graduated from Bennington College in 1966. Aaron’s major creative career began in the theatre. After directing a touring production of the stage adaptation of Muriel Spark’s The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie with Kim Hunter, Aaron was installed as casting and programs director at The Mark Taper Forum, where he founded an actors’ workshop and directed several plays. His revival of S. Ansky’s The Tenth Man, with Hollywood star Richard Dreyfuss, earned him a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Director in 1977. Aaron’s other stage credits include Peter Link’s off-Broadway rock musical Salvation; Paris Is Out!, with Sam Levene and Molly Picon; the Kander & Ebb musical 70, Girls, 70; and That’s Entertainment.
Paul Aaron made his directorial debut in 1978 with the comedy drama A Different Story, a now largely forgotten and deeply problematic work about a gay man and a lesbian who eventually fall in love. Yes, that’s a major issue, but A Different Story must be afforded a little credit for featuring likeable, non-hetero characters in lead roles at a time when this was rare indeed. Stars Perry King and especially the icy-eyed and magnetic Meg Foster are both great, and though the film is often silly, questionable in its themes, and frequently wrong-headed, A Different Story is a little better than it is now given credit for.
After his oddball gay-themed debut, Paul Aaron took a major left turn with his next film: the 1978 action belter A Force Of One starring Chuck Norris. Proving himself a truly muscular director, Aaron really succeeds with this early Norris entry, in which the hard-kicking martial artist is drafted in by the cops when the members of an elite police unit get killed one by one. Boasting rumbles aplenty, Aaron gets maximum characterisation out of the taut script by Unsung Auteur Ernest Tidyman, and good performances from Norris, Jennifer O’Neill, Clu Gulager and Super Fly himself Ron O’Neal.
From assisting in the rise of action star Chuck Norris in A Force Of One, Paul Aaron next helped solidify the cult cache of unpredictable talent Wings Hauser, who had made a name for himself as a brutal pimp in the 1982 exploitation classic Vice Squad. That film’s producer Sandy Howard was a big fan of Wings and wanted to turn him into a Charles Bronson-style action superstar, which didn’t quite happen with 1983’s Deadly Force, but the resultant film is an absolute ripper.
As he had on A Force Of One, Paul Aaron orchestrates the violence and carnage on Deadly Force with aplomb. Wings Hauser is unsurprisingly off-the-charts as the wonderfully named Stony Cooper, a tough ex-cop turned private eye on the trail of a vicious serial killer branded The X Murderer due to his unpleasant habit of carving the letter X into his unfortunate victims’ foreheads. Though Deadly Force was a box office disappointment, it has amassed a small cult in the decades since its release, and marks a rare lead for the great Wings Hauser. It’s also further proof of Aaron’s skills as an action director, though he unfortunately called it quits on the genre after this crackerjack entry.
Though Aaron worked on the screenplay (along with Unsung Auteur Leigh Chapman) for the superior 1980 Chuck Norris actioner The Octagon, he next took on a more theatrical film in the form of 1985’s Maxie, a fun supernatural tale in which the ghost of a 1920s good-time-girl possesses the uptight housewife who moves into her house. Featuring bravura, full-bodied work from Glenn Close, Mandy Patinkin, Ruth Gordon, Barnard Hughes and Valerie Curtin, Maxie is an endearing but now almost completely forgotten 1980s curio that deserves far more praise than its current and practically non-existent status.
Maxie represents Paul Aaron’s last real big screen credit. He took the Alan J. Smithee option on the amiable 1987 teen comedy Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home (he replaced original director Terry Winsor four weeks into the shoot), and then worked exclusively in television. Alongside his small collection of feature films, Aaron also directed a clutch of telemovies, the best of which is unquestionably 1979’s excellent The Miracle Worker starring Patty Duke as devoted teacher Anne Sullivan and Little House On The Prairie star Melissa Gilbert as her deaf and blind student Helen Keller. In a nice piece of stunt casting, Patty Duke had played the Helen Keller character opposite Anne Bancroft in Arthur Penn’s classic 1962 version of the true-life story.
Now 83 and obviously retired, Paul Aaron deserves more credit for his role in helping to establish the careers of Chuck Norris and Wings Hauser, and also for his skills in the action genre. And though he never worked with him, Paul Aaron also deserves credit for helping to establish the career of another high-profile action man: Keanu Reeves. In 1970, Aaron married the future superstar’s mother, Patricia Taylor, and the family moved to Toronto, Canada. The marriage was short-lived, but Aaron remained active in young Keanu’s life, encouraging his acting aspirations and even connecting him with a manager in the very early stages of what would become a very impressive career.
Paul Aaron, we thank you…for everything.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Savage Steve Holland, Rudy Wurlitzer, Keith Gordon, Alan Metter, Lynne Littman, Chuck Russell, John Derek, Don Chaffey, Harley Cokeliss, Jeannot Szwarc, Craig Gillespie, David Greene, Ernest Pintoff, Paul Williams, Jo Heims, Lee H. Katzin, Christoper Cain, Ken Wiederhorn, Barbara Loden, David Mackenzie, Alan Rudolph, James Lee Barrett, Edwin “Bud” Shrake, Joan Tewkesbury, Jamaa Fanaka, Jack Starrett, Joseph Sargent, Jeffrey Schwarz, George Sidney, Philip Dunne, Zak Hilditch, Luke Sparke, Cyrus Nowrasteh, Morgan Matthews, Tom Laughlin, Diane Keaton, Ed Hunt, Nancy Savoca, Robert Vincent O’Neil, Marvin J. Chomsky, Sam Firstenberg, Jack Sholder, Richard Gray, Giuseppe Andrews, Gus Trikonis, Greydon Clark, Frances Doel, Gordon Douglas, Billy Fine, Craig R. Baxley, Harvey Bernhard, Bert I. Gordon, James Fargo, Jeremy Kagan, Robby Benson, Robert Hiltzik, John Carl Buechler, Rick Carter, Paul Dehn, Bob Kelljan, Kevin Connor, Ralph Nelson, William A. Graham, Judith Rascoe, Michael Pressman, Peter Carter, Leo V. Gordon, Dalene Young, Gary Nelson, Fred Walton, James Frawley, Pete Docter, Max Baer Jr., James Clavell, Ronald F. Maxwell, Frank D. Gilroy, John Hough, Dick Richards, William Girdler, Rayland Jensen, Richard T. Heffron, Christopher Jones, Earl Owensby, James Bridges, Jeff Kanew, Robert Butler, Leigh Chapman, Joe Camp, John Patrick Shanley, William Peter Blatty, Peter Clifton, Peter R. Hunt, Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
