By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: director Ronald F. Maxwell, who helmed Little Darlings, The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia, Gettysburg and Gods And Generals.
There’s a fairly obvious reason why director Ronald F. Maxwell rates as an Unsung Auteur: his career resume is literally cleaved in two, the first half made up of freewheeling youth movies, and the second half dominated by big, sprawling epics about The US Civil War. Neither of these filmmaking streams are big with pundits and film commentators, and when combined with the fact that his directorial identity is so divided, Ronald F. Maxwell’s fate as a truly under-celebrated filmmaking talent is sealed. But in more than a few instances, Maxwell has literally made films like nobody else, which makes him both more than worthy of discussion, and a prime candidate for this very column. Though The LA Times aptly wrote that “Ron Maxwell created the most ambitious Civil War movies ever made”, he’s not nearly celebrated enough…for these feats and others.
Born in 1949 in New Jersey, Ronald F. Maxwell graduated from The Institute Of Film at New York University’s Tisch School Of The Arts in 1970, and made his small screen directing debut with the 1976 telemovie Sea Marks, which he followed up with 1978’s Vera: USO Girl starring Sissy Spacek, William Hurt and Sally Kellerman. Maxwell made his big screen debut in 1980 with Little Darlings, a gutsy, female-driven teen comedy drama boasting a punchy, knowing script by Dalene Young and Kimi Peck, and bravura leading performances from Tatum O’Neal and Kristy McNicol.
In a plot to make just about anyone blush, O’Neal and McNicol play wildly different fifteen-year-old summer campers who engage in a bet over who can lose their virginity first. If you can get past the inherent raunch of the premise, Little Darlings is the best kind of teen flick: fresh, funny, honest, authentic, smartly written, and with two female leads to boot, along with a youthful Matt Dillon. Ron Maxwell displayed an extraordinary gift for balancing the film’s “summer camp shenanigans” elements with its more thoughtful moments, and crafted a teen flick of rare sensitivity that should be mentioned in the same hot breath as classics like Fast Times At Ridgemont High.
Maxwell stuck with the talented Kristy McNicol for his next film, 1981’s sadly forgotten The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia, which was based on Bobby Russell’s song of the same name. All sass, tough talk and old-soul swagger, McNicol is pure gold as Amanda Child, who plays manager for her older brother Travis (Dennis Quaid at his brash, cocky best), a wannabe country singer who spends nearly as much time bedding women as he does performing on stage. The sibling duo’s quest for fame and fortune is interrupted by a small-town sheriff (the great Don Stroud) who takes a dislike to the pair. Featuring plenty of rollicking country music (McNicol and Quaid do their own singing), a small role for Star Wars’ Mark Hamill, and a winning down-home vibe, The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia marked an impressive sophomore effort from Ronald F. Maxwell, who gave the film an enjoyably loose-limbed gait.
After his impressive Kristy McNicol double-shot, Maxwell veered off into even more youthful territory with the now almost completely forgotten 1984 comedy Kidco, in which a group of very early teenagers start up a fertiliser company (!), which proves incredibly successful, and eventually invites trouble from various concerned adults who don’t like what they see. As with his previous films, Maxwell’s obvious empathy for his young characters and complete lack of sentimentality provided Kidco with an air of authenticity (the curious plot actually has some basis in fact!) lacking in most kids’ flicks. Maxwell stayed on this track with the 1986 telemovie The Parent Trap II, a sequel to the 1961 Disney fave toplined by the original’s legendary child star Hayley Mills now in the mother role opposite Tom Skerritt. The film was a success for Disney, with more films ordered for the franchise, though Ronald F. Maxwell opted not to return, instead heading into far, far more serious territory.
Released in 1993, Ronald F. Maxwell’s Gettysburg still stands as a film like no other. Originally envisioned as a TV mini-series, the quality of the work saw it elevated by its backers to feature film status. Running at a colossal 245 minutes, Gettysburg still rates as one of the longest features ever released by a major distributor in the US, and tells in exhaustive detail of the eponymous battle, which was one of the defining moments of The US Civil War. With a huge cast (Tom Berenger, Martin Sheen, Jeff Daniels, Stephen Lang, Sam Elliott, Richard Jordan and many more) playing various historical figures, hundreds of speaking parts, and complex battle sequences, Gettysburg was a mammoth undertaking for Ronald F. Maxwell, who was duly praised for his attention to detail and sense of historical accuracy.
“A deep concern of mine is to try to understand why people were fighting,” Maxwell told Historynet. “The first thing you see when you read your first book about the Civil War or see your first film, whether you’re 8 years old or 50, is you’re struck by the horrific destruction and slaughter. It is so immensely sad. It is such a huge tragedy that the first question in your mind is what were they thinking? So, it was a big challenge for me to address that question. I am not interested as a filmmaker to explore the motivations of the opportunists, the war profiteers and the sadists. I was interested in why did the good people get involved. Why did the people of honour, of high ethical standard, of selflessness, of courage, the people who had a sense of duty, the people who had a great sense of humanity, why did they so readily take part in the killing and the destruction and the warfare that went on for more than four years? Why did no one say, ‘Stop?’ It was a fight to the death, and it only ended when to continue it for another day it would have changed from warfare to just murder.”
In a rich groove, Maxwell wasn’t done with The US Civil War, and the filmmaker returned ten years later in 2003 with Gods And Generals, another mammoth epic, this time focusing on the life and career of Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, played by Stephen Lang, who had played a different role in Gettysburg. Though similarly expansive and ambitious in scope, Gods And Generals didn’t fare as well as its predecessor, with the film slammed in some circles as Southern propaganda. “It was a high priority for me to give every character in the film a chance to explore why they were in the war,” Maxwell told Historynet. “I was rewarded for asking that question by a torrent of insults and personal attacks by the mainstream motion picture critics who don’t think there is any honourable, honest reason why any Confederate fought in the war. I found it to be revealing of the pervasive ignorance as well as the high-minded self-righteousness of so many people in powerful media positions who think they understand the Civil War but really don’t have a clue. What’s the point of making a film on The Civil War unless we try to go there to where those people lived and try to understand what made those people tick; and try to illuminate their condition because they can no longer hear us? But if we listen very, very carefully and make a real big effort to open our hearts and our minds, we can hear them. And that is the rationale for both of my Civil War films.”
Admirably unbowed, Maxwell returned once again to America’s bloody battlefield with 2013’s Copperhead, which tells of the impact of The Civil War on a New York family. Despite its setting, Maxwell does not see Copperhead as a true companion to his previous two films. “Copperhead is about a farmer, a respected man, in a little hamlet in Upstate New York…he’s an old-fashioned Democrat who is against the war,” Maxwell told The Batavian. “And he is standing up against his community on this. The community is torn apart, his family and the family of his chief rival are torn apart. These people are casualties of the war in a different way. The film is also about the resilience and resourcefulness of the people at home during wartime. It’s a rich and complex story about a fascinating time in American history.”
Rivalled only by Unsung Auteur Robert Greenwald (who directed Xanadu and now largely helms leftist docos) in terms of a striking career turnaround, Ronald F. Maxwell should be more frequently and loudly celebrated for his incredible ability to mount films both small and freewheeling, and large and finely detailed. This makes him a truly singular and fascinating talent.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs 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.
