Career
Kaplan was born in Paris, France. He is the son of film composer Sol Kaplan and actress Frances Heflin; the nephew of actor Van Heflin. He is the brother of actresses Nora Heflin and Mady Kaplan.
Kaplan started his career as a child actor in the Broadway production of The Dark at the Top of the Stairs directed by Elia Kazan. He earned a BA at the University of Chicago before studying film at New York University, where he made an award-winning short film, Stanley (1965).
Kaplan was working at the Filmore East in New York, doing some editing on the side, when he received an offer from Roger Corman to direct Night Call Nurses (1972). Corman also allowed him to rewrite and edit the movie. Kaplan make the movie and returned to New York. It was hit and Corman offered him another film, The Student Teachers (1973), which he also co-wrote and co-edited.
He made The Slams (1973) for Corman's brother Gene, then Truck Turner (1974), which was another big hit, and saw Kaplan get an offer to direct White Line Fever (1975) for Columbia, a major Hollywood studio.That movie was an even larger success but then Kaplan made what he describes as "the biggest failure of my career", Mr. Billion (1977), an attempt to launch Terence Hill to American audiences. He then went on to make the critically acclaimed Over the Edge (1979), which failed to reach large audiences by has since come to be seen as one of Kaplan's best movies as well as launching the career of Matt Dillon.
During the early 80s Kaplan directed movies for television and many music videos, including several John Cougar Mellencamp and Rod Stewart's "Infatuation" in 1984. His feature film career revived in the late 1980s, with The Accused (1988). In the 1990s he moved into television, becoming one of the most highly regarded directors of that medium.
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