Paul Aaron, August 2010

Paul Aaron believes that creating a great ensemble is the key to being a successful director.

Aaron grew up in Hoosick Falls in the 1950s, the prototype setting for Thornton Wilder's classic American play Our Town. Aaron graduated as a Drama Fellow from Bennington College in the mid- 1960s. Shortly thereafter, he was the Casting and New Programs Director at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. There, he founded an actor's workshop and directed several plays, including a critically acclaimed production of The Threepenny Opera.

Upon returning to New York, his directing career was firmly established with his production of the national tour of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, starring Academy Award winner Kim Hunter. Off Broadway, he directed the rock musical Salvation in 1969, starring then-unknown actors Barry Bostwick, Joe Morton and Bette Midler. In 1974 Variety called his direction of Ugo Betti's drama The Burnt Flower Bed" ... nothing less than masterful." His directorial debut on Broadway was Paris is Out in 1970.

In 1977 he was awarded the Los Angeles Drama Critic's Award as Best Director for Paddy Chayefsky's play The Tenth Man, starring Richard Dreyfuss. His film career followed with A Different Story in 1978, the first Hollywood film to depict gay people as positive protagonists.

His follow-up feature was the action film A Force of One in 1979, staring Chuck Norris and Jennifer O'Neill, with a screenplay by Academy Award winner, Ernest Tidyman.

Aaron entered television in 1979, helming the Emmy Award- winning NBC Special Event of William Gibson's classic The Miracle Worker. His work has garnered the Christopher Award, Director's Guild and Golden Globe award nominations and the Director's prize from the Monte Carlo Film Festival.

Aaron continues to direct on both film and stage with some of the most esteemed actors of the past half-century, including Lillian Gish, Claudette Colbert, Jane Alexander, Fritz Weaver, Glenn Close, Mandy Patinkin, James Earl Jones and James Woods.

In the 1980s, he created Elsboy Entertainment, where he manages artists and develops projects as a writer, producer and director. He guest lectures at many universities, including UCLA and the University of Washington.

Paul started our conversation asking me what led me to this project.

SL: Since switching from teaching theater to film, I've noticed that a greater percentage of my theater students had much more intellectual curiosity about history, and the world, including all aspects of their own art than many of my film students. And though my film students are extremely bright, a majority of them didn't do theater in high school and just want to play with the toys of filmmaking. Because video has become so accessible, students easily come into our program with wonderful technical skills, but lack an interest and understanding of the importance of character and story that results from studying literature and theater.

PA: The academics insist on separating themselves: theory, or technology, or aesthetics. Film is a constantly evolving technical medium, as you said, "They want to play with the toys." But it's very important to know the evolution of those toys, and what the artists in directing, writing, cinematography and so on, have done in the past that pave the way to the future.

One of the great weaknesses of film programs is that they do not study the language of acting. The language, the very core of the communication, is one of the very few things that are similar in terms of theater and film. Most other ways they are very different.

SL: Where are you from?

PA: Brought up in a little village in upstate New York called Hoosick Falls known mostly because it is the home of Grandma Moses. If you pick any Grandma Moses paintings you'll know my childhood.

SL: And you went to Bennington College?

PA: I went to Brandeis University first and then got a fellowship to Bennington.

SL: When did you start in theater?

PA: I was directing in my little town in the community theater when I was 16. I was still in high school but directing adults.

SL: Okay, so to the manor born?

PA: I didn't grow up in the alleys of New York. You know, I mean in Shubert Alley, going to plays when I was seven or eight or nine. I don't think I saw a play in New York until I was probably 16, 17. The Diary of Anne Frank [1955] was the first play I ever saw. But it didn't matter what play it was, because somehow that's always what I wanted to do. That's always how I saw myself. Before I knew what directors did, I was directing.

When I did my first Broadway show, on the opening night there are always lots of flowers and gifts. There was also a special delivery envelope from Dorothy Niles who was my second grade teacher back in Hoosick Falls. Inside was a yellowed mimeograph program, from the days when purple mimeo was the way of copying. It was a program from second grade: "The Adventures of Ichabod Crane, adapted, produced and directed by Paul Aaron." So who knows? As you said, "to the manor born."

SL: You went to Brandeis University?

PA: I went to Brandeis after high school. Actually, I spent a year in Israel, and then I went to Brandeis for two years. Bennington College was not yet coed, but they had Drama Fellows in dance and drama. And there were, I think, 12 of us. The school mandated that you couldn't matriculate from high school. You had to have gone two years elsewhere before they would invite you to finish with them. It couldn't be a very serious program of drama or dance if you didn't have men and women. A year or two years after I graduated, the school became coed. So, I was one of the last of the Drama Fellows. [The all-female college became coed in 1969] Alan Arkin was Drama Fellow. Oh yeah, lots of great people.

SL: And why did you pick theater over film?

PA: Because I could do it. Because it didn't involve technology. There was no video at the time. I mean the idea to be able to work with film, and your parents going out to buy you equipment was impossible. Now you can have a MAC computer, and for a few grand you can make a feature-length motion picture. But what I could do was get five kids together and do Ichabod Crane. I did it because I could do it. I have never been technically interested or gifted. I'm a storyteller, and I could do that best in theater. And it was not until later that I went to do film.

SL: What brought you to film?

PA: What brought me to film was that I was casting for Seventy Girls Seventy [1971], the Kandor/Ebb musical I was directing. There were several girls in...