Born in Paris, France,[3] Kaplan is the son of film composer Sol Kaplan and actress Frances Heflin, the nephew of actor Van Heflin, and the brother of actresses Nora Heflin and Mady Kaplan.[4]
Kaplan lived in Hollywood until 1954, when his father had to move to New York after being blacklisted.[3]
Kaplan was working at the Fillmore East in New York, doing some editing on the side, when Roger Corman offered him the opportunity to direct Night Call Nurses (1972); Kaplan had been recommended by Scorsese.[6]
Kaplan made the movie and returned to New York. It was a hit, and Corman offered him another film, The Student Teachers (1973), which he also co-wrote and co-edited.[7]
After making The Slams (1973) for Corman's brother Gene, he directed Truck Turner (1974), which was another huge success 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 international audiences.[8] He then went on to make the critically acclaimed Over the Edge (1979), which failed to reach large audiences.
Kaplan says at this stage the only films he was being offered was "boy meets truck boy gets truck, boy loses truck and boy gets truck again.",[3] so he directed a series of TV movies. "I'm a director," he said. "I want to direct movies. I don't want to sit around and have fantasies or let a project go down the tubes when we can't get some star to read the script."[3]
