It’s a wrap: Lynchburg native directs first feature-lenth film; reflects on life in Hollywood
By Casey Gillis on Feb. 07, 2008
Martha “Marty” Elcan made the transition from Southern gal to California girl about a year too soon.
In the 1970s, the Lynchburg native had just finished taking voice and diction classes at the University of Virginia when she auditioned for a film called “Rollercoaster,” which was shooting at King’s Dominion that summer.
At the time, Elcan says, she had a strong Southern accent, but worked hard to lose it for the audition.
After reading her lines, “the casting director looks at me and says, ‘Where’s your Virginia accent?’” Elcan recalled in a phone interview last week from her home in Van Nuys, Calif.
But as hard as she tried, “I could not get my accent back.”
It all worked out in the end for Elcan, who helped out on the set of “Rollercoaster” and found her true calling behind the camera.
Now, after years as an assistant director - working on films like “Steel Magnolias,” “Mystic Pizza” and “Driving Miss Daisy,” among others - Elcan has just finished her first full-length feature film.
Called “Next of Kin,” it’s about a young woman who meets the half-brother she never knew after her estranged mother is in a car accident. Cast members include Ed Begley Jr. (“St. Elsewhere”), Bess Armstrong (“My So-Called Life”), Jeremy London (“Party of Five”) and George Newbern (“Father of the Bride”).
The script was written by Kate Orsini, who also stars in the film. Orsini approached Elcan with the script on the recommendation of a mutual friend.
“It wasn’t anything I’d been pursuing,” says Elcan, who was actually trying to secure financing on another project at the time.
But the script charmed her.
“It’s just a really sweet … story about this kind of very unusual family getting to know each other,” Elcan says.
“I like to only work on things my family can watch (but) those kinds of scripts are kind of hard to come by. I love stories about interesting people and great relationship stories, and this was an example of one of those.”
It was also a quieter film that was easier to shoot quickly and on a budget. In fact, they shot the film in record time: 13 days, the shortest schedule Elcan has ever worked on. (She says most low-budget films usually shoot for 45 to 50 days).
Elcan says her assistant directing experience came in handy when dealing with all of the logistics.
On a film set, first assistant directors arrange the shooting schedule, make sure the actors and extras are where they need to be and do a lot of paperwork.
The second assistant director is in charge of supporting the first assistant director in all of those duties.
“Basically,” Elcan says, “you do everything. You pull the whole production together. You run the set.”
Even with that experience, the “Next of Kin” shoot was still very hard, she says.
“I had to shoot very simply. I wasn’t sure, quite honestly, if it was possible.”
But, she says, “I was thrilled to find out I knew what I was doing.”
Her mother, Anita Elcan, knew all along that her daughter was up to the task.
“I knew she’d be good at whatever she wanted to do,” says Anita, who still lives in Lynchburg. “I never worry about her. I think she was so excited to get it done. It’s something she’s wanted to do for a long time.”
Filming wrapped in September, and after editing is done, Elcan plans to hit the festival circuit to find a distributor.
“It’s really hard,” she says. “Normally, for the Sundance Film Festival, I think they get 8,000 film submissions, and they can only show 200 at their festival. And only five to 10 of those get a distributor.”
Elcan has learned the ins and outs of the business in the nearly 30 years she’s lived in Hollywood.
She was first inspired to follow her filmmaking dreams on the set of “Rollercoaster.” After hearing about an assistant director training program in California, she picked up and moved to California in the late ’70s. Once she arrived, Elcan learned that candidates had to have a four-year degree, so she completed her final two years of college at UCLA.
But it was still awhile before she made it into the program. She graduated from college in 1980, the same year the Screen Actors Guild went on strike, and the program was cancelled. The next year, she passed the written test, but not the interview.
Always creative, Elcan found an interesting way to make money while pursuing her dream: delivering singing and tap dancing telegrams around Los Angeles.
She finally got into the program the following year, 1983, and hung up her tap shoes.
“I was an overnight sensation seven years later,” she laughs.
The program was very prestigious. Elcan says between 1,200 and 1,500 applied every year, and only a dozen were chosen to be Directors Guild of America (DGA) trainees.
Naturally, she was thrilled about finally getting in - until she reported to her first set.
“You get on the set, and you’re the scum of the earth,” she says with a laugh. “You’re not even at the bottom of the totem pole. You’re under the totem pole.
“It was totally different than anything I had ever done before. They don’t really train you as much as they put you on the set, and you have to figure things out. It’s really on the fly. You have to come up to speed really fast.”
The program lasted two years and provided the trainees with the 400 days of work they need to be full-fledged members of the DGA. During those two years, Elcan bounced between TV and film and assisted on shows like “Hill Street Blues” and “Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories,” an anthology series that aired from 1985 to 1987.
She made a lot of connections within the industry, which led to steady work after she finished the program.
“I would literally turn down 10 for every one I took,” she says, because she wanted to work on films and series that her family could watch.
Sure, she declined to work on the set of “Rambo,” but Elcan built up quite the resume, working as first or second assistant director on films like “Steel Magnolias” “Driving Miss Daisy” and “Mystic Pizza” in the 1980s.
It was on the set of “Steel Magnolias” that Elcan says she got a real taste of how Hollywood does things.
During the filming of a scene underneath a magnolia tree, “there were no magnolias on the tree. The art department had to bring in magnolias and staple them to the tree,” she recalls. “I’m going, ‘OK, welcome to Hollywood.’”
She continued to go back and forth between film and television, earning credits on “Picket Fences,” “Once and Again” and “Six Feet Under.”
In 1996, she worked as first assistant director on Emilio Estevez’s “The War at Home,” a film about a Vietnam vet haunted by his experiences in the war.
Elcan says she’d most like to emulate Estevez’s style, as well as that of “Driving Miss Daisy” director Bruce Beresford.
“They were two of the most prepared directors. They knew what they needed and … they were so in tune,” she says.
Elcan’s first turn in the director’s chair came in a 1997 short film called “There Goes the Groom.” Based on that film, she landed a job directing a 1998 episode of “Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction,” another anthology series.
“It was terrifying, exhilarating and exciting and tense and scary,” she says. “And at the end of the day, I was absolutely exhausted, and I thought, ‘I’ve only done one day.’”
Her other directorial efforts include short films “The Hit,” which she also wrote, in 2002 and “Crossing the Line” last year.
Writing is something Elcan is also beginning to pursue.
“I used to love writing (as a child),” she says. “Screenwriting is a very different animal, though, and I’ve always found it very intimidating.”
The financiers of “Next of Kin” have expressed interest in working with her on another project, so she’s currently working on a screenplay.
Elcan is not a member of the Writer’s Guild of America, so she can work during its current strike. Still, she’s affected by the strike in other ways.
Her husband of 20 years, Scott Guthrie, is the chief lighting technician on the NBC series “My Name Is Earl,” which shut down production in November because of the strike.
“They were supposed to shoot until April,” Elcan says. “I see people who are worried about losing their homes and can’t support their families now.
“But I support the writers because I think with new media, they’ve got to establish right now what is going to happen when it takes off.”
Before the strike, Elcan worked as an assistant director on the second episode of ABC midseason replacement “Eli Stone,” which airs at 10 p.m. tonight.
As a female director, Elcan says she’s always surprised by some of the gender bias that can occur in the industry.
“It always amazes me that so few women directors are hired. The statistics are just absolutely appalling,” she says. “I don’t understand it because I’ve worked with some fabulous woman directors. All I can figure out is it was a male (dominated) industry for so long.”
But, she says, “that’s very, very slowly changing.
“As an assistant director, I’m the one who had to run the set. So getting the entire crew to listen to you is probably more of a challenge than directing, but I don’t remember having a problem. As long as you know what you’re doing … and have a sense of humor about it.”
A few of Elcan’s favorite things
Testament, a 1983 film - which stars Jane Alexander, William Devane and a young Kevin Costner - about a San Francisco family dealing with the aftermath of a nuclear attack. Alexander was nominated for an Oscar for her performance.
“It’s such a powerful anti-war film, in such a quiet way,” Elcan says. “I just felt if everybody in the world saw this movie, there would never be any war again.”
Memento, Christopher Nolan’s groundbreaking 2000 film. Told in a non-linear fashion, it’s about a man who has no short-term memory and is searching for his wife’s killer.
“It was so unusual. It just had a different approach and was captivating and intriguing,” she says.
Crash, the Academy Award-winning film about racial and social tensions in Los Angeles.
“That movie, to me, is what I’ve always wanted my movies to be,” Elcan says. “I like scripts that leave the world a better place than before you went into the (theater).
“To me, that movie had the ability to change people’s perceptions and the way they acted with other people.”
That’s also why she likes 1980’s The Elephant Man, a biopic about a severely disfigured man rescued from a life as a sideshow freak.
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