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Mitchell Lichtenstein took a myth he learned in college into one of the most unique independent films of recent times. The former actor who gained notoriety for his award winning roles in Robert Altman's STREAMERS and Ang Lee's THE WEDDING BANQUET turned to writing and directing. His first feature film TEETH, a comedy/horror, deals with the myth of the "Vagina Dentata," which he learned in college and explored the possibility of a normal teenage girl who suddenly realizes that her vagina has teeth. The film premiered to enthusiastic reviews at last year's Sundance Film Festival and is set for theatrical release on January 18th. To promote its release, Lichtenstein took part in a roundtable of reporters including the Crypt to discuss the film, and then sat down exclusively with the Colonel to talk more elaborately about the process in making this sure to be cult classic.
COLONEL’S CRYPT: TEETH is a very unique film in that depending on your gender; for women it’s a revenge fantasy tale and for men it’s probably the scariest movie ever made. How did you come up with this story to make your first feature film? MITCHELL LICHTENSTEIN: I was intrigued really obviously by the myth and what it meant, what it said about how men treated women on a basic level. I was amazed by the pervasiveness of it, the myth in these difficult cultures. I felt there was a lot to explore there and as I developed the script I just really began to really love the character and her story and it seemed to start to say other things about society and stuff, and because it has this tone it seemed like a good vehicle to express a certain sensibility. CC: One of the underlying themes was showing a nuclear reactor behind Dawn’s house, indicating that the radiation may have something to do with her growth. Was that something that you originally planned or as you went along you felt would be a good way to show how she may have gotten this? ML: That was always at least an option, something to suggest without ever saying anything about it. You can’t explain, although I was tempted to have one of those goofy movie scenes where someone explains but you always see that scene. I did have to do that scene with the coroner describes the teeth. That’s in all these movies so I had to have that one. I resisted having one where scientists explain what’s going on but just to suggest that, and also there’s a proud history of 1950s horror movies with the radiation theme that the monsters are created by that. CC: I was about to get to that because it felt to me as I was watching it that the first half of the film had a feel like those public education films which in the early 1990s when I went to school they still showed you. Was that the feel you were intending, this innocence? ML: Not to that extent because the abstinence group didn’t come until later on but there was always going to be a very sweet romance that they are shocked out of by the reality of the teeth. CC: What was it about Austin, Texas that made you decide to shoot there? ML: Really there was this Hamilton Pool that was a swimming hole outside of Austin. It’s basically a sinkhole that has left a large, deep cave overhang that actually has helictites so it has formed an actual vagina dentata. Then it’s great largely because with Linklater and Rodriguez, there’s great crews down there, you don’t have to bring people down. CC: How long did you shoot the film? ML: Five and a half weeks. CC: You started out as an actor. How has the transition been from acting to writing and directing? ML: Fine, it’s been sort of a long, continuous transition because I started writing around ten years ago, I wrote some really bad scripts. I started writing quite a while ago. As a kid, I always wrote short stories and I always wanted to get back to that, I kinda got away from it when I started college. So I did that not really thinking of leaving acting and the more satisfying it became writing, the less I really needed to act and I don’t miss it at all. CC: So filmmaking is it from here on in? ML: I hope so. CC: At its core, I consider TEETH to be a horror film. What do you consider to be the definition of horror? ML: It is a confrontation with a deep seeded fear, and that’s why I thought that this was the right territory because of the evasiveness of this myth. It’s a fear of the dark or fear of the unknown. It’s clearly something on men’s mind historically and it’s very basic. CC: How was it primarily working with Jess on this film in terms of the casting and audition process, what was it about Jess that made you decide on her? ML: We did see a lot of people. I decided on Jess because she acted the age very well and brought a nuance to it. Dawn had to have a believable sexuality and purity. I still think about that with Jess. She had to radiate being a good person and she’s also a wonderful actress. CC: Did you have the decision from the beginning not to show the Vagina Dentata? ML: Yeah. I toyed with it at certain stages. I wanted the character to be full of purity and I didn’t want to associate violence with her body. She never has any blood on her in the film. The closest I came to maybe putting it in was a “Vagina Cam” shot in the gynecologist’s office maybe from the inside and having him peek in. I’m glad I resisted. CC: That was my favorite scene in the movie. Was that the most enjoyable scene to film in terms of having that moment or was any particular scene you found the most enjoyable and challenging? ML: That was really fun. It was fun but it’s hard to consider it purely fun especially when it’s your first movie. Josh Pais who plays the gynecologist was so great in the scene. From the very beginning he was the first person that we saw for the part and I actually didn’t need to see anybody else but we had to go through the motions. He was so surefire about things that I could totally relax while we were planning. When we worked out the choreography on the table and saw that happen, that was genuinely fun. It was as funny as I hoped when I wrote it to be. It was one of the places where I had those moments where I was sitting and writing that scene and then I’m seeing people actually acting it out and doing it, so to me that was really fun. CC: What was the shooting budget on TEETH? ML: It was two million. It may have climbed up eventually. CC: TEETH was shot on 35mm film where most independent films budgeted modestly shoot on digital. If you had the choice in the future, are you strictly a film guy? ML: Not necessarily, on my next project I am considering shooting on digital. I did for this, I really just wanted that look and such. CC: Growing up, what were the films that inspired you that wanted you to become an actor and later a filmmaker? ML: Well especially with this, ROSEMARY’S BABY. I first started studying film in the late 1970s, early 1980s and Igmar Bergman was a big influence. Actually I remember seeing some Altman movies where the acting was really inspiring. CC: How was working with Altman? ML: Great, I think any actor who has worked with him loved the experience. He was vicarious and he somehow projects this net of support from wherever he was, it was just great. CC: Where do you see independent filmmaking going within the next few years, do you see it going in a direction like the 1970s where the low budget, independent films were heralded over the big, studio releases? ML: I would like it to, I don’t know. I think that the fact that it is cheaper to do films now can only be good. I just don’t know about the thing is what are the venues for it, how many people are going to watch? If it’s through the internet, you’re competing with a huge net to attract people to you. There seems to be endless availability and opportunity but you have to attract people to it, then you get to something that involves money and you’re back to where you started from. CC: Thanks for your time Mitchell and best of luck with TEETH. ML: Thank you.
ROUNDTABLE: The obvious question is a man directing such a female dominating film, what are the challenges of that? ML: I think the challenge for me was this was my first feature and I originally wanted a woman to direct it. It was hard to find someone but I did ultimately, we did find someone who was very interesting. I was working with her for a while and we kind of realizing that the tone became so specific and I developed a sensibility to it. Although she would’ve done an interesting job with the film it would’ve been different from what I would do. It would’ve been hard for anyone to make this. My main reason for not directing this was being afraid of if it didn’t turn out the way I hoped. The myth is a gynophobic invention and if it didn’t work the way I wanted it to, then the movie wouldn’t also work. Once I was willing to risk it, then I decided to direct the film. What was going on in your life when you wrote the screenplay? ML: Well I wasn’t working much as an actor and I always wanted to get back to writing, which I did. That was mainly what was going on in my life. I learned about the myth years ago in college. There it was about in connection to 19th century literature, it would come up in stories and for years I thought it was interesting fodder because it is such a pervasive myth in many cultures. Many religions have their own versions of it, and if you direct it in the right way with humor, you would see right away that it says something about men and not so much about women so it is clearly a male problem. Although it isn’t strictly a horror movie, the best horror movies tap into some deep seeded fear and this clearly is because of the pervasiveness of it. What did you tell your female friends about the film? ML: I did ask around, asked a few friends on whether I should go there. People in the business were against going there and people outside the business were for it. What kind of jokes were made on set? ML: It was a fun set. There was some playing around with all the prosthetics, the penises. That was interesting, a barrel of fun. What helped you determine how far you would go in terms of seeing the reactions to the teeth? ML: More just I really began to see if was this bloody, shocking, and funny, or was it just gross period? What’s in there was what I thought, for many people it goes too far and for real horror fans it may not go far enough, I don’t know, so it’s just an expression of what I thought was enough to actually wake you up but not go too far. Of course early on I wondered about showing the Vagina Dentata itself but quickly realized that I wanted to keep the character of Dawn in that bubble of purity. She didn’t have blood on her. I didn’t want anything ugly or violent directly associated with her and to see the teeth would’ve been a violent and unattractive image, and since she’s the heroine it is really meant to be ultimately a positive thing. I didn’t want to have that image associated with her. Could you describe the choreography in the castration scenes? ML: All the sex scenes are the most choreographed for the obvious reasons, you wanted them to feel comfortable. Whenever there is a severing, there’s the guy right off camera with a pump pumping out blood. Those were by no means foolproof. This was a low budget and we had very limited time, so when the latex starts dissolving it starts dripping out the wrong end. It could’ve been a lot grosser than what we saw. Were there revisions done to the screenplay in terms of Dawn’s religious group and who got revenge in what particular way? ML: The whole abstinence group came out while figuring out the character because she has this event in her childhood where subconsciously she knows she’s different. I knew that after the opening scene where we see her as a teenager she has to be completely unaware of her body and it occurred to me that there are these groups out there that also want you to delay knowledge of knowing her body and she would be attracted to this group. It made perfect sense that she would join a group like this and it would be a great opportunity to play with that angle. That part of the movie is like a teen romance and they have this obstacle of not being together because of their vows and this big obstacle that turns up later. That turned out to be an important part of it but it wasn’t necessarily integral, it came out of the character. As for the revenge, the first guy committed rape so he kind of deserved it on one level. The other level is as it happened early on I didn’t want to get, in early versions we had police looking for her and I didn’t want to get into that, so if he had lived to tell, that would’ve been a problem for me. The next guy, the gynecologist won’t tell because he was molesting her. The guy who made the bet about her was bad but he wasn’t a rapist, so it was plotted out and it also has to escalate each time to get a little grosser. What did you remember from your own sex education and do you feel there’s a moral dilemma of men fearing the vagina? ML: Yeah, I think there is. In the movie there’s in the biology class where they cover the male anatomy and not the female and that did happen in West Virginia. What you see in the movie, this school board decided it shouldn’t be shown because they felt women had this natural modesty that it shouldn’t be seen and also that men are so stimulated by visuals that this may be too much to see this diagram. I don’t necessarily believe that those are the ideas. I believe that there is something deeper that does want this mystery to maintain mystery. What is your theory? ML: I don’t have a definitive theory but whatever it is it isn’t serving women any good. I think it’s a fear of women’s power, whether it’s sexual or as people. Any kind of subjugated group that has someone maintaining that and even if it wasn’t as subjugated that it was, those things are happening and that’s one place where it still is. I’m still shocked even now because I thought that THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES would have completely opened the door as far as printing the word vagina or saying it on TV and I’m discovering that for this film, the papers are having a problem with putting the word in. I really thought that she had opened that door fully. Was Sundance the first time it was shown to an audience? ML: We just finished it, we hand carried it to Utah with us. What was the most surprising reaction that you got there and the feeling that you got to embrace the film there? ML: The biggest surprise was putting it in competition because we assumed that if we were lucky enough to get in at all that it would be in their midnight slot. That’s sort of how we submitted it so even though I don’t think of it as a midnight movie, I think generally the description sounds like that and it would fit there. Giving it the seriousness of putting it during the day was a big surprise. We really hadn’t shown so would women be outraged by it, would men even sit through it, we didn’t know. It seemed from the beginning the people got the humor and starting laughing from the title on. How did you feel about Jess winning the acting award? ML: She was actually gone because she was in the middle of doing a movie and was in flight when we found out. We had to stop her from going to San Diego and the stewardess told her when she got off the plane that she had to go back because she won the award. It was exciting for her. When you proposed this, what was the process? ML: A lot of people were turned off by the script, or at least were wary enough not to come in. We didn’t see anyone known but I wasn’t necessarily expecting that, and I was in a great position where I wasn’t obligated to cast anyone well known which I hope for people this movie works out because it would be a good lesson. Even low budget, independent movies are usually obligated to cast someone known and they may not be the best person for the part. Jess was the best person for this part and I casted it. What were some of the negative comments you heard from those who didn’t fully understand the script? ML: I remember John Hensley who plays Brad, when he first got the description when he got the script, he really thought it was a practical joke. He read it to see if it was the real synopsis and he thought it was so crazy that he had to meet who was responsible for this. A lot of people thought it was really funny. I can’t remember any specific stuff. Jess didn’t want to come in originally but we lured her in. She read for another part, a smaller part and I asked her if she would read for Dawn with no obligation and she was great. I had to talk to her about the larger vision of the movie, about this real myth and that it’s really about the birth of a superhero who learns about her powers. Were you worried that there might be a reactionary view of it? ML: I always assumed we would get an NC-17 rating because of the concept and we have an R. The MPAA were really behind because they saw it as a cautionary tale that all parents would take their teenage sons to see it because the message in the movie is if your intentions are good, they would work out fine, but if they aren’t, then ouch. Your father is Roy Lichtenstein. Do you feel this film is keeping in the family tradition of pop culture absurdities? ML: I hope so, I think he would’ve liked it. He definitely would’ve liked the outrageousness of the film. Did you ever think to put a painting in the background? ML: I wasn’t given permission (laughs). Could you talk about the family, there’s so many dynamics going on. What was the back story of this family in terms of where it turned up on the film? ML: The event that happens in the first scene in the kiddie pool informs both of their sexuality from them. Brad already seems angry from the beginning. The implication of Brad is that he fears the vagina and that he’s abusive. His sexual relations are that he doesn’t seem to let her get close. He’s into pain and there are some weird bondage things up on this room. Dawn of course goes to this abstinence group. That incident makes her delay knowledge of her body so that’s how it started. Also there’s bitterness in Brad because he was always in love with her but once she became his sister he couldn’t express that. That’s how that dynamic started. What are you doing next? ML: I’m doing something I wrote called HAPPY TEARS. It’s a comedy/drama about family. It’s nothing outrageous but I think it’s funny. There’s nobody signed but we are assembling a good cast. It will be rated R. Thanks Mitchell. Thanks everyone.
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