Q-and-A with Teeth director Mitchell Lichtenstein

What was the impetus to create a movie with an actual vagina dentata? Heh. I guess I’ve been intrigued by the myth for a long time. It is a pervasive myth in many cultures, and many religions have a version of it. And it said something to me about men’s attitude towards women on a certain level, and it seemed like it was fruitful territory to explore directly in a darkly comic way.

Speaking of the comic thing, it seemed like Teeth could’ve dropped into campiness at certain points, but I thought the movie avoided that pretty well. Was that ever a concern of yours, that it wouldn’t be taken seriously? Only in that I didn’t want it to, I mean, as much as you can with such a ludicrous premise, to keep the characters real, and not to wink too much at the audience, although there may be a couple moments that we do [laughs]. But I didn’t want to go too ludicrous.

So this is your first time both writing and directing a full-length film, right? How was that experience for you? I’d done a short before, and in a way you kind of have all the same issues in a short that you do with a feature. The short was really trial by fire, because that was my first time directing anything. I knew film sets and stuff from having been an actor, but that’s about it. So of course with a feature there’s a lot more time for things to go wrong, which is probably the big difference, and things certainly did, but nothing disastrous. Y’know, I really felt good about everyone, all the collaborators. I had a lot of good guidance.

As far as the imagery in Teeth, I thought there were some pretty overt messages in terms of purity, particularly the masturbation scene. Is there a specific message you wanted to get through with this movie? What do you want viewers to go home thinking about? I guess the main thing is “What does it say about the pervasiveness of this myth? What does it say about what men are afraid of?” Because it certainly is a metaphor for something. Even today, for example, I’ve heard there is a Hillary Clinton nutcracker. Regardless of what we think of her and her politics, and even what we perceive her to be as a person, the fact that when there’s a strong woman, there’s immediately the urge to make her into a castrating image, that female strength. So that’s with us today. Why do we men go there, and what is it? On a serious level, that’s the main thing. But I also just hope it’s kind of a fun and exciting ride, too.

It seems like there’s one side of critics who are charging you with not being able to pick a genre within the film, and kind of flip-flopping, while there’s another side that’s lauding you for crossing genres. Do you have any comment on where you think Teeth falls?

Most movies, even low-budget movies, by the time they’re finished they’ve been channeled more clearly into one genre or another. And I never had the obligation to do that and didn’t want to. For me, I was just trying to tell the story and it all came from first the myth, and then the character in this situation and creating an interesting story about what would happen to her and how she would deal with it. And I wasn’t worried, I wasn’t thinking from the outside, well “This must remain horror,” or…I always knew it would have to be done with humor, just for me, that’s how I’d have to do it. I just didn’t go through any committee that guided me more firmly one way or another. It is different from most movies, and I guess to me it is mostly about comedy, but if I had been made to make it into dark comedy, then I wouldn’t have had all the gory shots, that would’ve been cut down. But I enjoy those gory shots, and I think they’re a good payoff for what’s happening. So I didn’t want to leave them out.

Do you have a favorite part of the movie? I guess every time I watch it, I kind of rediscover different things. I think the last time I watched it, I really liked, oddly enough, when Brad [Dawn’s brother] tries to feed the dog biscuit to Melanie [Brad’s lady friend]. Melanie’s reaction to the dog biscuit, she really plays that well, as he kind of guides the biscuit to her face, she really goes through this, you know, she just responds differently to each touch of the dog biscuit. But I mean, it was also really fun putting together the masturbation scene.

So finally, Teeth seems to have gotten pretty successful, good reviews coming out, so with all that do you have any projects in the future? What’s next?Yeah, I’m casting my next movie, something I wrote called Happy Tears, which we should be filming in April. It’s very different from Teeth. It’s a comedy-drama about a messed-up family.