"I'll be talking to someone and say, 'I did Teeth,'" Joyce Pierpoline exclaims, "and their body language changes completely!"I'm talking to the producer of 2007 cult horror-comedy Teeth in London's British Academy of Film and Television. Around me, expensively dressed industry executives tap smartly on MacBooks or raise sparkling toasts to future deals.Pierpoline, a dark-haired woman in chunky silver jewelry and fluffy sneakers, grows animated. "And then," she goes on, "they'll turn away from me"—she hunches over, crossing both legs in demonstration—"and be like, 'Oh, you produced that?" Advertisem*nt
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A powerful critique of America's purity culture, Teeth is also an incisor-sharp commentary on male entitlement, consent, and sexual violence. But despite a mostly warm critical response, Teeth performed poorly at the box office. On a limited theatrical release on January 18, 2008, Teeth barely recouped its $2 million budget. More distressingly, it was outperformed at the box office by Katherine Heigl vehicle 27 Dresses, an asinine rom-com clunker about a perennial bridesmaid. Over time, however, Teeth settled into a new critical importance like dentures in a water glass. Advertisem*nt
Dawn O'Keefe, played by Jess Weixler. Photo courtesy of Joyce Pierpoline
"I had a manager at the time who said, 'Don't show it [the Teeth script] to anyone,'" Lichenstein tells me over Skype from his home in Maine. "He said, 'Anyone who reads this will not read anything else you write.'" Why? "The movie industry is still run by men, I guess, and they don't like the idea of seeing dicks get cut off. Most men don't want to see that." As a result, Teeth was put together entirely with private equity. Every film studio—even European ones that Lichenstein and Pierpoline thought might be more liberal about vagin*s—turned it down. Advertisem*nt
Director Mitchell Lichenstein: "Either the studio didn't get it, or it was misogyny." Photo courtesy of Joyce Pierpoline
Teeth certainly isn't p*rn. Neither is it horror; at least, not really. Although Dawn can, and does, castrate men—bloodied dicks thud to the ground with pleasing regularity throughout the movie— Teeth doesn't make Dawn a monster. Her vagin* dentata only snaps shut when she's being violated or raped; she is otherwise capable of consensual, non-castrating sex. Unsurprisingly, this metaphor for consent was somewhat lost on the (mostly) male critics reviewing the film. Here's film critic Jim Emerson on a pivotal rape scene in the film: Advertisem*nt
Because they're such unprincipled horndogs who won't take "no" for an answer, the movie suggests they deserve what they get. Still, when Dawn's first full-frontal victim looks down to find he's not even half the man he used to be, he seems genuinely hurt—by the rejection as much as the castration. In a bloody, nightmarish, young-romantic way, it's kind of touching.
The scene Emerson describes takes place at a waterfall, where a consensual kiss between Dawn and her classmate Tobey turns into attempted rape. (Dawn: "Get off." Tobey: "You don't have to do anything." Dawn: "No! No! Dammit. Stop! Dammit Tobey! NO!") As we watch Dawn struggle against her attacker, we're clearly watching a violent sexual assault—but Emerson minimizes Tobey's rape as "young-romantic" ardor, and reimagines him, not Dawn, as the "victim."Like Emerson, movie executives didn't understand, or want to understand, Teeth. "Either the studio didn't get it, or it was misogyny. I lean towards it being misogyny," Lichenstein says. "The distribution company [Roadside Attractions] wanted to sell it as a pure horror, against my objections, and I think it was marketed to the wrong audience. They messed up."But the good news is that people feel that they discover it themselves, it's not pushed down their throats from advertising hype. It's a word of mouth thing, and that's a more genuine way of people discovering it."Pierpoline pulls even fewer punches when it comes to naming names. A decade on, she's still pissed off about how its release was handled. "If Lionsgate had done a different marketing campaign and spent more money and gone wider, that would really have helped the film," she says. At the time Teeth came out, studios were trying to replicate the success of torture-p*rn slasher franchises like Saw; Saw 3 came out a year before Teeth's Sundance premiere. "Lionsgate…did so many films like Saw and everything, and we're not like that." Advertisem*nt
It's a radically different poster from the one the distribution company eventually settled on. Lichtenstein and Pierpoline's poster features a tousled-looking, relatable heroine. It correctly implies that Teeth is a comedy as much as a horror. The poster that the distribution company settled on is styled according to more conventional horror tropes: Dawn reclines in a stark white bathtub, her face erased of any emotion. There's no trace of the wit or intelligence Weixler brings to the role, evident in the first poster. Underneath, the word "Teeth" is traced in blood red lettering on a black background.
I was a teenager when Teeth was released, and I remember swerving the film because the poster made it look scary. When I mention this to Pierpoline, her eyes fractionally darken and she flinches in irritation. "I think it was a film ahead of its time, and I don't think the marketing campaign addressed what it was about. People were hesitant to face it head on."Pierpoline and Lichenstein are now trying to pitch a TV remake of Teeth. Despite the intervening passage of time being mostly kind to the film, they're still getting rejected at every turn. Turns out, a TV show about vagin* dentata in 2017 isn't any more palatable to Hollywood execs than a movie about vagin* dentata in 2007."We'd love to make it into a TV series with Dawn as a Dexter-type avenging angel, but I don't think people are necessarily ready for it," she explains. "A lot of men still run agencies and departments. It's still a TV show about vagin*s."Like Lichenstein's agent all those years ago, executives have pulled Pierpoline aside and told her a TV remake would be a bad idea. She's still stubbornly refusing to take no for an answer. "I'm like, why not?" she exclaims. "It's original. It's fun. It's about a strong woman."Ever the hustler, Pierpoline isn't about to give up. Before I leave, I find myself promising to send her the relevant VICE contact for her to pitch her TV remake. "So I'll hear from you," she says firmly. Who knows? Maybe one day, Dawn O'Keefe will live to bite off another dick.