Toothday
Bite down into a perfect set of stories all about teeth.
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When youre working on somebody whose face people recognize, they know it, he says.
Every mouth is different.
Every face is different.
You have to think about everything, says Chris Lyons, director and owner of special-effects company Fangs FX.
30 Days of Night
Vampires have existed on film for nearly as long as film itself.
The result was about 70 pairs of irregular,jagged teeth.
I dont want any of that kind of stuff.
We did lots and lots of teeth, tops and bottoms.
We probably spent a good month sculpting all the teeth and getting them painted.
Dental monomer is very white until you really give it depth.
Youre building in color and shape and emphasizing the sculpt to make it read on-camera.
Its a lot of small brushes and delicate work.
:Once we see the actors, then we have to fit them into their mouths.
We had to tell the actors, You gotta be careful to get used to your teeth.
you could easily bite down on your lip or your tongue.
You could actually bite and hurt somebody.
There were a few people there who accidentally bit themselves, and thats the way it is.
:Luckily, not many of the actors had to deliver lines.
Some stunties would just chuck them at me, like, Im done.
We did something we did back onLord of the Ringsfor the orcs.
Its Listerine with green and black food coloring added to it.
It would stain the inside of their mouth this gross color.
When you see everyone coming together on-camera, youre like,Oh yeah, you guys are terrifying.
Youre a lovely group of people, covered in blood and with fangs.
The iconically toothy Chatterer provided a unique opportunity to meld the old and new.
Josh Russell:The designs came from lead concept designer Keith Thompson and David Bruckner.
They were working them out quite a bit before we were involved.
The Chatterer was the only other legacy character in the remake besides Pinhead.
You cant screw it up because people are looking for it and cheering for it.
We got Jason Liles, who was the first member of the Cenobite cast who was hired.
Theres a questionable orifice in the front of his forehead.
We do need a monster in this monster movie.
We ended up meeting in the middle.
We took it back, probably to one-third, from those big, long horse teeth.
The teeth are incorporated into the sculpture, and theyre all cast in the same silicone rubber.
Its so satisfying to hear on set.
We wanted to make those puppies chomp.
A wire had come loose.
What are we gonna do?
[Both laugh.]
We figured it out, and its great.
Its the coolest Chatterer scene; its before he dies.
This is the most fun weve had doing teeth.
:Hes the toothiest weve done, for sure.
Thomas is stunning and thenhe puts those teeth in his mouth.
And we went, Wow, thats a whole moment, says makeup-department head La Sonya Gunter.
Meredith Scardino:When Paula realizes that Gray actually feels trapped, is she there for her friend?
We thought the most extreme version which is usually what we do would be to help him.
We consulted La Sonya and said, Thomas Doherty has a beautiful set of teeth.
How do we make it look like he has these little jagged, little spaced-out fox teeth?
Then she went to work.
La Sonya Gunter:Im drawing out sketches, and Im thinking of B-movie, pointy, scary teeth.
My first one was a hand drawing, and it was like Halloween teeth.
I kept sending Meredith sketches, and she sent me sketches back.
We actually had a puppeteer make a fox puppet, and those are technically the teeth we were matching.
:I went to special-effects makeup artist Jason Milani, whos amazing.
After they finished the mold, Jason made it out of acrylic.
Its just like going to the dentist, except youre not going for fox teeth.
He painted the teeth with dental paint.
After Jason got the mold, those teeth were literally made in about two days.
:He couldnt stop!
He threw them out the window.
:Thomas tried them on, and we messed with them a little bit.
We made the gums a little pinker.
Because of the teeth being made of acrylic, I was able to use Skin Illustrator.
Its a palette, and we use it to cover tattoos.
:Everything had to be shaved down and spaced.
I think we elongated the canines.
:We took a few out.
Literally, the day we were doing it, I was like, Theyre not small enough!
Im taking a file and Im filing them down.
Im making them pointy.
:We had such a jam-packed schedule, it was the last thing up in the day.
It was even labeled as time permits.
We did a few takes, and he nailed it.
He had a couple lines before he revealed the teeth.
He was such a dream guest star so game for everything.
Peter described it as someone who was looking to re-create the confidence and authority that Tony Robbins has.
It meant the teeth would be oversize but perfect, shiny white.
That honed us in on pushing more toward real.
The thing that Ive learned is that you gotta keep dialing it back and dialing it down.
How little material do you actually need to add to the actor for achieve the effect youre after?
Peter described it as Find that fine line where youre walking between reality and parody.
Making teeth or anything for an actor, its a shared sale.
The teeth are all fake, and so are the gums.
People still come up to me about it.
They assumed that Matt had actually gotten veneers, which I thought was hilarious.
AliensandAlien: Romulus
The xenomorph inspires a not-insignificant amount of fear thanks to its maximalism.
The issue of the teeth was a very strong consideration, because we were such fans of H.R.
Gigers work and Ridley Scotts firstAlienxenomorph creature, which had silver metallic teeth.
Back then, we worked from sketches of the queen and a maquette, which is a miniature sculpture.
It was one of the largest creatures for effects that had been accomplished at that point.
They were remolded into clear urethane, inserted into her fiberglass understructure, and painted.
There were probably three, possibly four, heads made, and dozens and dozens and dozens of teeth.
The saliva was a food additive called methylcellulose.
Its added to other things that thicken things up.
Also, we used tons of K-Y Jelly.
It was always a fun thing to go buy 100 bottles of K-Y from the local pharmacy.
The queens tongue is about four feet long.
Theres a driving mechanism on a pulley system that would actually shoot out.
That was all manually driven.
You had to be very careful so you dont hurt Sigourney Weaver.
You dont want to drive that inner mouth through and smash those teeth out.
To break those teeth and have to fix them on set would be an absolute disaster.
You have to pop kick open the mouth and then shoot that mouth out and close it.
And that inner mouth also had an inner mouth mechanism that opened.
Those teeth werent translucent.
They should have been clear.
It was unintentionally different.
I remember a very interesting lesson I learned.
And I said, Hey, Sigourney, do you want to see the queen?
I have a picture of the queen.
I felt rather ridiculous for even asking.
And that happened on the newest film as well.
Alien: Romulusties intoAliens.
It was a complete surprise to me and to the other partners here at Legacy.
And the interior mouth was corrected.
They werent enamel colored this time; they were silver.
The Offspring hybrid was always meant to be a prosthetic makeup and not an animatronic creature.
Theres 13 or so different pieces that get glued and get body-paint detail.
Hes wearing a set of teeth.
Theyre veneer teeth that pop into place.
They look sharp, but theyre not horrifyingly sharp.
These things happen all the time.
Chris Lyons:The makeup designer, Naomi Dunn, phoned me and said, We got theBondmovie.
It was the firstBondmovie I worked on.
He takes out the good teeth to reveal the rotten teeth.
That was a one-off.
But he was well up for it.
Weve done rotten, smashed teeth, but not to that degree.
The rotten teeth are less than a millimeter thick.
The set that goes over them is a couple of millimeters thick.
The cheek piece ended up going to theBondarchive.
The Righteous Gemstones
No, notUncle Baby Billys teeth his wife Tiffanys.
We did the bad teeth and then we did a set of good teeth.
She was popping them in, the director was looking at them.
We had a bad, a very bad, and extremely bad concept.
They were different stages of staining and angulation.
They didnt want to go with the extreme concept because it would have been too comedic.
We manufacture things out of dental acrylic.
We use lacquer stain on them.
Anything with the mouth has to be ADA approved.
There were two looks created, and of those looks, there were three of each.
Theyre gonna end up looking bulky, and theyre going to be sticking out.
Nobody likes to turn down money, but youve already got something nice.
I cant make it nicer than nice.
You started this whole myth of bad British teeth.
Im going to send him over to you.
The whole gag was that he had to have these horrible 1960s prototype British teeth.
I based them on some pictures that he sent and on some people Ive met in my lifetime.
Everything was done with denture acrylic and dental acrylic.
The first set of teeth we created, he loved.
Literally out of the box: Theyre perfect.
Dont change a thing.
He went backward and forward on his timeline with them.
Youll notice some of his teeth, theyre just a little bit softer.
The angles are a little bit more rounded, theyre less pronounced, theyre not as dark.
Nothing was ever wasted.
If you look at Austin Powers without the teeth, its Mike Myers wearing sunglasses and being funny.
I hate to make it about the teeth, but without the teeth, the character was missing something.
We did teeth for Verne Troyer; we did teeth for Michael Caine.
We did the gold teeth forGoldmember.
If I leave a legacy behind me, Austin Powers will be it.
I still have an original set in the shop.
Ill never sell them; Ill never give them away.
Theyll be with me forever.
