Toothless Models

We all have “those stories”

About commercial advertising productions gone wild.

We also all have unspoken laws

About what we will and won’t do.

And boy, is there a story behind every rule.

One of my rules now

Is, “Talent must send video reels for selection.”

And, “Talent must appear with full set of teeth.”
(Whether partial, natural or full dentures,
we do not prefer which. Just at least one.)

Here’s how it happened.


We were on a three day shoot in Mississippi

For an innovative tech company who truly has my heart.

We had ten scenes (entirely different) to shoot in three days.
It was a lot to shoot in a short amount of time,

Which is honestly just part of it.

On the last day
We shot until 10pm and had a 5am call the next morning…

Which lends itself to beautiful night and evening shots

And spicy 🌶️ crew members, including yours truly.

On our last scene, scene 10/10,

I was drinking water between sets, trying to cool down my brain

and I heard a great clatter.
Running outside to see what was the matter,

I saw our producer making a beeline to the agency producer
and I heard a hubbub in wardrobe.

“He doesn’t have any teeth!”

“I got him to laugh and I counted three, he has three teeth!”

I looked at our producer who had her mouth firmly set in a line.

“He doesn’t have any teeth. He had teeth in the photos.

No clue where his teeth are.”

Innovation is the mother of invention,

Even if innovation is not the mother of teeth.

Trying to act like 0 things were wrong,

I placed our talent strategically

In the frames,

None the wiser,

A reduced rate

Negotiated for the client

Happy campers all around.

After the shoot wrapped, we were left with so many questions.

Was it a tragic shotgun accident?
Were the dentures forgotten or lost?
How can someone show up in the span of two weeks, suddenly toothless?

We will never know.

Here is my rule.

Models must send a smiling video with full teeth.

I make the rules now.

We keep our sanity in production by expecting the unexpected

Adapting on the fly

Pulling as one team

And… implementing “those” rules.

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