Gap-Toothed Women

Director Les Blank, Maureen Gosling, Chris Simon, Susan Kell / 1987 / USA

What do model Lauren Hutton, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, truck driver Rena Morena, Chaucer's 'Wife of Bath', cartoonist Doris Seda, Cleopatra, and belly dancer Sharlyn Sawyer have in common? The answer: they all have a space between their two front teeth. Blank and his co-filmmakers interviewed close to 100 women with gap-teeth, ranging in age from 18 to 88 years, to find out what makes them tick - their interests, beliefs, lifestyles. and whether or not a space in one's teeth can make a difference. Forty of them appear in the finished film which, as in Blank's Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers, takes a seemingly trivial subject and turns it into an arena for the exploration of the cross currents of human nature in general, and US society in particular.

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