Whole Tooth

By Dr. Robert Kelly, For The Mountain Times

In my last few articles I talked about the sports stars and pop culture celebrities who were in the news recently with tooth mishaps.  Another funny story to tell involved a movie star with a dental problem in real life …and that problem was conveniently written into the script as part of the storyline.  

A while back, there was a movie called “The Hangover.”  It was wildly successful and spawned sequels. The story was about a group of guys getting together for a wild trip to Las Vegas, to celebrate at a friend's bachelor party.  

In the movie, one of the characters,  a dentist who was a friend of the groom was played by actor Ed Helms. The movie and its sequels featured numerous comedic twists and turns: the groom went missing, a baby mysteriously appeared overnight, and there were repeated run-ins with a crazy gang boss. There were memorable cameo appearances: Mike Tyson and his pet tiger in a hotel room, Ed Helms’ dentist character getting so drunk he woke up one morning to find that he extracted one of his own teeth  – epic moments in the film.  

For the rest of the movie, Helms’ character walked around with a missing tooth; we now know that this was real, not special effects.  Although he did not in fact have a tooth extracted, he was actually missing a tooth. He was born without his upper lateral incisor, so he had a dental implant to replace it when he was younger.  For the movie, he had his dentist remove the crown from the implant – then, after four months of filming, had the tooth (crown) put back on.  

It was reported that the film crew first tried using prosthetics and other methods to block out the tooth, but removal was the best way to make it realistic. It was a funny movie that generated lots of dentist jokes.

Until next time!