BY DANIEL BAIG | Novocaine, opening this Friday, November 16, is the latest release from Artisan Entertainment, the company which brought you The Blair Witch Project, and more recently, Made, Soul Survivors, and last month's TV movie Surviving Gilligan's Island. As you might guess from its title, Novocaine tells the tale of a glamorous fashion model/astronaut who, when her experimental rocket plane crashes in the uncharted jungles of  just kidding; of course, it's about a dentist, and the noirish misadventures which befall him when he gets mixed up with a seductive patient.

The actor playing that tooth doctor sang fifteen years ago, in another movie, that his (character's) mother had predicted his chosen profession when he was still a young boy  "You'll be a dentist! / You have a talent for causin' things pain!" Many people thought Steve Martin should have been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for that turn as the thuggish "leader of the plaque" in Little Shop of Horrors. In any case, he once more now, as Dr. Frank Sangster, D.D.S., gets to order people to spit. (But no singing this time. Just stabbing.)

The screenwriter and director of Novocaine, David Atkins, didn't have to look far for inspiration to come up with a story: his father and two brothers are dentists. In marked contrast to the image exemplified by Steve Martin's sadistic periodontist who sang the above Howard Ashman-penned lyrics in Little Shop, Atkins has this to say about the family profession:

"I think dentists are contemporary heroes. They epitomize the American Dream. People are wary of dentists and tend to go out of their way to avoid them, and the dentists are aware of this. But instead of being bitter or mean-spirited, the dentists welcome them with open arms. Their only goal is to take away people's pain."

At the press day for Novocaine, David told me and a few other reporters that in 1997, faced suddenly with an open future / unemployment (he implied that he had had to abruptly leave a band he had been a part of, on less than amicable terms), he "thought, I'll take this opportunity to go undercover in a dentist's office and write the dental movie that I had always been thinking about.'" Specifically, his father and brothers' offices.

"I saw [my] first luxation, which is the teeth pull, and the blood starts flowing, and the next thing I know I've got my hand on the door and I'm halfway out the door, and I hear my brother's voice go,

"Where you going, Davey?'

"And I said, I'm just walking out '

"Get back in here!'

"So I had to watch, and sat through all the procedures, but especially the consultations with the [special type of] patients that I knew existed, [who were] the reason that I was there to begin with . . . I knew about these particular patients who would come from out of town. They always had a story of one kind or another about a bad tooth. And they would use that tooth to get a prescription. But they could never come in the next day for the root canal. It was always next week, so can you give me a little something to hold me over?' They get the prescriptions, then they forge them [for much larger quantities than the dentist prescribed].

"My dad is a dentist and my two brothers are dentists, so I grew up in a dentist's office, and I was always aware of this going on. As a kid, I didn't really quite understand, but in time I became more and more aware of what was going on. And then I wanted to delve into that [in a movie], because I'm interested in that, in grifters of all kinds. And that's a grift that nobody's ever seen before [in a movie]."

And it's the grift that gets Martin's Dr. Sangster into a murderous mess, courtesy of the prescription-grifter played by Helena Bonham Carter.

One other thing David got from his family which he uses in Novocaine: "My dad had said to me, David, the worst thing that could ever happen to a man is to lose his teeth.' . . . I knew as a dentist that was his motto. And as I'm driving home, I'm thinking, Of course. The end of, the thing that happens at the end of the movie has to happen as a result of the first line of the movie.'" And that piece of advice from his father is indeed the first line of the movie, voiced as narration by Steve Martin.

In addition to writing and directing the movie, David also shows up on the soundtrack, playing drums with the band Penny on the title song. He told us that he hopes to actually write the soundtrack on his next film, if it gets off the ground.

His past musical experience was something else that influenced Novocaine's story. A band he used to play with in Austin, TX (the one he left immediately prior to going "undercover") had, in his words, "a tall bass player, blond, female, and a petite bass player, dark-haired, female." In the movie, Steve Martin's character finds himself torn between tall, blond Laura Dern and petite brunette Bonham Carter.

I asked David about what had seemed to me to be fairly obvious references to the French filmmaker Jacques Tati in Novocaine.

He seemed quite pleased. "Thank you for noticing that!" He then revealed that he named his dentist protagonist "Frank" "because he's a Francophile. That was the first personality trait I was going to give him; he's a Francophile, so he'll be Frank . . . ." He also told us that the scenes in Novocaine set in the South of France were actually shot in Wisconsin!

* * *

Steve Martin was not alone when he came in; he was accompanied by a friend, who went over to the side of the room and plopped down onto a couch. "Pay no attention to the man in the corner!" a publicist joked.

But it's hard not to pay attention to Martin Short.

"Now I'm nervous. We have Martin Short!" Steve joked.

"Don't mind me; I'm just here to listen," Martin told us. And then he pointed at Steve, and exclaimed, "I hear he's a riot on a roll!"

Everyone was laughing.

I thought to myself, "Wow! Two of the Three Amigos!" I looked around and waited expectantly, but in vain, for Chevy Chase.

"This must be radio?" Steve Martin asked. "Is this print, or radio?" [Generally at these press days, the roundtable rooms are divided up with radio and print journalists in separate rooms.]

I informed him we were Print.

"Print. Okay. I think the last one was print too, and I thought it was radio. . . Oh my god!" he joked, "I said all the wrong things. Oh my god, it's completely different! INSTEAD OF TALKING LIKE THIS [exaggeratedly deep voice] . . . ."

Much laughter.

Steve Martin up close looked surprisingly elfin. I mean this not in terms of his size, but just his face. A large part of this, I had to remind myself, was because he was wearing a lot of makeup, almost certainly for television interviews. (I remember the first time I encountered this I was really shocked, because the talent in question, sitting right next to me, layered in cosmetics, was none other than The Rock. Not someone you'd ordinarily expect to see in foundation.) So Steve's skin, in addition to its natural pallor, was smooth and shiny. But it wasn't just that which gave him a pixie-like look. His nose is a little on the long side, and slightly pointy. He has delicate, "perfect" features. Plus the white hair (in combination with the pink/white glowing skin). And the near-constant smile, friendly, with an occasional wry quality entering in.

Steve used to call himself a "wild and crazy guy." Those days are long gone, but he's still a pretty funny guy, with the same delivery of jokes that's deadpan, yet not completely so, in that his voice gives away the fact that he does know he's being funny.

The first question he got was from a reporter who wanted to know how he had come to be involved with Novocaine.

"Oh! Well," he started, as though he thought that that was a really interesting question, which he had a fascinating answer for. "It was a really mysterious way," he continued. "I was sent the script by my agent."

Much laughter.

But he went on in a slightly more serious vein  for a moment. "I read the script. I didn't know what was going to happen next  which is unlike," indicating his pal on the sofa, "the films that Marty Short makes . . ."

Martin, as did everyone else, laughed, though his laughter went on a bit longer than ours. Then, when things had quieted down and Steve started talking again, Marty loudly interrupted with a loud, fake, "Ha ha ha hah!!" which cracked Steve up momentarily.

The next question was, "Did you prefer this to more of the big budget studio stuff you've been doing recently?"

"You know, I'm a lazy guy. So, a movie like this shoots in seven weeks, and a big budget Hollywood movie shoots in twelve weeks, and they do exactly the same thing. So I don't know what the difference is."

"You get a lot more money in the other one, don't you?" I interjected.

Without missing a beat, Steve answered me, "That's true." Pause for big laughter.

"Yeah. And, uh, uh, I like the speed of a low budget movie, because it's like television."

He looked over at Martin Short. "How am I doing?"

"You're lost, Steve. Face it."

("Is he like your chaperone?" I asked.

"Yeah.")

The next question was mine. "You said that you're lazy, but, I mean, recently ,"

I held up my copy of his best-selling novel (it actually says a novella' on the cover, but it's 130 pages, which I think counts as a novel; I think the novella' was just his modesty) Shopgirl, which came out last year and was critically very well received.

I continued, "Steve Martin the acclaimed novelist, Steve Martin the famous art collector whose work is exhibited in the Bellagio Gallery, Steve Martin the screenwriter [he wrote his films Roxanne, L.A. Story, and Bowfinger, in addition to cowriting his earlier movies The Jerk, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, The Man With Two Brains, and Three Amigos!] . . . It doesn't sound like a lazy guy."

Again, without missing a beat, he responded. "Well, that's only two things."

A LOT of laughter.

I was going to add his recent Academy Awards show hosting duties, and I also could have mentioned his producing of and writing for this year's TV series The Downer Channel. (Also, I think it was THREE things, but whatever . . . .)

"Well, I know it looks like I'm always working, but I'm not! I work like three days a week for two hours, and suddenly, you know, these things [his novel, the movie, etc.] come out. But I think, the trouble is, you people aren't thinking of me all the time, going Where's Steve Martin?'"

And once again there was a comical interruption from the one-man peanut gallery on the couch  "You're telling me!"

Steve didn't catch what Martin had said.

"Pardon me?"

"I said, You're telling me!'"

More good-natured big laughs, before Steve went on.

"So it looks like, cuz you're not doing that [thinking about him all the time], Oh, [in a funny voice] he's doing all these things!' but it's really a year apart, or two years apart, for things."

Another reporter mentioned that Steve had been playing the banjo with Earl Scruggs.

"I just played the banjo on a record with Earl Scruggs  did you know that, Marty?" he asked as he turned to look at his pal.

Martin answered in a slow, patronizing way, "Yes. You told me many times."

More laughs.

Steve mentioned that he'd be performing with Earl Scruggs on the Letterman show in a few weeks.

And then, noticing the book under my hand, he said, "Ah yeah, and then of course the Shopgirl PAPERBACK is now out."

Which I thought was a good opportunity to ask about something I had noticed while preparing for the interview. Steve Martin's name is on the front cover of A LOT of paperbacks right now, including Nora Ephron's Crazy Salad, selections from Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack, and a collection of S.J. Perelman pieces. He is the "Series Editor" for the Modern Library's "Wit and Humor Series."

"How much connection do you have with those?"

"Oh, that was an anthology of comedy writing they asked me to edit. But you don't actually  editing means you choose what's in it. Rather than change their words around. So, uh . . . God, I even forgot I did it. I wrote a little essay for it."

(He seems to have forgotten just how much he did, as well, for as I wrote above, it wasn't just one book, but several.)

Then he switched into his Steve Martin clueless comic persona; leaning towards me and (kind of) lowering his voice, he "confided",

"Between you and me and not "

He looked around at the other writers present, and put his hand in between his mouth and them, as if only I could hear, "the press . . ."

Everybody cracked up.

"You know, they kind of do the choosing and you make the final judgments, because you don't have the time to read every comedy manuscript from 1930 to the twentieth century [sic]."

I pointed out to Steve that many actors at the place he is at now in his career turn to trying their hand at directing. I asked him if he had any interest that way.

"No. I think about it sometimes, but, you know, it's a year-long process, and the director's the first one there, and the last one to leave, and I think, Gee, I could just go home. And let somebody else direct.'"

Much laughter.

Then he was asked if he'd ever do Prime Time Glick again. (If you're not familiar with the show, it's a program on Comedy Central in which Martin Short, in a fat suit and extensive prosthetic makeup, pretends to be probably the worst celebrity interviewer on the planet; his guests are real stars  often his friends, like Steve.)

Steve gave a look of disgust. "Oh, NO, I would NEVER do ", interrupting himself as if he had just remembered who was sitting on the sofa behind him, and then continuing in a Damn! I've been caught! whisper, "ooh  Marty's here . . ."

Big laughs.

Martin shouted out from his seat, "It's not like I wandered off!"

The publicist approached. "We have time for ONE more!" she announced.

A reporter started to ask a final question, but Steve turned to the couch.

"Marty?"

Laughter.

But then of course he turned back to the reporter. "Go ahead."

It was a gossip columnist, who mentioned that he interviewed each contestant as they were voted off Survivor. He told Steve that the most recent loser was a dentist, who, when told about Novocaine, said, "This is why the dentists have the highest divorce rate and suicide rate, because we're so maligned in society "

Steve interrupted with the punchline before the guy could even finish his question.

"Only twice by me!"

Big laughs. End of interview.

(But Marty stayed behind to do a quick Jimmy Glick impression for us!)

Have you seen Steve's work for us? Check out Morto the Magician and Gwneth and Steve!