RUSSELL Brown’s indie “The Blue Tooth Virgin” is a cautionary tale for struggling writers: Never ask your best bud’s opinion of something you’ve just penned.
Screenwriter Sam (Austin Peck) makes that mistake when he asks magazine editor David (Bryce Johnson) for advice. David is underwhelmed (as is Sam’s wife), and tells Sam so in a roundabout way. There goes a friendship!
Brown’s film consists of a series of long, talky, humorless takes, during which the old argument about art versus commerce comes to the fore.
Veteran kook Karen Black brightens things up as a script consultant. (She’s also in Henry Jaglom’s “Irene in Time,” which opened Wednesday.)
Other than that, “The Blue Tooth Virgin” (also the name of David’s script) plays like a TV sitcom. How low can they go?
Running time: 79 minutes. Rated R (language, pot smoking). At the Quad, 13th Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues.