`Mrs. Tingle' Based On Williamson's Teacher

Principle, gallantry or something forbids me from mentioning her name, though I suspect she's dead and gone. All I'll tell you is that she was my seventh- and eighth-grade social-studies teacher and I learned nothing from her classes except new ways to despise bullies like her.

Though I cherish the memory of far better teachers who came on as crustily as she did, this teacher remains, for me, a paragon of bumptious mediocrity and unchecked malevolence.

Then I saw "Teaching Mrs. Tingle," and realized that, just maybe, I got off easy.

The title character, Eve Tingle (Helen Mirren), is a scorpion in a suit, a corrosive, sultry nightmare of a high-school teacher sprung from the wry imagination and painful memories of Kevin Williamson, screenwriter for such hit horror movies as "Scream" (1996), "Scream 2" (1997) and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" (1997).

The 34-year-old Williamson, who is making his directorial debut with "Teaching Mrs. Tingle," was inspired to write this pre-"Scream" script by one of his former teachers who, as he remembers it, "had it in for me from the time I walked into her class."

She repeatedly told Williamson, once in the middle of reading one of his stories in class, that he had no hope of ever being a writer. For almost a decade, the North Carolina native accepted her verdict, eventually moving to California with little more than acting on his mind.

While taking a screenwriting class at UCLA, Williamson decided to vent his longtime anger by writing a script about a poor but honest high-school valedictorian unjustly accused by the aforementioned Mrs. Tingle of cheating on a final exam. Through circumstances beyond her control, the A-student becomes a co-conspirator in kidnapping Mrs. Tingle and holding her hostage in her own home. (The idea, you see, is that maybe she'll change her mind . . . )

The script, then called "Killing Mrs. Tingle," was on Williamson's back burner while he became both the new hip prince of Hollywood horror and - thanks also to the success of the WB Network prime-time soap opera, "Dawson's Creek," which he created and produces - a major player in the premillennial youthquake enveloping pop culture. Such success gave Williamson the leverage he needed to finally bring "Tingle" to the screen.

He cast Katie Holmes, a lead player in the "Dawson's Creek" ensemble, as good-girl valedictorian Leigh Ann Watson, who is essentially Williamson's surrogate in this story.

"No pressure," jokes the 20-year-old actress, whose comfort level in the role was eased by their "Dawson's" association. "I remember thinking when I got the role, Great! Now I can annoy him in his trailer every day." Another WB star, Barry Watson of "7th Heaven," plays hunky school miscreant and co-kidnapper Luke Churner while newcomer Marisa Coughlan plays the third co-conspirator and Leigh Ann's best friend. Molly Ringwald, Lesley Ann Warren, Michael McKean and Jeffrey Tambor are among the surprising names in supporting roles.

The process of casting Tingle, Williamson says, involved discussions with several actresses suggested by his studio bosses at Miramax. "I sat down with them, chatted with them, liked them and would love to work with them. But I kept saying from the get-go, `You know, guys, we need someone like Helen Mirren.' And finally, (Miramax chief) Harvey says, `Well, why don't we get Helen Mirren?' And I pitched it to her and she was really into it. Gave up doing `The Cherry Orchard' for me. I was thrilled."

The 53-year-old Mirren, best known for her role as dauntless police inspector Jane Tennison in the British TV series "Prime Suspect," has an eclectic assortment of complex characters in her resume that range from earth mothers to mob molls. She thus seems an odd choice to play someone conceived in such broadly villainous strokes as Eve Tingle.

Well, exactly, says Williamson, who maintains that Tingle "is not Cruella De Vil. Helen and I worked very hard on giving this woman a back story. She's someone who at one moment could be sugary, then diabolical and then very sensual."

Says Mirren, "My imperative was to make her believable and not just be the Wicked Witch of the West. It's because Eve Tingle has all these levels to her behavior that she is more dangerous. And more interesting. Yes, she can get very extreme and Jacobean. But it was important to give her a psychological profile suggesting, but never revealing, just why she was the way she was."

Throughout the filming, the title was "Killing Mrs. Tingle," though the title character was never in danger of losing her life. ("It was always meant metaphorically," Williamson says.) But even before the April 20 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in which a teacher was among the 13 victims, Williamson had his qualms about the title.

"This was the first movie script I wrote and the last one I got made," he says. "And I was afraid that I was going to pick up all this baggage from `Scream'; that any movie by Kevin Williamson with `Killing' in the title had to be a horror movie and I didn't want this movie perceived in that fashion. Yes, there's suspense and there's a dark quality to the situation. But I was trying to do a little genre-jumping here.

"Then came the Colorado incident and that's when the studio stepped in and we agreed to make the change . . . "

So who is Eve Tingle's real-life counterpart? Williamson reveals nothing except that she died some years ago. Yet while he acknowledges that this movie will trigger recognition among many in the audience about the Eve Tingles in their pasts, Williamson wants to make it clear that he was making this movie from something deeper than vengeance.

"I wouldn't have been able to make this movie if I didn't love Mrs. Tingle," he says. "I relish her. I gave her all the best lines, all the great moments. And I'm very thankful to my own Mrs. Tingle because I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for her. The Tingles, in their own peculiar way, can inspire as much as the teachers who aren't out to get you."