Toothy Tales of Hollywood . . . Script Dentist!

You’ve all heard of script doctors. Well, here’s a new one: script dentists.

Beverly Hills dentist Dr. Evan Chandler--the man who’s entrusted to care for Sherry Lansing’s, Christian Slater’s and Valerie Golino’s teeth, among others--found a new patient in his chair one morning interested in listening to a couple of his movie ideas. The patient was screenwriter J. David Shapiro; the idea actually came from Chandler’s then 11-year-old son, Jordi. The conversation took place post-”Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” and resulted in a writing partnership that has become “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.”

“Evan Chandler’s son turned to his father and said, ‘You know, Dad, you know what would be a great thing, a spoof of Robin Hood,’ ” recalls the King of Parodies, Mel Brooks, who liked the duo’s screenplay send-up of the 1991 hit that starred Costner as the chivalric arrow-slinging hero who stole from the rich to give to the poor and decided to make it his next movie. “It didn’t hurt that the man’s in a lot of show-biz mouths,” he said, acknowledging his connection to Shapiro through a mutual friend who works for Brooksfilm.

Brooks also gives a nod to the kid despite the fact he’s in a Writers Guild arbitration with his father and Shapiro over who should get what screenplay credit. Brooks says they should get story credit and he and Shapiro screenplay credit. Chandler would not comment for this story. (Consideration is being made whether to give Jordi some recognition in the end crawl credits.)

But Brooks also pats himself on the back for having attempted an even earlier Robin Hood parody done for television in 1975, “When Things Were Rotten,” a sitcom for ABC that aired four months before being canceled.

“Even though the kid was 12 or 14 years late, it was still a good idea,” said the spoof-meister of such genre lampoons as “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein.”

He said timing, notably Kevin Costner’s ripe-for-satire performance (the actor was roundly made fun of for his wavering laid-back California/British accent), and some of Chandler/Shapiro’s Sherwood Forest scene-setters convinced the filmmaker to make it his next project.

For one, the Mafia helps Prince John get rid of old Robin (played by Cary Elwes). The role of Rabbi Tuchman (as in Friar Tuck) is, in the words of the actor, “brilliantly played by someone who shall be nameless.” Gee, we wonder who that is.