A FORMER DENTIST EM-BRACES A NEW CAREER
Dentists are usually comic characters in movies--but not in “Enemy Mine.”
In 20th Century Fox’s upcoming sci-fi-fantasy, German ex-dentist Mic Wollensack is the supervisor of model-making.
As a child he saw “Ben-Hur” and went home and built a “Ben-Hur” diorama out of odds and ends. But model-making didn’t exist as a profession in his homeland, so he became a dentist. But he gave that up nine years ago after a long stay in the hospital: “I wanted to do something that came from my heart as well as from my fingers.”
He began creating small models for museums, then dummies and special effects for German TV. “Enemy Mine,” shot in Munich, is his first big-budget feature. In addition to fighter planes and a scavenger ship, he’s created a model of a launch station using two miles of metal wires and four pounds of solder.
There’s still no training in Germany for model-makers. When Wollensack needed help, he hired a goldsmith, a wood specialist, two electronic engineers . . . and two dentists.
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