I. Jeffrey Combs
Peter Jackson: "Jeff Combs was someone I had known from the Re-Animator movies, I never met him but I was a big Re-Animator fan - still am. And these were about 10 years old, and I hadn't seen him doing any movies in recent times, and I wondered where is the Re-Animator guy now, he'd be someone who is interesting and I mentioned his name to Victoria Barrows. She tracked him down and asked him to come and to audition for us. I remember the first time that Jeff walked into the audition room he ran up to me and shook my hand and says: Do you know you and I are both in the Fangoria Hall of Fame?"
Jeffrey Combs: "This is very rare, he met me before I auditioned, he wanted just to meet me and say "this is sort of what I'm looking for, now go away and come back in 10 minutes and we'll do it."
Peter Jackson: "He proceeded to do a very great audition, we put him through the hoops. I remember he wanted to audition with his glasses on, he had the idea his character would wear glasses, and I couldn't imagine Dammers in glasses, so I asked him to take his glasses of after the first take."
Jeffrey Combs: "Now, you have to imagine: I'm blind! I can't see. I've got pages... fortunately I had it memorized. [...] I had to basically take my glasses of and act with Michael J. Fox as a blurr before me, it was pretty weird, I have a "blurry" memory what this audition was like."
Peter Jackson: "We chreated this character [...] The goverment has sent him to breake into cults and sects and he's been doing this for like 15 years [...] The problem with Dammers is that they haven't deprogrammed him in between misssions, they have given him no therapy in the last 15 years and the poor guy has just sacrificed his personality for his country."
Jeffrey Combs: "If you take nationalism at that far, it really turns into fervant fascism, so that was where the haircut came in [...] I went to Wellington public library and I got out some books on Hitler, and I found fotos of young Hitler."
Peter Jackson: "And he says: I think Dammers should have this haircut [...] and I thought yeah, that's great, so Jeff went of to get this haircut. And then he comes back, and without me knowing he goes and he visited Richard Taylor."
Richard Taylor: "He wanted us to make him little tiny appliances that would fit behind his ears and force them foreward. The idea was that they would made him look slightly geeky or a bit awkward."
Peter Jackson: "The last touch was the idea that we had him put black contact lenses on
Jeffrey Combs: "We had this image and this vision of this man having these dark dark black beedy balls of eyes that were alive and yet dead."
Peter Jackson: "So I am at the set working on the film and I get a cert tap on my shoulder and I turn around and there is Jeff standing there. He's got the Hitler haircut and he got these things glued behind his ears that made his ears stick out and he said: "What do you think, what do you think"? [...]
Another area that Jeff Combs had input into in terms of Dammer's character was this chest tattooing or scaring. And I know he worked really hard with Richard Taylor to create the perfect combination of cultish type tattoos and carvings on his chest, he was very particular in the sort of symbols he wanted to be there."
Jeffrey Combs: "What was really great about it was that Richard Taylor and all those guys involved me in the design. They came to me with scetches and they said: "This is what we have - which was really phenomenal - and they said "what YOU think", I mean almost to the point they said "YOU draw one. Go home and take some of this and use everything that we have and you come back". Well, I went home and I drew one... it was so wonderfully colaborative, just like every aspect for me on this movie was a wonderfully collabotarative effort.[..]
The old butt ring.. another one of Peter' ideas. He brought it up fairly early on but it never got really written in the script. You have to figure Milton, Special agent Dammers, having been in all of these hideous cults and sects that some pretty damaging things have happened to him, despite the fact he's also just an uptight sort of fellow, he would have kind of a hemorial condition [...] and so he needs a little "protection". Peter had this idea of this buttring, so they went to a store where you can get these things [...] and they brought it back and yeah, it was a butt ring, but it was kind of big, so it couldn't be portable and would look ridiculous pulling this thing out. So the prop guys run of and they come back and said "How is this " and it was perfect. Great looking tiny little thing, perfect size, and I said "Where did you get this" And they said: it's an innertube for a weelbarrow. Noone would know, it just looks like a mini butt donought."
II. Bloopers:
Jeffrey Combs: "I had to get hit by this sceletton. The special effect guys had this sceletton and they padded the sceletton so when it hit me, it wouldn't hurt me, but they padded it to low, so when this thing came it was like being hit by a baseball bat."
Jeffrey Combs:"I remember the close ups of the mouth and of the eyes..."
MJF: "Peter [...] wanted to get all these different perspectives of Dammers, you know, close ups of the eyes and close ups to the mouth, and strange points of view and hands held shaking bizare. Disconcerning stuff, [...] he did it on Jeffrey's mouth and it was so ridiculous and funny that Peter kept laughing and wrecking the text."
Peter Jackson: " I started to giggle and I never told anybody why I started to giggle. The reason was, I was watching the close up of the mouth on the monitor, and I suddenly became aware of a little dribble of saliva that was forming on Jeff's lower lip. I suddenly wasn't in the dialogues anymore; I was just watching the progress of that little dribble of saliva that was making his way down from his lip to his chin and I started to wonder wether Jeff had noticed it was there [...] and I struggled to supress a giggle, I could feel it coming and it got worse because he suddenly wiped it away with his finger. From that point on I was just fighting trying not to laugh but I couldn't make it to the end of the take, I'm sorry. [...]"
Jeffery Combs: "And then he got it under control and then Michael went of and I lost it on that. He had to take a walk and I could even hear him way over to the other side of the stage muffling a laugh."
Peter Jackson: "The previews didn't cause us any great concern. One interesting thing that did develop was the whole issue of the swastika that was on the palm of Dammer's hand."
Jeffery Combs: "Milton Dammers has a swastika on his hand, [...] a little cruedly made mansonesk swastika. [...]. I hold it up, she starts yelling, she sees in the mirror that I have a swastaker there and I explain that my first undercover assignment was being part of the Manson family. [...] It was interesting because when they tested this movie, the audiences didn't get it. They misunderstood. They thought I was a nazi, because I have a swastika. And maybe because of the hair... they always saw with the visual and did not get the verbal explanation. So it was taken out. But I guess it's back in.
The Frighteners