8/31/2009

Hollywood Prop

Last weekend Linda, as she often is, was watching a bad movie called Babylon AD starring Vin Diesel. Not to be confused with the excellent TV series Babylon 5. I found myself watching it with her when suddenly I noticed a prop that the evil Doctor was using while trying to read Diesel's mind. The shape of it looked awfully familiar to me. A few beats later in the scene and, sure enough, it's an obsolete Guidant product that I helped design back in 1997. The Zoom programmer was used to monitor and program the pacemakers and defibrillator we sell.



Here he is proudly showing off the Zoom programmer.



They modified the flip up display to cover the original touch screen. The original screen was much bigger then this one so I'd say this was a bad upgrade. They also added cables to what was the floppy drive bay - which is probably a better upgrade.



And lastly we have the evil Doctor in his classic 'I have you now!' moment with his trusty Zoom programmer by his side. From this angle you can see that they added a block to the back of the screen to most likely hide the product and company logos.

I'm not sure how a Hollywood prop department would obtain a programmer. I thought they were supposed to be returned to the company. It was fun to spot something I had a hand it, even if it was in a terrible movie. Why couldn't it have been the Matrix or Star Wars!