A commercial for AT&T’s “Voices” campaign was launched in March, 2006, filmed in one of Howard Hughes’ immense airplane assembly hangars located on the grounds of Playa Vista Studios (near the Los Angeles International Airport), where some of the most memorable technical props in modern film history were assembled for a major commercial shoot. I provided the original “WarGames IMSAI” (and related props), which is featured in a starring role along with “Robby the Robot” from “Forbidden Planet“, “Rosie the Robot” (from television’s “The Jetsons”) (uh… that’s me on the left!)and “K.I.T.T.” the intelligent talking Pontiac from the “Knight Rider” television series in AT&T’s new commercial campaign. More photos and story coming up as soon! The commercial clip can be found on YouTube here.As an aside, I was absolutely captivated by the original film release of “Forbidden Planet” in 1956 and never imagined in my wildest dreams that I might someday share Robby’s space in place of the lovely Anne Francis, as shown in the following image:Forbidden Planet (1956) – Anne FrancisPLUS! …… the answer to one of the most asked-about items
“What happened to the WOPR?”3/18/2006 NOTE- A reproduction of the original 1983 WOPR prop has been made and is featured with the “WarGames IMSAI“, “Robbie the Robot“, “Rosie the Robot” (from television’s “The Jetsons”), and “K.I.T.T.” in an AT&T commercial that was filmed in Los Angeles. more related items…Another “WarGames” Treasure!Two years ago I was astounded and immensely grateful to come into possession of one of the two CompuPro 8/16 computers used in the backstage control of the set of “WarGames” as described above. I only became aware of the heritage this unique machine when the donor casually mentioned it to me during our discussion of IMSAI history. More details about this priceless addition to the “WarGames IMSAI” collection will be added as time permits.An IMSAI 8080 was originally to have had a “walk-on” part in Turner Network Television’s “Pirates of Silicon Valley“, a Hollywood version of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates from their hacking days to the distant present. Supposedly based on Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine’s 1999 updated book “Fire in the Valley”, the movie does not even begin to resemble the original 1984 publication. Instead, it depicts Steve Wozniak (Apple Computer‘s co-founder along with Jobs) as a kind of rummy, happy-go-lucky hardware hack, Jobs as a brilliant, but psychotic opportunist, and Gates as the clever manipulator of all he surveys. In short, it didn’t really do justice to any of it’s principal characters. The movie does present a well-produced fiction that is engaging and entertaining despite its limited scope. Just don’t take any of the story as factual. Oh… and the IMSAI 8080? Apparently just another “Face on the Cutting Room Floor”.Footnote: The Wargames DVD Director’s Cut version commentary track has Mr. Lasker suggesting he specified a Radio Shack TRS-80 for the slot filled by our IMSAI 8080. Time, or a changing of the guard with film personnel in the early stages of production may have eroded Mr. Lasker’s memory. Otherwise, our IMSAI 8080 suffered a most fortunate mis-casting!This oversight seems to have promoted further fallacy, witnessed by this offering of a supposedly “official MGM” tee shirt on eBay in September 2002:
THE WARGAMES IMSAI