{"id":4666,"date":"2009-04-28T07:19:01","date_gmt":"2009-04-28T12:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4666"},"modified":"2009-04-28T07:19:01","modified_gmt":"2009-04-28T12:19:01","slug":"my-jokes-usually-become-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4666","title":{"rendered":"My Jokes Usually Become Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the show 24 <\/em>this few seasons, I’ve noticed (along with a few million other fans) that Cisco Systems must have paid huge money to the producer to have not only the government, but the terrorists, using their “NetMeeting” virtual conferencing system (in a very, very slicked-up Hollywood version utterly unfamiliar to those of us who’ve been using the more mundane versions for the past several years).<\/p>\n

And then I noticed – everyone <\/em>on the show uses Heckler and Koch firearms; Jack Bauer dropped his SIG 226 and switched to a USP back during Season Three; the various redshirts<\/strike> “tactical” guys all carry MP5s; this past several seasons have seen Jack, his friends and his enemies blasting at each other with G36, MP5, MP7, PSG1 and the HK416; indeed, the slick black HK pieces seem to have displaced pretty much everything else on the show.<\/p>\n

And they’re popping up on other shows as well.\u00a0 And I joked “H’nK must be paying great money for product placement!<\/p>\n

And when I joke about something like that, it seems to turn up as reality as often as not:<\/a><\/p>\n

The German gun maker Heckler & Koch (H&K) intensifies a marketing strategy of product placement in movies and TV-series, a feature of the British TV-station Channel4 has found: “You can\u2019t advertise guns on TV, so what do you do?” According to that report the Oberndorf based company has increased its efforts to convince armourers in Hollywood of its newest models. Already in 2004, the then spokeswoman of H&K, Andrea Franke, confirmed to the Greenpeace magazine that the U.S. subsidiary of H&K closely cooperated with the movie makers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve heard from friends that Hollywood’s “armorer” community – the prop-wranglers that handle firearms for movie shoots (which are usually done in places like California, New York and Vancouver, places with institutionalized government paranoia about guns) are among the most eagerly-awaited guests.<\/p>\n

While there is no secret that the owner of the German pistol producer Carl Walther travels himself to the movie sets of each James-Bond-sequel to hand over the PPK or lately the new P99 for 007, it is not known whether H&K\u2019s owners Andreas Heeschen and Keith Ralston, who are both part of British High-Society anyway, do likewise. However, it is noteworthy that Bond defeats his adversary in “Casino Royal” (2006) with the submachine gun HK UMP which is used by many special police units in the US. The poster for the new film “Quantum of Solace”, which is due to be released in November 2008, shows Bond\u2019s silhouette with H&K\u2019s MP5 submachine gun (http:\/\/movierls.info\/?p=9). And the expert on war cinema Peter B\u00fcrger points to the fact that Bond\u2019s opponent in “Die Another Day” (2002) uses an XM29, which H&K had developed for the US-Army.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course this piece was written by someone from the pants-wetting set (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

Also, in the successful TV series “24”, which has evidently inspired some US soldiers to torture<\/strong>, agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and his colleagues use some current H&K weapons, the assault rifles G36 and HK416 [and the USP, UMP, MP7, MP5 and PSG1.\u00a0 Amateur].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is the first I’ve seen Jack Bauer -a\u00a0 fictional character – replace Karl Rove and Dick Cheney in that claim.\u00a0 Fact-check time; the only real life <\/em>torture the show has ever inspired was a desire on the part of fans to waterboard the writing staff after Day Six; the urge was communicated clearly enough that 24 <\/em>seems to have done the improbable – having jumped the shark in Season 6, it feels like it’s actually jumped back<\/em> this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the show 24 this few seasons, I’ve noticed (along with a few million other fans) that Cisco Systems must have paid huge money to the producer to have not only the government, but the terrorists, using their “NetMeeting” virtual conferencing system (in a very, very slicked-up Hollywood version utterly unfamiliar to those of us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-n-e","category-geekery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}