I started working in the film business in Tucson Arizona in 1978, doing make up and stunt work. I moved to LA California in 1981 and started my film career in earnest. Around 1984/5, I was in Orange County California looking to kill some time, and I wandered into a Military surplus store. Right near the door was this olive drab, military looking mechanical device, that I quickly recognized as a "Stedicam". I asked the clerk about it, and he said, no it was not really a "Stedicam" it was a gun mount the military had been experimenting with for aircraft door mounts and jeep mounts, but they couldn't dampen out the "climb" from the gun recoil. I asked how much, and he said $500. Well that was out of my price range for something like this so I moved on. On the way home I was thinking how cool this device was and what I could make with it. Then It occurred to me, what if you used it like the "Stedicam", as a body mount, but for a huge gun in place of a camera. Now my hand drawing skills are fairly poor, but mechanical things I'm OK at drawing, at least to get the idea across. A couple of years earlier, I designed all the weapons for "Ice Pirates" for another Prop House, Ellis Mercantile, and since my illustration skills were so poor compared to professional concept designers, I figured my designs would be redrawn. But no, my original sketches, on notebook paper, were shown to the director. I was horrified.
So when I got home from Orange county, I did some sketches of Sci-Fi guns, with this surplus military gun mount. Happy with the design, I got out some good paper and did a final pen & ink drawing. Given my usually poor skills as an illustrator, I was pretty happy with the drawing. It was a large gun, perhaps 4 to 5 feet in length mounted to a stedicam style arm, which in turn was mounted to a body harness. The gun, when not being held, could be "stored" up behind the wearers shoulder. There were a couple a variations to the gun design, either on the same page or another drawing. (I don't recall)
At the time, I was working for one of Hollywood's bigger, more predominate Prop Houses, "The Hand Prop Room". Allen Levine the owner, was a retired prop master, who told me amazing stories of working on "Apocalypse Now" and "Jeremiah Johnson". One day, Allen calls me up to his office and asks if I have any sci-fi gun drawings. (He knew I did Ice Pirates for his competitor years earlier). I tell him I have a couple and he asks me to bring them in, he wants to show a prop master, who is working on a new sci-fi film.
At this time in history, color copies are rare, because the good Canon ones cost $100,000, so only the bigger copy businesses have them. In the morning Allen ask me about the drawings and I tell him, my plan to go make copies at lunch time. He tells me not to bother. I explain these are my one and only originals (not to mention rare good drawings). Again, he says don't worry, he's only going to show the prop master. Well, he let the guy take them, and it was the last I ever saw of my drawings. A few weeks later, when it was clear I was not getting my drawings back, and the Hand Prop room was not making props for this sci-fi movie, I asked Allen, what was the film. He said it's a sequel for "that dumb alien movie".
Well, needless to say I was pretty annoyed when I saw the film, and there where guns on stedicams. But that's Hollywood!