De Palma a la Mod

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

MORE ON THAT PODCAST - 'DRESSED TO KILL'
CONFUSION REGARDING POLICE WOMAN, AND PETER'S SUPPOSEDLY "NONSENSICAL TECHNICAL MUMBO-JUMBO"

I just have a couple more notes regarding the Junk Food Dinner podcast I linked to the other day in a post about Sisters. The guys on the podcast also talked about Dressed To Kill, and as I mentioned the other day, sometimes the discussion is rather frustrating. For instance, one of them talks about the character Betty Luce, the female officer that Detective Marino has tailing Liz, and who, by outward appearances, looks just like Bobbi. One podcaster talks about how Betty Luce is, like Bobbi, transexual or transgender, but this is simply not the case. The podcast gets more frustrating as not one, but two more of the participants echo this mistaken perception of the character.

Another odd moment in the podcast comes when one of the participants, who is prepared enough to know that as a youth, Brian De Palma won a regional science fair prize for building a computer, complains that the Keith Gordon character in Dressed To Kill spouts "nonsensical technical mumbo-jumbo" regarding the machine that he's building in his bedroom. Well, let's take a look at what Peter actually says in the dialogue with his mother, Kate:

Peter: Mom, this is the most incredible thing that I’ve ever built. I mean this carries!

Kate: [Humoring him] It carries… Carries what?
Peter: Binary numbers. I mean, it can hold up to a twenty-digit figure.
Kate: Now, wait a second [humoring him]—you said it can carry, and it holds, too?
Peter: [Nodding] Both, it does both, that’s the whole point. I mean, there isn’t a circuit like this in any of my books. I’ve invented it!
Kate: [Sincerely proud] Well, that’s great. That’s great, Peter.

I'm not sure what there is to complain about there, but the podcaster said that because he knows about De Palma's science background, "I expect better from De Palma."

At the beginning of an article by New York Magazine's David Rosenthal (August 4 1980, pp. 25-27-- the photo above is from the article), De Palma says, "That character in Dressed To Kill is me. I mean, that's my room. That machine, I built that machine. It was a differential analyzer."

Posted by Geoff at 12:29 AM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, April 7, 2015 12:31 AM CDT
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Sunday, May 3, 2015 - 9:18 PM CDT

Name: "Sean"
Home Page: http://www.junkfooddinner.com/

Hey Geoff, love the site - fantastic resource. Sean from JFD here - hope you enjoyed our episode despite your reservations. We're not professional film journalists, but enjoy watching cult films and discussing them with our friends. I haven't gone back to re-watch Dress To Kill since the episode, but I'm pretty sure the lines you quoted are the ones that irked me. It could just be that working professionally the past fifteen years in computer engineering has made me overly sensitive, but the lines struck me as devoid of meaning and false.

Parsing Peter's description of a circuit that stores data in a binary format, it would seem likely he is discussing a DRAM chip (invented in the early 60s), but the claim of holding a twenty-digit figure is more dubious, although it's hard to tell exactly what he meant.

If he is referring to simply holding 20 binary sequences (bits) within a DRAM chip, this would only provide enough memory to store less than three English characters worth of data, as the ASCII standard (also invented in the 60s) requires 7 bits of storage per single letter represented (and other non-ASCII textual formats use up to 8 bits, or a full byte). And if he's talking about storing a single twenty-digit text string in memory, this would only require 140 bits (~18 bytes) of storage, which would be a very small amount, even for 1980 - for context, the Apple II computer introduced in 1977 came with anywhere from 4KB to 64KB of installed memory (so at least 222 times more memory than 18 bytes), and 256 bit DRAM chips were commonplace on the market as early as 1970.

Hollywood has a history of getting technical speak incorrect, but as you highlighted, I had hoped for something that rang a little more true from De Palma based on his background. Overall I still very much enjoyed the film, though - and this one scene didn't detract notably from the overall experience.

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Sunday, May 3, 2015 - 10:59 PM CDT

Name: "Geoff"
Home Page: https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma

Hi, Sean-- thanks for writing in and clarifying further. You do seem to know of which you speak, so it is very interesting to hear (read) your thoughts on that dialogue. Left to my own devices, I wouldn't have any idea myself as to whether any of it makes logical or technical sense, but I can certainly see why you would naturally pay particular attention.

I did indeed enjoy the podcast discussion, and I think other De Palma fans would, too-- I try not to nit-pick too much about such discussions, but I guess a couple of things here and there nagged at me. You seem like a smart group, and it is interesting to hear your takes on these movies.

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