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."