Keith Gordon (Dressed to Kill) Dressed to Kill
Keith Gordon plays Peter Miller, Kate's teenage son who teams with Liz Blake to catch the killer using homemade mace, a time-lapse camera, and a binary computer he built for a science competition. The role launched Gordon's career and, more importantly, taught him the craft of directing -- he went on to direct The Chocolate War (1988), A Midnight Clear (1992), and became one of television's most sought-after episodic directors.
De Palma's autobiographical character gave Gordon a window into the director's method
De Palma has said Peter Miller is his most autobiographical character -- the teenage inventor who builds electronics and enters science competitions before pivoting to a different kind of problem-solving:
"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." -- Brian De Palma, Cinephilia & Beyond (2015)
Gordon recognized early that the production was a masterclass in a specific kind of filmmaking:
"Dressed to Kill was all about montage and editing and constructing sequences and building tension." -- Keith Gordon, Senses of Cinema (2004)
Gordon learned that raw footage transforms completely in editing
The gap between what Gordon saw on set and what appeared in the finished film became the most important lesson of the production:
"I remember seeing that stuff being shot and thinking, 'Oh my God, this looks so embarrassing and not real and stupid and it's not going to be scary.' And seeing the finished scene and not being able to believe the change that it went through." -- Keith Gordon, Senses of Cinema (2004)
"That was probably the single biggest lesson out of that one -- there were a billion little ones." -- Keith Gordon, Senses of Cinema (2004)
De Palma was calm and willing to teach during production
Gordon described the set as controlled and unhurried, with De Palma's teaching instincts still intact:
"Though Dressed to Kill was more of a mainstream film, it wasn't an overblown, crazy production situation and Brian was really in pretty complete control. So he was pretty calm during it and the teacher in him was still there. He was very kind about the fact that I wanted to know about how he did what he did." -- Keith Gordon, Senses of Cinema (2004)
Gordon transitioned from acting to directing and became a prestige-TV mainstay
After Dressed to Kill, Gordon acted in John Carpenter's Christine (1983) and several other films before directing his debut, The Chocolate War (1988), adapted from Robert Cormier's novel. He directed A Midnight Clear (1992) and Waking the Dead (2000) before transitioning to television, where he became one of the industry's go-to episodic directors with credits on Homeland, The Leftovers, Dexter, Fargo, Masters of Sex, and Legion. The formal training he received from De Palma on Dressed to Kill -- montage, tension-building, the transformation of raw footage through editing -- became the foundation of a directing career that has outlasted his acting one. (sensesofcinema, wikipedia)