--
Lessons in Lawbreaking
BAD INFLUENCES
--
[From September 1990 Issue of Premiere Magazine. -Jaded Jules]
Movies aren't just escapist entertainment. Actually they have much to
teach us--about the frailty of Family relations (Ordinary People,
Terms of Endearment), or the healing power of love (Pretty Woman, An
Officer and a Gentleman), or the victory of never letting your
shortcomings stand in your way (Rocky, The Karate Kid). And then
there are some lessons that are a tad unorthodox, like how to stall a
cop car by stuffing bananas up the tailpipe. How useful is such
information in real life?
-In The Manhattan Project, Christopher Collet plays a prank on a jerk
in his science class. By mixing two liquids commonly found in a high
school laboratory, he creates nitrogen triiodide, a chemical that,
when dry explodes at the slightest shock--which is just what happens
when the jerk slams a drawer shut. "Oh, God--they put that in a
movie?" exclaims Cornell University chemistry professor John
Wiesenfeld. "It's extremely dangerous. Unfortunately, it's done
regularly as a prank in high schools and colleges. You can do it in
your own home." To the movies credit, it doesn't identify the two
ingredients in the mixture. Says Wiesenfeld, "That a movie director
would supply information on how to make a significant contact
explosive--I wonder about our values."
-Eddie Murphy wants to get cops Judge Reinhold and John Ashton off his
trail in Beverly Hills Cop, so he shoves three bananas up their car's
tailpipe, causing the car to stall. In reality, says Ron Arbizzani,
director of engineering for Midas International Corporation (the
muffler people), a more substantial blockage, like a jammed in piece
of wood, would be needed to conceivably make this work. "Something
like a couple of bananas--being as mushy as they are--the engine
pressure would build up and blow them right out of there," Arbizzani
says. "I'm sure that some kids probably saw that movie and tried that
on their friends. The worst thing that's going to happen is it's
going to splatter bananas around."
-John Ashton wants to slow down the progress of rival bounty hunter
Robert De Niro in Midnight Run, and he gets a credit-card company to
help him. Pretending to be De Niro, Ashton calls the company, gives
De Niro's account number, and tells the representative to cancel the
card. According to American Express spokesperson Nancy Muller, before
canceling a card the company would first confirm the caller's identity
by asking for additional personal personal statistics, such as his or
her social security number and mother's maiden name. "That's not to
say that it's impossible," Muller says. "There's no question that
there are lots of ideas that people can get from films on how to
defraud companies. This scenario is one we feel comfortable that we
can guard against."
-Rather than pay a quarter for a cup of coffee like real people, Real
Genius Val Kilmer removes an ice cylinder encased in liquid nitrogen
from his dorm freezer, saws off a piece the size of a quarter and
drops it in a vending machine. David R. Stone of the National
Automatic Merchandising Associates says that might work with some
older models. All vending machines measure coin diameter, some
measure weight, and most new ones even test for electrical
conductivity. "Obviously we hope people aren't going to cheat
machines," says Stone. "It's been an ongoing challenge ever since the
first vending machine was invented. But that one scene in Real Genius
is not going to bankrupt the industry." And anyway says Cornell's
Wiesenfeld, a dorm freezer isn't cold enough to liquefy nitrogen.
-In Twins, Arnold Schwarzenegger deactivates a car alarm by lifting
the auto's rear end. He explains that alarms automatically shut off
when cars are lifted more than 45 degrees to allow for towing. "Not
true," says Gary Rader, owner of Marco Locks in Manhattan. "There are
alarms that, if you lift the car, it will set off the alarm. But
there are no alarms that if you lift up the car it will shut them off.
Unless you're Arnold Schwarzenegger."
-In Bad Influence, Rob Lowe tries to blow up James Spader by running a
wire from the leads of a broken taillight into the car's gas tank--an
idea inspired by a terrorist practice, says director Curtis Hanson.
But he deliberately omitted an important step, which of course we
won't reveal. According to Robert Goulding, training and education
director for the Automotive Parts and Rebuilders Association, gasoline
explodes only when met with a strong flame, and the depiction seen in
Bad Influence would fall short. The odds of it working are "one in a
million," Goulding says. "But I sure wouldn't want to try it to see
what would happen."
-Matthew Broderick may be a mediocre high school student in Wargames,
but he obviously knows something we don't know about technology.
First he makes a free call from a pay phone with the help of a soda-
can tab. After unscrewing the bottom part of the receiver, he holds
one end of the tab to the mouthpiece ant the other to the keyhole in
the coin box. We hear a buzz of electricity and then a dial tone.
According to NYNEX spokesperson John Bonomo, this trick worked by
extending the phones electrical ground. But AT&T spokesperson Jo
Johnston says performing this task would require lots of trail and
error, and anyway it can't be done anymore now that pay phones have
welded mouthpieces.
In another scene, Broderick manages to fool an electronic access
lock while he's being held captive by federal agents. He connects a
tape recorder to the wires of the lock inside the wall; when a guard
punches in the combination outside, Broderick records the touch-tone
sound pattern, which he plays back through the lock to open the door.
"I'm sure that in some systems that is possible," says Rick Eisen,
eastern regional sales manager for Kaba High Security. "But that
technology is probably ten years behind what's actually being used. I
think a lot of the more sophisticated systems that the government is
using are not known to the general public and are not being depicted
in the movies."
ROB MEDICH [Original author]
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