Utopia Talk / Politics / Awww, poor bitch, Roman Polanski

The Zero Identity Member	Mon Sep 28 16:38:24 The hunt for Roman Polanski Roman Polanski has spent 30 years on the run from the law â?? and a lifetime fleeing his demons, writes David Gritten Few film industry figures polarise opinion as sharply as Roman Polanski. For every dozen people outraged that he is currently being held in Zurich, waiting to hear if he will be extradited to the US to face sentence on charges of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl, another dozen can easily be found who are gleeful that Polanski may finally receive his just deserts. To his detractors, Polanski sealed his guilt by fleeing America to escape imprisonment in 1978 â?? the year after the offence took place â?? and making a permanent home in France to avoid extradition. But as with every aspect in the life of this Polish director, the case for him is as riddled with complexities and contradictions as the case against. Even some who concede that he is brilliantly talented find it hard to get past the arrogance and petulance that can mark his behaviour. It is somehow typical that even the judicial proceedings against him in that infamous case have now been revealed as flawed and unfair. Polanski's life has been tumultuous since childhood. When he was eight, his Jewish parents were sent to concentration camps; his mother died in Auschwitz. The boy escaped from the Kraków ghetto just before it was liquidated and roamed the Polish countryside, seeking shelter with Catholic families. Once he ran into a squad of German soldiers, who sadistically used him as target practice, howling with laughter as he dodged their bullets. After the war he became addicted to cinema, entered film school in Poland, and directed a few shorts. His first feature-length film, Knife in the Water (1962), made him an international star at the age of 29. After a spell in Paris, he gravitated to Swinging London in the mid-Sixties, where he made two notable films, Repulsion and Cul de Sac. He was gaining a reputation for films that, if not violent, were jarring and threatening; they seemed to match his view of the world. Hollywood beckoned, inevitably. His first American film, Rosemary's Baby (1968), starring Mia Farrow as a young woman impregnated by the devil, was a huge hit and a critical success. Polanski made himself at home in the Hollywood Hills, and surrendered to many of the pleasures LA had to offer. Now another contradiction loomed: given his appearance (he is tiny and nobody's idea of handsome) he attracted many beautiful women. One was the striking actress Sharon Tate, whom he married in 1968. She soon became pregnant with their first baby. But then came the trauma that affected Polanski as deeply as the Holocaust: the murder of Tate and four others by Charles Manson's infamous "family". Chastened and grieving, Polanski found solace in work. He headed back to Europe, obtained French citizenship, shot a film version of Macbeth in Britain â?? then returned to Hollywood for his biggest triumph to date. Chinatown (1974) is, without question, a timeless classic â?? a noirish, complex confection about corruption, greed and twisted relationships in LA, with Jack Nicholson at his peak as a sceptical private eye. It is as dazzling and assured a piece of directing as you will ever see. Chinatown was universally acclaimed, the movie industry was delighted for Polanski in the wake of his tragic loss, and public sympathy for him was never higher. But then came his fateful liaison with 13-year-old Samantha Gailey (now Geimer), a would-be actress and model, whom he met at the Mulholland Drive home of Jack Nicholson (who was not present). Polanski, then 43, had been assigned to photograph teenage girls in Los Angeles for the magazine Vogue Hommes. She and Polanski agree that sex took place, and that it was consensual, though Polanski gave the girl champagne and a Quaalude to relax her. He was arrested and pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse, after charges of rape and sodomy were dropped. Samantha's parents asked in court that he should not be imprisoned. Polanski spent 42 days in jail undergoing evaluation, but rather than face the judge, he headed for the airport and flew to France. His reasons for fleeing remained unclear until last year when an astonishing documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Its director Marina Zenovich had persuaded Samantha, now in her mid-40s, to discuss the case on camera. She has publicly forgiven him and supports his attempts to have the charges dismissed. Also in the film are Polanski's defence attorney Douglas Dalton, and Roger Gunson, the assistant DA who was prosecuting him. Remarkably, both men agreed that justice had been undermined by the presiding judge, Laurence Rittenband. At one point in the film, Gunson describes the legal proceedings as "a sham". "It isn't about whether Polanski is likeable or not," Zenovich told me. "It's about whether he was treated fairly under California state law. And clearly he was not." Rittenband (who died in 1994) had a taste for celebrity cases, and wanted to make his name as the man who jailed Roman Polanski. He was egged on by an ugly-minded media, which dubbed Polanski "the poison dwarf", stressed his foreign origins, and described him in terms of thinly veiled anti-Semitism. And the judge, it turned out, belonged to an LA country club that barred Jews from membership. Crucially, no one in California had served jail time for a comparable offence in the previous two years, and Dalton secured an agreement with Rittenband that Polanski's 42 days was sufficient time served. Polanski, it now appears, fled the US because it was clear that the judge had reneged on this agreement and planned to incarcerate him anyway. So began his three decades of exile. One might argue that fleeing has been a motif in Polanski's life: from the Nazis, from the ghastly memories bequeathed by the Manson family, and finally from possibly unlawful imprisonment. Film-makers are wanderers by nature, and in exile he has simply adapted. He shot Tess (1980) in northern France rather than Thomas Hardy's Wessex, because Britain would have extradited him. In 1989, he married French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, with whom he has a son and a daughter, and lived a quiet, blameless life in Paris â?? until this weekend. Is he as nasty as he's cracked up to be? Even Zenovich's film, while sympathising with his legal position, portrays him as vain, arrogant and evasive. Two years ago in Cannes, Polanski joined a line-up of distinguished world directors on stage then petulantly flounced off in the face of perfectly amiable questions from the press, clearly dismaying his colleagues. Yet screenwriter Ronald Harwood, who collaborated with him on his last great film, the multi-Oscar winner The Pianist (2002), once described him to me as delightful, amusing company. And I once had a hugely enjoyable lunch with Polanski at a Paris studio where he was shooting Bitter Moon (1992), and found him intriguing, generous-spirited and funny. He's a walking enigma â?? and an easy mark. The thought occurs that while Polanski's crime against Samantha Gailey was utterly wrong, the 1970s were a different time, and his behaviour was not aberrant by prevailing entertainment-industry standards. If every member of British rock bands touring America who seduced an underage girl had been arrested, our music industry would have been decimated. So why extradition now? Just as Polanski has habitually run from his demons, history may be repeating itself. Steve Cooley, the Los Angeles County District Attorney, has reportedly tracked the director's movements, and pressed for him to be detained when it was clear he was heading for Zurich last week. Thirty years on, could Cooley become the latest Californian to change the course of Polanski's tormented life? http://www...e-hunt-for-Roman-Polanski.html
licker Sports Mod	Mon Sep 28 16:44:56 I don't give a shit about polanski. Criminals should all receive the same treatment.
Hot Rod Member	Mon Sep 28 16:51:06 He should receive the maximum allowed by law.
Leah Horchler Member	Mon Sep 28 18:02:11 Interesting to see HR has a problem with assraping little... GIRLS. If this was a boy, HR would have a new hero.
freaky boy Member	Mon Sep 28 19:49:27 have you ever done anything wrong licker, ever screwed a coloured girl?, ever go to a communist party meeting? ever jerked off in the front seat of your car at the beach? hot rod, did the masters of the universe finaly get it right? does the law seem fair to you? she was 13, and liked the cock - so you would ruin a mans life for that?
Hot Rod Member	Mon Sep 28 20:01:21 If it was your 13 year old daughter would you forgive him? I wouldn't. But the woman in question has forgiven him and if she speaks up at his hearing he may get off.
Ubes JAC Wildebeeest	Mon Sep 28 20:26:28 "he may get off" Again! *rimshot*
Billah Member	Mon Sep 28 20:27:19 Nothing wrong with screwing coloured girls, and going to communist meetings, except coloured girls can be pretty wild and communists all take themselves to seriously and kind of suck as people. I am not into reading essays by old communists every week so I can sit at a coffee shop and have long boring discussions about them with boring people who take themselves too seriously and try to dress like ultrafashionable Soviets from some other decade. Wacking in the car at the beach though? That's strange. Are you admitting to wacking to 13 year olds from your car at the beach?
The Zero Identity Member	Tue Sep 29 00:23:57 "But the woman in question has forgiven him and if she speaks up at his hearing he may get off. " No. She waived her rights because she settled in a civil matter and received and undisclosed amount of money. She has no say.
freaky boy Member	Tue Sep 29 00:47:32 so she's a hoe - she banged for bucks. why put a man in jail, when a hoe will bang for bucks. thats just against the rules.
Hot Rod Member	Tue Sep 29 05:08:46 "Roman Polanski's most compelling defender is the woman he raped at Jack Nicholson's house when she was just 13. Now 45, Samantha Geimer is a mother of three who lives quietly in Hawaii and works as a bookkeeper. In January, Geimer, who publicly forgave Polanski in 1997, filed a formal request that Los Angeles prosecutors drop the charges against him." MORE: http://www...w_45_got_over_it_long_ago.html
The Zero Identity Member	Tue Sep 29 08:19:38 Right, but it doesn't matter what she says though. She can file all the formal requests that she wants to, the court doesn't have to hear her as she waived her rights.
Jeddediah Wilkins Member	Tue Sep 29 08:21:10 Lots of victims feel guilty about rape. We should ignore her. It must be humiliating for her. She was drugged and raped vaginally and anally by a sick fucker. He should be dragged through the streets like a Somali welcome wagon.
Forwyn Member	Tue Sep 29 18:17:58 Yeah, lets not forget the honor student who served 7 years because some girl 2 years younger performed consentual fellatio on him, or the girl who was prosecuted as a child porn sex offender for taking pictures of himself. But hey, this douchebag should get off from sodomizing a teenage girl because he fled sentencing and spent the next 30 years making shitty movies.
Pierre Member	Tue Sep 29 18:22:09 "this douchebag should get off from sodomizing a teenage girl because he " what??? why should he get off he did a very bad crime he should be in jail...
Forwyn Member	Tue Sep 29 18:35:30 To correct my post, the honor student served a little over 2 years, out of a 10 year sentence. And fuck you pierre. Its obvious I was being sarcastic. Though, of course, you're trolling, and I'm just feeding the troll.
Billah Member	Tue Sep 29 18:35:49 He's had a pretty fucked up life, which will make a good movie after he's dead.
leah horchler Member	Tue Sep 29 19:05:56 He was an honor student at a nig school though. That just means his IQ was about 80.
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