Roman Polanski, or pardon me but your poll is in my neck.

Yesterday evening I had a very heated debate about this case with my best friend. In all honesty I nearly stood up and walked away. Instead I was practically shouting. She kept giving alternatives: "she probably looked 25, why did her mom let her to the house with adults, it's Hollywood!" I kept repeating that he DRUGGED and RAPED teh girl. I asked her if she ever needed Qualudes to be fucked with her permission (does that make sense in English?) She kept saying where did I read this. I asked her where she got her information and I found out she knew NOTHING about this except "that his wife was brutally murdered." Like what? But ath end of the arguement I actually excused myself for being so verbally aggressive. It's not really worth it. In this case my friend's the idiot but who am I? In other cases I'm probably an idiot.

I think a lot of people (read: me three days ago) have no idea about the details of the case and assume it was sex with an underage girl who had given consent. this doesn't excuse woody and whoopi and anne rapelbaum et al, but it does excuse civilains saying dumb stuff. My gf didn't realize how bad what polanski did was until actually reading the grand jury transcript.

I couldn't get my head around why there's even been an argument over all this, but that makes a lot of sense, 'hmmmm'. It's like, having got the word 'rape' out of the plea, the focus should now be on justifying every word of that - so 'unlawful sex with a thirteen-year-old girl' gets answered by 'wouldn't be unlawful in europe', 'she looked older' and 'she was promiscuous therefore a woman'. Whereas if you approach from first principles such as, I don't know, by looking at the facts, it doesn't look like that at all.

I just assumed - considering how rape laws in the '70s were all 'she asked for it' and that the Hollywood hills are alive with career sex often egged on by a certain type of parent and tacitly accepted by anyone who relies on the industry - that for the incident to come to light at all, much less go to trial, spoke volumes about what Polanski did to the girl.

It's more the catch-all term "statutory rape" means you can't tell the 'drugged-up' from the 'young/curious'

You can make a few strong hypotheses if the older perp is in his 40s and the younger victim is 13.

Can you?

I'm not saying either is 'right', it's just that (I'm presuming) the majority of cases are "She wanted to" rather than "she got fed drugs".

So, that ends up being the default hypothesis.

There are no default hypotheses in rape cases. Since my uncle was a vice detective in the '70s and '80s I'm pretty au fait with what passed muster as a winnable case in the eyes of law enforcement, what's consensual or obscene, and what gets swept under the rug, often from sneaking looks at his case files when I was the same age as the girl - stuff like that made me a feminist in the first place.

No, but I'm not meaning in 'rape cases'

I mean where people can line up and go "Stop chasing this man, this was all a long time ago" where people will give their opinion on the innocence/guilt of the perpetrator (on a sliding scale) without knowing the details.

Naturally, in the 'rape case' the detail is all.

What seems crazy, from Polanski's point of view, is that from what I've read it seems the judge in 1977 was only going to order him back to jail for another 47 days, in exchange for Polanski's voluntary deportation. All he had to do was another 6 weeks' jail time, and yet he still fled. Even now, if he goes back and doesn't withdraw his original plea, the maximum penalty is only 16 months, according to the LA Times.

Presumably this was the deal the judge 'reneged' on?

The judge came back on that though, stating suddenly that he was considering a punishment of years in prison (15? I forgot), and that's when he fled.

xp

Maybe that's right, but it seems otherwise from this article:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-polanski-legal1-2009oct01,0,1100452.story

French drop Polanski release call

From wikipedia: "All parties expected Polanski to get only probation at the subsequent sentencing hearing, but after an alleged conversation with LA Deputy District Attorney David Wells, the judge "suggested to Polanski's attorneys that he would send the director to prison and order him deported".[46] In response to the threat of imprisonment, Polanski fled the United States."

Reading this thread is like being stuck in purgatory, with everyone having the same conversation over and over and over...

It's more like being stuck in purgatory, tbh, what with everything being said more than once.

There seems to be a curse on Polanski's post-rape moviemaking, has he really made a good one since then? I haven't seen Tess. I have seen The Pianist, but I didn't find it as good as everyone said it was.

― Zelda Zonk, Wednesday, September 30, 2009 2:45 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

polanski's 80s output is crap (pirates and frantic), but aside from that his filmography is pretty solid. true, he never made another great film, but name another 70s titan who did? there are plenty of good and/or interesting post 70s polanski flicks, bitter moon and death and the maiden are way underrated.

I enjoyed his film of the Ninth Gate (more so than the pretentious book it's based on), but I still think he should be banged up in noncecamp.

yay katha pollitt

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/anotherthing/479379/roman_polanski_has_a_lot_of_friends

man i hope some celebrities actually stand up and start talking shit against polanski. got a lot of respect for some of the signers to that petition but they're fucking up on this issue, to say the least.

well there's one at least...

French film-maker Luc Besson, who directed the 1994 movie Leon, has also refused to lend his support.

Speaking to French radio station RTL, he said: "I have a lot of affection for him, he is a man that I like very much ... but nobody should be above the law.

"I don't know the details of this case, but I think that when you don't show up for trial, you are taking a risk."

Despite that, Mr Polanski has no shortage of supporters, including at least 110 film industry figures who have signed a petition calling for his release.

Among them are Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen and David Lynch, as well as Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodovar, Tilda Swinton and Monica Bellucci.

Actor Peter Fonda said he thought "celebrating the arrest of Osama bin Laden and not the arrest of Polanski" was far more important.

The big problem I have with this whole thing is that, even if you think Polanski was actually targeted by a famewhore mom and her scheming vixenette, it doesn't change the fact that he drugged and had sex with a 13-year-old girl and plead guilty to a crime; you don't get to plead guilty and then run away from sentencing unless you die.

agreed, but i really hope those celebrities don't turn out to be mel gibson, patricia heaton, stephen baldwin, ron silver etc etc

xps

The big problem I have with this whole thing is that, even if you think Polanski was actually targeted by a famewhore mom and her scheming vixenette, it doesn't change the fact that he drugged and had sex with a 13-year-old girl and plead guilty to a crime; you don't get to plead guilty and then run away from sentencing unless you die.

B-b-but he's an artist. Who has the priviledge of making films!

French film-maker Luc Besson, who directed the 1994 movie Leon, has also refused to lend his support

Who else then?

some euro politicians i believe (it's from the "French withdraw support" link)

What's everybody's take on Polansky in 'A Pure Formality'?

Bitter Moon is definitely as interesting as the bulk of his pre-rape movies.

I like how his career is now divided into pre- and post- rape periods.

Oddly enough, there's more rape in the pre-rape movies.

I think of his career as early films/hollywood/exile/80s crap/90s return to form

but it's not all that neat

anybody who's looking for a polanksi film to view through the filter of recent events should check out death and the maiden, essentially an account of a woman violently confronting her rapist.

and bitter moon is one of the blackest comedies ever made

...but not particularly good.

i thought it was terrible as well. tess was the first exile picture, right? i saw that in a theatre a few years back, beautiful film but loses it near the end.

Isn't Tess some sort of raper-caper too?

Actor Peter Fonda said he thought "celebrating the arrest of Osama bin Laden and not the arrest of Polanski" was far more important.

thanks peter fonda

Did he catch OBL!!????!??

The Polanski arrest is just the law grinding on as usual. As it should. Only reason it made news is the he's-a-bigger-celeb-than-Gary-Glitter factor. Otoh, an OBL arrest would be a hallelujah day.

from kevin smith's twitter:

Via @JoeyFace42 "Please don't be one of those FREE POLANSKI people" Look, I dig ROSEMARY'S BABY; but rape's rape. Do the crime, do the time.

lol @ "raper-caper"

"celebrating the arrest of Osama bin Laden"

lolz yeah I'm sure the Los Angeles DA's office will get right on that

I was thinking about how all these silly pleas for Polanski's freedom hinge on some kind of dramatic miscarriage of justice against him - that he didn't get a fair shake from the judge etc. And then I think "yeah, gee you know if there's one group of people in this country who are always getting screwed by the legal system, it's RICH WHITE FAMOUS MEN." WTF people.

like OJ

when will our country's vicious persecution of rich white guys finally be stopped

whoa whoa whoa guys, we have to catch Osama bin Laden first

Would he show up for a lifetime achievement award in Switzerland?

it's the "he's suffered enough" bit that gets me -- as if fleeing the country to avoid incarceration was some sort of noble self-imposed exile

he's suffered the adulation of the French