After 31 years, Director Roman Polanski is arrested (1 Viewer)

Did anyone else watch the HBO documentary about Polanski and the 1977 trial last year? It was an eye opener.



http://www.newsweek.com/id/138382


Not saying he should get off scot free, but after listening to both the prosecutor and the victim, I had an entirely different perspective on the case (which I didnt know much about, other than he "drugged and had sex with a 13 year old," etc.)
You can skillfuly tell any story and make a monster into a misunderstood and sympathetic charachter.

Not really any excuse for Rufie-ing a 13 year old under any circumstances then fleeing the consequenes, no matter what the Hollywood whitewash says.

I'm interested in the big effort to add context and sympathy when if it was anyone of us the "I was upset and not thinking clearly" or "it was a youthful indescretion" excuses wouldn't fly.

The world would be a better place if rules were rules.
 
You can skillfuly tell any story and make a monster into a misunderstood and sympathetic charachter.

Not really any excuse for Rufie-ing a 13 year old under any circumstances then fleeing the consequenes, no matter what the Hollywood whitewash says.

I'm interested in the big effort to add context and sympathy when if it was anyone of us the "I was upset and not thinking clearly" or "it was a youthful indescretion" excuses wouldn't fly.

The world would be a better place if rules were rules.

As I said, I dont think he should escape punishment entirely, just that there seemed to be a lot more going on behind the scenes of the legal case than I had previously known (I was 6 in 1977). In particular, there seems to be evidence that judge was way out of line in how he handled the case. Of course, the judge is dead, so you gotta take the movie's take on him with a grain of salt, but if rules are going to be rules, then that has to apply to the judge as well. It could very well be that if it was you or me, we would have actually gotten probation and that would've been it because there was no news value in it for the judge to do otherwise.

Anyway, I dont find him (Polanski) particuarly sympathetic. (And I think his movies are a bit overrated, personally.) I just think that there's more to the story than the headline news version.
 
I don't know of anyone who raped a 13 year old girl with a date rape drug who merely got probation. Maybe I don't know the right kind of scum?
 
I don't know of anyone who raped a 13 year old girl with a date rape drug who merely got probation. Maybe I don't know the right kind of scum?

Me neither, though I do know some folks that took quaaludes and had underage sex in the 70s. They might be scum, but they hide it well.

Anyway, my beef is not with Polanski being charged with a crime, but how his case was handled. That's all. Honestly, I don't really give a damn either way -- I just thought it was an interesting documentary.
 
I hear what you are saying. I think sometimes the rich and famous can be overprosecuted because of their fame. Convicting them or giving them a harsh sentence makes the state look "fair," increases the fame and prestige of those involved in the case, and gets huge applause from those who like to make everything about class. Martha Stewart is a great example. And Winona Ryder also. She served time for a first-offense misdemeanor shoplift that would have been plead out for another other schmo. I don't want celebrities to get away with things, but I also don't want them to be over-punished just to make some point. But with Polanski, he owes time for the rape AND for skipping the country. He's going to have to pay.

Also, for those who say the girl has forgiven him, it doesn't matter. There are truly good souls in the world who will forgive someone of almost any wrong. Society and civilization still demands a price. And it's a common tactic for a molester to choose a victim he thinks won't tell or will forgive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbAWh2sCy0Y
video relevant @ 5:30
 
Late to the party on this topic but these op pieces resonated with me. I certainly understand why he fled given the fiasco and lack of "blind justice" associated with the case but he sodomozied a 13 year old girl.

...On Tuesday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza ruled that if Polanski, who fled on the eve of his sentencing, in March 1978, wanted to challenge his conviction, he could -- by coming back and turning himself in.

Espinoza was stating the obvious: Fugitives don't get to dictate the terms of their case. Polanski, who had pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl, was welcome to return to America, surrender, and then petition the court as he wished. Indeed, the judge even gave Polanski more than he deserved, saying that he might actually have a case. "There was substantial, it seems to me, misconduct during the pendency of this case," he said, according to the Los Angeles Times. "Other than that, he just needs to submit to the jurisdiction of the court."

Polanski deserves to have any potential legal folderol investigated, of course. But the fact that Espinoza had to state the obvious is testimony to the ways in which the documentary, and much of the media coverage the director has received in recent months, are bizarrely skewed. The film, which has inexplicably gotten all sorts of praise, whitewashes what Polanski did in blatant and subtle fashion -- and recent coverage of the case, in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and elsewhere, has in turn accepted the film's contentions at face value....

In "Wanted and Desired," Zenovich casts Polanski, whose face repeatedly fills the screen with a Byronic luminosity, as a tragic figure, a child survivor of the Holocaust haunted by the murder of his wife, the actress Sharon Tate, at the hands of the Manson family. His friends are uniformly supportive: "This is somebody who could not be a rapist!" one exclaims.

As for the judge, Laurence J. Rittenband, why, he's a risible self-promoter. If Polanski is Byron, the judge is an Oliver Hardy or a Billy Gilbert, all but twiddling his tie in a series of ever-more-comical photographs. He actually kept a scrapbook about the celebrities who came through his Santa Monica courtroom. He had two girlfriends.

Now, that's one way to portray those two men -- and one that Polanski's current lawyers would prefer. But there's another way, too: You could show one as a child-sex predator who drugged a 13-year-old girl with quaaludes and champagne; lured her to pose for naked photographs; ignoring her protests, had sex with her; and then anally raped her.

The other could be cast as a canny jurist -- possibly a brilliant one, smart enough to have gone from high school directly to Harvard Law and graduated so young he wasn't allowed to take the bar exam -- who may have gone too far in his intent to block off the legal escape hatches celebrity wrongdoers use.

The truth is somewhere in between, but it's probably a lot closer to the second version. Yet that initial stark contrast -- the tragic hero, the goofy jurist -- permeates the film. Documentarians should have a wide leeway to argue their case the way they want, but there's a point at which ethical lines are crossed. Zenovich, like many other chroniclers to the stars, seems to have been blinded by her contact with Polanski.

Here's an example: The word "sodomy" is briefly referenced in Zenovich's documentary, but it's a somewhat ambiguous term, and it's never explained. Zenovich has fun flashing bits of the victim's grand jury testimony on the screen, but she never gets around to using this exchange from that testimony, which was made public in 2003 and published by the Smoking Gun:

"Then he lifted up my legs and went in through my anus."

"What do you mean by that?

"He put his penis in my butt."

In the girl's grand jury testimony, which is slightly sickening to read, she also said that she had repeatedly told Polanski no, but that she was too afraid of him to resist.

It's a drag to include a scene of anal rape of a 13-year-old in your moody documentary about such a Byronic figure, but it's also fairly relevant.

At the same time, Zenovich doesn't have time to tell us about the exceptional back story of Rittenband. In other words, she withholds the most damaging bit of information about Polanski from her viewers, and the most favorable bit of information about the judge.


http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/09/28/polanski_arrest/

http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2009/02/19/roman_polanski_documentary/index.html
 
Late to the party on this topic but these op pieces resonated with me. I certainly understand why he fled given the fiasco and lack of "blind justice" associated with the case but he sodomozied a 13 year old girl.



http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/09/28/polanski_arrest/

http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2009/02/19/roman_polanski_documentary/index.html
That's why the piece was a whitewash.

Given the facts, to which he has admitted, although claiming no premeditation (despite slipping the Mickey prior to molestation of the girl), do you think if he had a truly fair trial against a competent prosecutor that he would not have been convicted and spent time in jail?

This isn't politics or anything but its the same issue with the media spinning and telling you black is white and up is down. They are painting this guy in a sympathetic light when he admits sodomizing a 13 year old girl. Nobody who is not considered "above the normal rules" walks away from that without jail time.

But for those so favored as Polanksi, you get your own exculpatory documentary made. It's good to know the right people.

Take the trial away from L.A. and an ambitious judge and move it to say, Tennessee, and what of the outcome is different for Polanski?

Instead of probation, he probably does hard time.

Disgusting across the board.
 
i find it ironic how people often claim that the rich and famous get off easy because of their status... do you think for a second that any resources would've been devoted to catching this guy if he wasn't who he is? C'mon now, an old guy who molested a teen girl 30 something yrs ago, after the teen girl has come out and said he should be forgiven-- do you think there would be what basically amounts to an international manhunt for this guy if he wasn't famous?? What he did was inexcusable, and criminal-- but just like Paris Hilton (whom i can't stand, but served time when most with identical charges would not have) and Martha Stewart (whose crimes would've almost certainly been dismissed w/probation if she were anyone else)-- if Polanski goes to jail, it will be because he is Polanski and not Jim the factory worker.

His status is what enabled him to enjoy the high life over (almost) all of Europe for the past three decades. I'd say it was hardly an international manhunt since everyone has known where he has been all of this time.
 

Well that's much worse than drugging and raping a 13 year old in the butt. Just ask Whoopi.

The actress Whoopi Goldberg has coined the stupidest term in the whole furore over Roman Polanski’s arrest in Zurich for having sexual intercourse with a minor.
Speaking on television show The View, Goldberg said “I know it wasn’t rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don’t believe it was rape-rape.”

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/cultur...rg-defends-roman-polanski-it-wasnt-rape-rape/
 
Well that's much worse than drugging and raping a 13 year old in the butt. Just ask Whoopi.

The actress Whoopi Goldberg has coined the stupidest term in the whole furore over Roman Polanski’s arrest in Zurich for having sexual intercourse with a minor.
Speaking on television show The View, Goldberg said “I know it wasn’t rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don’t believe it was rape-rape.”

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/cultur...rg-defends-roman-polanski-it-wasnt-rape-rape/

shoot, maybe the girl liked it. but didn't like-like it.
 
Well that's much worse than drugging and raping a 13 year old in the butt. Just ask Whoopi.

The actress Whoopi Goldberg has coined the stupidest term in the whole furore over Roman Polanski’s arrest in Zurich for having sexual intercourse with a minor.
Speaking on television show The View, Goldberg said “I know it wasn’t rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don’t believe it was rape-rape.”

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/cultur...rg-defends-roman-polanski-it-wasnt-rape-rape/

LOL. Reminds me of the time one of our employees with a suspended license drove one of our trucks on an errand.

Boss: Henry, you're not supposed to drive any of our trucks.

Henry: I wasn't driving-driving.
 
This reminds me of that flick Kingpin, at the end, when Bill Murray is celebrating his win he says something like, "I'm a millionaire! I can do anything I want to! I'm above the law now!"

Sad but true. Leni Riefenstahl made great films too, but I don't think she deserves celebrating. Sometimes people do (or in her case supoort) awful things that totally erases the separation between art and artist. Polanski drugged and raped a 13 year old girl and if you know anyone who has lived through a similar experience you know the damage it causes. Meanwhile, he's celebrated across Europe and lives a great life. Truly sick, IMO.
 
i find it ironic how people often claim that the rich and famous get off easy because of their status... do you think for a second that any resources would've been devoted to catching this guy if he wasn't who he is? C'mon now, an old guy who molested a teen girl 30 something yrs ago, after the teen girl has come out and said he should be forgiven-- do you think there would be what basically amounts to an international manhunt for this guy if he wasn't famous?? What he did was inexcusable, and criminal-- but just like Paris Hilton (whom i can't stand, but served time when most with identical charges would not have) and Martha Stewart (whose crimes would've almost certainly been dismissed w/probation if she were anyone else)-- if Polanski goes to jail, it will be because he is Polanski and not Jim the factory worker.

The question i would ask, does punishment serve any purpose here? The man got away with the crime (not the first, and won't be the last). Jail might have served a purpose 30 years ago (why wasn't he extradidted?) but with only about 8 years left to life (average) jail might not be the best form of punishment.

I say take 95% of everything he has and donate it oranizations the help women and girls recover from sexual abuse. Thats a punishment now that i think fits the crime.
 
oh man this thread sucks...I was hoping someone would defend Polanski so we could all get a good laugh at the defender.
 

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