Maybe Polanski was right to flee America
P.G. Morgan goes in search of the truth about the great director’s flight from the US courts — and uncovers some uncomfortable truths worthy of a scene in Chinatown
High above the heat and smog of Los Angeles, a small cardboard box sits on a shelf in LA’s Superior Court building awaiting its Hollywood moment. The handwriting on the box — P v Polanski #A334129 — has faded in the Californian sun. But the box’s contents — witness statements and lurid court depositions from Roman Polanski’s statutory rape case — remain as sensitive now as when they were filed away in February 1978.
The box was coaxed out of hiding for our film Roman Polanski — Wanted and Desired, a new documentary which examines Polanski’s decision to flee the United States after pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. The director of Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby was on the verge of being sentenced in 1978 when he hopped on a British Airways flight to London and then on to Paris. He never came back.
Thirty years on, the Polanski case remains a hot button issue in the US — and an immensely difficult one to film. Polanski himself declined to participate. (He sent us a fax to that effect in 2003. Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately — we never received it.) It took five years of phone calls, emails and private meetings to persuade all the other participants to talk on camera — somewhat longer than it took the film’s director Marina Zenovich and I to date, get married and have our first child.
Our goal in Wanted and Desired was not to absolve Polanski or make excuses for his behaviour. Instead, we wanted to clarify what happened after the 43-year-old director took 13-year-old Samantha Geimer to Jack Nicholson’s Hollywood home. What did Ms Geimer’s lawyer mean when he said that the day Roman Polanski fled was ‘a shameful day’ for the American judicial system?
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Tariq
October 9th, 2008 1:56pmObviously the prelude to the O.J. Simpson fiasco sixteen years later, and pretty conclusive evidence of the corrosive influence television can have on the justice system.
Bill Corr
October 9th, 2008 4:19pmWell, the young lady in the Polanski story - a non-virgin by her own later account - actually existed.
Polanski, very sensibly, vamoosed because he didn't want to spend years in the slammer and/or a fortune fighting a vindictive conviction.
Others have fared far worse. Try a 'net search for the horror stories which result from internet entrapment. One silly chap, a veteran with a totally clean criminal record, thought he was chatting on line to a woman with two adventurous young daughters. Excited to the point where his brain switched off completely, he suggested naughty cross-generational hanky-panky and crossed a state line with a video camera in his possession.
A hefty fine? Probation? Counselling ?
No, none of the above; our hero got three CONSECUTIVE ten-year sentences in Federal prison.
The woman and her fearless daughters did not exist; the now-incarcerated felon had been chartting online to a Postal Inspector!
Sylvia Severi
October 10th, 2008 11:10amI always thought the parents of this wee girl should have been charged too. It is the duty of parents to protect their children. The child was only 13. Many Hollywood Stars are guilty of abusing minors and yes, Polanski got unfair treatment but he was/is still guilty.
PS I love the Spectator! Can't find it in China where I live but buy it in Bangkok every time I visit there.
Minnie Ovens
October 10th, 2008 11:58amIf I remember correctly there were some articles in the L.A. Times a few years back which discussed the reneging of the presiding judge on a plea bargain.
Polanski got wind he would be "stitched up" and fled.
The article also interviewed the girl who said that she was well aware of what was happening at the time and was a willing partner.
Quaintly, that time was far more liberal than present times!
Also many people were still sympathetic to Polanski after the Cielo Drive killings. Their opinion was, if the girl didn't mind then so what.
Try that on today.
Simon Peters
October 10th, 2008 3:47pmA demonstration of the folly of regarding the courts as providing suitable (cheap) fodder for television. There is always the possibility of a judge being more interested in gaining a celebrity reputation rather than dispensing justice. So let's hope we can keep court proceedings OFF our screens in the UK.
Joy Morones
October 10th, 2008 9:43pmI think that Polanski was very silly, but do some of you remember when Jerry Lee Lewis arrived to the UK with his like 14 or 15 year old wife, legally married in the US, and the UK went spare.
I also seem to remember that the girl in question absolved Polanski of any wrong doing, not so very long ago.
Given that the US would have done a show trial on Polanski, I don't for a minute blame him for scurrying home.
Billl Corr
October 11th, 2008 6:31amThe *Smoking Gun* website, open to all, has all or most of the grand jury documents pertaining to the Polanski case and, incidentally, added a new word to the language which - unfortunately - never caught on.
The "victim" in the case referred to *cuddlingness* - or this fine word may have been an illiterate stenographer's creative spelling.
Like Nancy Sinatra's verb *truthing* [as opposed to lying]it deserves a wider currency.
David Short
October 15th, 2008 9:43pmI'd like to say that you have at the Spectator decided not to publish perhaps four or five of my submissions here.
I wonder why. Why do you feel you should support such a point of view?
I do not think it is the view of your proprietors.
Rock Stone
October 31st, 2008 11:10pmIt's waaayyy past time to forgive Polanski. What he did was reprehensible. In light of the fact we are going to elect an Inexperienced Racist Islamic Mob-Connected Terrorist Funded Asshole to the President's office should be more than enough proof we have much bigger fish to fry