BUT PLEASE, for THE LOVE OF DECENCY AND JUSTICE, refrain from paying any money to watch the 2005 movie version that is about to be released...directed by Roman Polanski.
I have nothing against Polanski's movies. Most of them are brilliant and I think he is one of the finest directors working today, The Pianist aside.
I do have a big fat problem with Polankski's crimes and his flight from justice.
Don't buy that b.s. that he was "railroaded", "mistreated", or "abused" by the courts. The facts are he admittedly drugged and had sex with a 13-year-old girl (since identified as Samantha Jane Gailey) while he was supposed to be shooting pubescent girls for a Vanity Fair spread inspired by the child nudes of Lewis Caroll's photographs.
- He knew the girl was 13.
- He drugged her.
- He took her to Jack Nicholson's house for a "shoot", knowing it would be empty.
- He admitted he had sex with her, without asking if she was on birth control and without using a condom.
- After being convicted of statuatory rage, he jumped bail and fled the U.S. (he was not yet a U.S. citizen, though he wanted to be). He felt he had served "enough time" while detained for a 3-month psychiatric evaluation.
- When asked why he chose Oliver Twist for his next movie, Polanski explained he has "two little children" and wants to make a movie they'll be able to see. His daughter is 13.
Call me old-fashioned, but I don't believe it's right to commit a crime in a country you're just visiting - a country of which you want to be a citizen - then flee your just punishment. For nearly 30 years, Polanski has lived in comfort and wealth in Europe while American actors and actresses bend over backwards to accomodate his unusual work conditions (he can't set foot in the U.S.).
Polanski's crime didn't take place in a vacuum, either. A Los Angeles women in her 60s recently revealed to her brother that she was sexually attacked by the director John Huston when she was 11, and her father (a well-known L.A. physician) and his friend Fred Sexton (the artist who created the bird statue for Huston's The Maltese Falcon) had sex with her when she was 14, after giving her alcohol. Huston played the incestuous father in Polanski's Chinatown starring Jack Nicholson...the man whose house Polanski used for the seduction of his 13-year-old victim. Go ahead, tell me this was isolated incident.
Polanski is still a fugitive. If he sets foot in the U.S., he will be arrested because the statue of limitations hasn't run out.
Please, don't help line the pockets of a child molestor and international fugitive!
4 comments:
You know me; I won't watch it on TV for free!!
OMG, how old is that girl now? She has to be pushing 40. We all tend to think of her as 13 and frozen in time.
You make a very good case, SME. I shall boycott this flick (not hard as I live 35km from the nearest theatre, and it shows stupid stuff like the Dukes of Hazzard anyways).
In all seriousness, though, the whole thing is appalling. Effing Jack Nicholson; he's a creep, too, if you ask me.
Yuck! I had no idea he drugged her and he knew she was 13. Now that changes everything. I must have heard lies from a Polanski apologist then.
I saw Chinatown in a film class and used it as a reference for Mr. Mulholland, the story of how Los Angeles became a city.
What's with directors and child molestation? The director of Powder molested a young boy in a town I used to live in in California. I remember seeing the kid holding up a sign urging people to boycott the movie. I saw the movie at a friend's house years later (recorded from a movie channel) and there was an uncomfortable scene where they rip the kid's clothes off.
These people are perverts.
L.A. seems to have a lot of problems with child molestation; it's one of those "pockets" of high-level activity. Nothing against the city itself, necessarily. Just a lot of well-connected pervs.
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