This is how degenerate Hollywood’s become: Today it’s more damaging to your career to buck the “cool kids” and speak out against the child rapist than it is to be the child rapist.
The round up below took twenty-minutes to put together. Who knows who or what else is out there. And don’t forget it’s early. Hollywood’s Rally ‘Round the Child-Sodomizer is only 36 hours old.
“We’re calling on every film-maker we can to help fix this terrible situation,” Weinstein said. Sources close to The Weinstein Company said the mogul would reach out to Hollywood to lobby against any move to bring Polanski to the US, where he could face up to 50 years in jail.
We live in an age that is so thoroughly post-modern that you can find an obvious literary antecedent for nearly every seamy media storyline. The same goes for the Polanski case, which is full of echoes of “Les Miserables,” the classic Victor Hugo novel about Jean Valjean, an ex-con trying to turn his life around who is being obsessively tracked and hunted down by the Parisian police inspector Javert.
Hugo’s story is a tragedy, as is the life story of Polanski, who was a fugitive as a boy and is now a fugitive as an old man. Whether the L.A. County district attorney office has its way or not, it is not a story that can have a happy ending. I think Polanski has already paid a horrible, soul-wrenching price for the infamy surrounding his actions. The real tragedy is that he will always, till his death, be snubbed and stalked and confronted by people who think the price he has already paid isn’t enough.
Has Polanski suffered at all for his crime, apart from going to jail for 42 days in 1977? Of course he has. The crime has been haunting his head and heart for 32 years and it has defined the political and geographical limits of his life and career for same amount of time — more than half his adult life. He’s lived as a fugitive, a restricted man, a hider in the shadows — never a good thing for anyone in a spiritual sense.
But in the minds of the haters, Polanski hasn’t begun to suffer enough. They’re determined to lash him to the rack and keep him there. They want Pilgrim justice, flayings, black caps, thumbscrews, howls and clanging metal doors.
The Zurich Film Festival jury donned red badges reading “Free Polanski” at a news conference Monday and accused Switzerland of “philistine collusion” in arresting Polanski.
“We hope today this latest order will be dropped. It is based on a three-decade-old case that is all but dead but for minor technicalities,” said jury president Debra Winger. “We stand by and wait for his release and his next masterwork.”
Festival de Cannes president Gilles Jacob, Italian star Monica Bellucci and directors Costa-Gavras, Wong Kar Wai and Bertrand Tavernier are among the signatures on a petition demanding Polanski’s immediate release.
“I am both surprised and concerned,” said Mark Urman of Paladin Films, who has worked with Polanski for decades, echoing sentiments expressed by many on the eve of the Jewish holiday of atonement.
“I find the whole thing sad all around,” wrote producer Mike Medavoy by email. Referring to the unrelenting policeman in ‘Les Miserables,’ Medavoy added: “While it isn’t exactly Javert, the original story — going back to Roman in Poland, the murder of his pregnant wife, and the strange mother-daughter story, the judge — I think they should drop the charges and he should come and end all of this.” … “He needs to be able to live a normal life without feeling this shadow over his head the women involved want him forgive and feel he should be left alone.”
You might wind up asking yourself: ‘But was it consensual?’ And if it’s consensual, does that really make a difference when you’re talking about a girl that young? …
In France, where Polanski has been living for the past 30 years without trouble due to the country’s limited extradition laws, they’re appropriately upset and “dumbfounded” by the Swiss’ decision to detain the filmmaker. The Zurich Film Festival will still go ahead with its planned retrospective of Polanski’s work and a special ceremony will be held Sunday night “to allow everyone to express their solidarity for Roman Polanski and their admiration for his work,” according to the festival manager.
Neil Jordan, Mike Nichols, Salman Rushdie….
Apprehended like a common terrorist Saturday evening, September 26, as he came to receive a prize for his entire body of work, Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison. …
We ask the Swiss courts to free him immediately and not to turn this ingenious filmmaker into a martyr of a politico-legal imbroglio that is unworthy of two democracies like Switzerland and the United States. Good sense, as well as honor, require it.
Roman Polanski Understands Women: Repulsion
I’m not going to go into my Roman Polanski defense. I’ve been doing this all morning, nearly ranting and raving over my views on the matter, and have grown frustrated and depressed. But in short, I’m not happy about his arrest. So, I would rather discuss one of his greatest pictures, a brilliant portrait of female sadness, alienation, sexual neurosis turned to psychosis. A movie all women should watch is his masterpiece Repulsion.
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