Once upon a time, Roman Polanski was considered to be one of the biggest movie directors in the world specifically because of “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown.” As far as anyone in Hollywood was concerned, Polanski could make any film he wanted to.
But that all came crashing down On March 11th 1977, Polanski was arrested in Beverly Hills for sexual assault against a 13-year-old girl that occurred at Jack Nicholson’s home while he was out of town. He was convicted and now he’s a fugitive from American justice.
And Roman Polanski audaciously claimed some of the most delusional nonsense about how he’s treated in the Me Too Movement era.
Roman Polanski is a convicted child rapist and was ready to accept the prosecutors’ plea deal that would result in a limited jail sentence.
But that all changed when his defense attorneys got word that the judge presiding over his case was ready to reject the prosecutors’ deal – something that doesn’t happen very often – and reportedly give him a fifty-year sentence.
So he bounced to Paris, France where he’s been hiding from the American criminal justice system ever since. Hollywood still clamored over the director’s works like for the “Pianist” where many of his fellow colleagues gave him a standing ovation when he won Best Director at the Academy Awards that year.
But once the Me Too Movement scandal took the nation by storm in October 2017, Hollywood did a drastic 180 on the director. The organization that runs the Oscars kicked him out of the Academy. It’s basically a classic case of excommunication. At his age, he’ll probably be a fugitive from American justice until his dying breath.
And he really has become so delusional about the case he was convicted of recently. Polanski said in an interview promoting his new film 93An Officer and a Spy” that people didn’t understand the “facts” of his case. But the facts are pretty clear. He drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl. Even if his argument was somehow that she was consenting to it, she was 13-years-old.
Now, Polanski feels he’s being “harassed” in the nearly now 2-year-old Me Too Era.
His new film is tone-deaf – about the famed “Dreyfus Affair,” which embroiled the French government with charges of corruption and anti-Semitism in the late 1890s. Artillery Captain Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason on false documents that reached all the way to the top of the French military.
Does Polanski really think he was wrongly convicted? Think about this: he was ready to make a plea deal accepting his guilt. It’s not that people haven’t done that before in the past considering the massive amount of time the state or federal government hangs over the defendant’s head, but the facts in Polanski’s case were disgusting and obvious.
Promoting his film, Polanski said, “Working, making a film like this helps me a lot. In the story, I sometimes find moments I have experienced myself, and I can see the same determination to deny the facts and condemn me for things I have not done. Most of the people who harass me do not know me and know nothing about the case… I must admit that I am familiar with many of the workings of the apparatus of persecution shown in the film, and that has clearly inspired me.”
That’s a rich take to have. So clearly making this film was somehow some sort of catharsis for him. Now we know that he clearly thinks he’s been victimized.
The Venice Film Festival has taken heavy criticism for including Polanski’s film. But festival officials have defended the inclusion saying that the film should be judged on its own merit and not on who directed it.
What a ridiculous thing to say about defending a child rapist.