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[tlcfasho]

Hey Black Tiger, you forgot to tell us about your stance on rape.

Good, bad, or too soon to tell?

[InMotion]

And InMotion, that poll only refers to imdb users, who are mostly sociopaths.

Damn! How did I miss that?

Yeah I wasn't trying to imply that it meant anything, just pointing it out.  The final result came out with over 53% for the arrest anyway, so the ones who visit later in the day are slightly less sociopathic.

[ftl]

Regardless of whether he gets extradited or not, I'm also very curious about the "why now?" question.

According to the internet (which we all know is always right!), this wasn't the first time he went to Switzerland -

"The most surprising aspect is that Mr. Polanski goes to Switzerland several times a year," Temime said. "He owns a chalet in Gstaad and vacations there three months annually."

If that's true, there's got to be more to the story than we know. Yes, he's guilty - but obviously, he's been just as guilty for years and years, and has been going to Switzerland (and not in secret, either), for years, and for some reason for years the authorities in Switzerland haven't cared. And suddenly they do. What changed?

Did some law change that lets him be extradited now? New treaties? Something? I assume the US has been asking for extradition all along, but for some reason Switzerland hasn't been cooperative in the past?

It just doesn't sit well with me if law enforcement is so ...arbitrary. It reminds me of the sort of stuff that goes on in corrupt states (Russia is the example I have stories from, since that's where my family is from) - authorities let a case sit unprosecuted so you have dirt on somebody for when they do something else that the authorities don't like, but isn't illegal itself. I'd hope that sort of thing doesn't go on in civilized places like Western Europe.

Does anyone know - why now? Why not earlier? What changed?

Or is the part about him going to Switzerland regularly a lie?


He should get whatever the punishment is as determined by the law. It's unfortunate that there's all this media hubbub about it - there's a snowball's chance in hell of sentencing being fair, he'll either be let off way too light because he's famous or be given the maximum allowable punishment just because he's famous... high-profile cases like this never turn out to actually be about what is just.

[Oregano Angercock]

It just took them this long to locate the handcuffs in the army knife.

[Heft]

There's an article somewhere that details how a warrant was put out for him something like six or seven years ago and made its way into international territory and how they've made a few various attempts to catch him including one or two near misses (one in 2007 in Israel, I believe, and I think another in Germany). So it sounds like they've been meaning to catch him for awhile, this just happened to be the first time they got everything sorted and figured out and arranged fast enough to actually do so.

[Heresiarca]

I came across this rather werid article and was very surprised to discover that Martin Amis had interviewed Polanski.* And then it dawned on me that I may have seen Polanski's name in the index of an Amis book, so I dug it out and here it is. The piece, originally published in 1980 in Tatler, is collected in Visiting Mrs. Nabokov: And Other Excursions. The interview is interesting, I suppose, inasmuch as it's conducted by somebody who knows his Lolita. Not much of a claim, I know. The overall impression from the interview is that Polanski is genuinely  oblivious to reality. I don't know how legal it is for me to post the whole article on here, so I won't, but here are the relevant bits:

'When I was being driven to the police station from the hotel, the car radio was already talking about it. The newsmen were calling the police before I was arrested to see whether they can break the news. I couldn't believe ... I thought, you know, I was going to wake up from it. I realise, if I have killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But. . . fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls - everyone wants to fuck young girls! No, I knew then, this is going to be another big, big thing.'

[...]

At five foot four, and with great liveliness of gait and gesture, he seems to be about sixteen years old. This impression didn't go away, even after several hours in his company. It occurred to me that his considerable and well-documented success with women has a lot to do with that fact. Contemplating little Roman, women wouldn't so much sense the appeal of being worked over by a priapic, trouble-shooting film-director; they would just want to take the poor waif upstairs and have him sob himself to sleep in their arms.

Looking sixteen, of course, does not entitle you to go to bed with adolescents. Despite what Polanski says — contra Polanski — not everyone wants to fuck young girls. One cannot hide behind a false universality: one cannot seek safety in numbers. Most people who do want to fuck young girls, moreover, don't fuck young girls. Not fucking apparently willing young girls is clearly more of a challenge. But even Humbert Humbert realised that young girls don't really know whether they are willing or not. The active paedophile is stealing childhoods. Polanski, you sense, has never even tried to understand this.

Not sure what this contributes to the conversation, really, but I thought I'd share it anyway.

*This is the (odd and somewhat confused) article: http://www.edmontonsun.com/comment/2009/10/04/11285061-sun.html
.

[Chairman_Meow]

I watched the documentary made last year, and I was struck by the same observation. The police who were interviewing Polanski and searching his home were dumbfounded by his nonchalance. It's not like he thought it wasn't illegal, just that he didn't think it was illegal illegal. He honestly seemed to believe that having sex with children was a common enough desire that it wasn't such a big deal.

And Jesus, he even kept her underwear.

[not terribly clever]

I wonder if he still feels the same now that he has children of his own.

[kicsiviz]

Well, he makes them keep their own underwear...

[HallelujahRIP]

Sociopaths tend to be indifferent about most things like this, though.

[BTMadness]

I don't get why they're making a big deal of this.  I mean, seriously who here hasn't drugged and raped a 13 year old girl at least once in their lifetime?  It just goes to show what prudes Americans in that they have to inconvenience great artists just because of minor technical illegalities.

Let's not forget that the girl in question was not a virgin when she was with Polanski, so that makes her a slut.  And, as everyone knows, it's perfectly okay to rape any woman that the general consensus ranks as "slutty".

[wophugus]

Faux-outraged sarcasm is all well and good, but I bet that if she had drugged and raped Polanski none of you would want to charge her with statutory rape.  I'm not defending what he did, just pointing out the double standard. 

[kewl]

It turns out one of those French ministers who defended Polanksi wrote an interesting book a while ago:

"In his 2005 book The Bad Life, he wrote: "I got into the habit of paying for boys," saying his attraction to young male prostitutes was not dimmed despite knowing "the sordid details of this traffic".

"All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excited me enormously... the abundance of very attractive and immediately available young boys put me in a state of desire." "

[Kendall]

So that list of people is more damning then originally imagined? I have reason to laugh all day now. Thank you.

[Speaknoevil]

Anyone watch Jay Leno on Wednesday Eve? It was refreshing to see/hear Wanda Sykes (who, honestly, I'm not a huge fan of) condemn Roman Polanski publicly. It's the first celebrity I've seen do it so far. Finally someone with half a brain. Imagine that, Wanda Sykes, the voice of reason and rationale!

[theorrhea]

It's surprising because....  she's a comedian?  I hear that Stewart guy has a good head on his shoulders too.

[Peace Frog]

Hey, I didn't see the show and I couldn't find the clip, but it's possible for a comedian to say something and not be joking.

[Kendall]

I've heard a lot of celebrities making comments via tv shows and youtube. I think theres a clip of Chris Rock on Leno commenting too.

[Mortal Wombat]

I posted a comment from Luc Besson over a week ago in this thread about how Polanski needs to face justice, and I'm sure it wasn't the first comment of that nature.

[Sa9jev]

Can't you guys just be happy that Wanda Sykes did something right for once?