Roman Polanski: A Primer

okay…so I tend to keep things light around here usually and tend to stay away from the BIG stuff (notice I didn’t talk about Mackenzie Phillips last week) because, frankly, I feel like most of you aren’t coming here for the heavy stuff (please tell me if I’m wrong…because I am here for you!) but there’s a lot of talk about Roman Polanksi this week and a few of my friends have absolutely no clue who he even is (color me SHOCKED!), and so I thought I’d take a moment to tell all of you a little bit about it. Brace yourself, though, this is a tough one.

So, here’s the deal.
Roman Polanski is an Oscar-winning Polish director. His parents died in concentration camps. In 1969 his pregnant wife was killed by the Manson Family. And that seems like nothing to compared to what came next, in 1977, when Polanski was 44. He was arrested and plead guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13- year-old girl.

Apparently, Samantha Geimer, an aspiring teenage model, was drugged, given
champagne and then sexually abused after a photo shoot in a hot tub at
Jack Nicholson’s Los Angeles home. Nicholson was not there at the time, but his girlfriend Anjelica Huston was and claims that she “appeared to be one of those kind of little chicks between — could be
any age up to 25. She did not look like a 13-year-old scared little
thing.”

If you are inclined, you can read a copy of the trial transcript, including Geimer’s testimony here.

“We did photos with me drinking champagne,” Geimer later told Good Morning America
“He was friendly and then right toward the end it got a little scary,
and I realized, you know, he had some other intentions, and then I knew
I was not where I should be. I just didn’t quite know how to get myself
out of there.”

In a 2003 interview she said that she began to feel uncomfortable
after he asked her to lie down on a bed, and how she attempted to
resist. “I said, ‘No, no. I don’t want to go in there. No, I don’t want
to do this. No!’, and then I didn’t know what else to do,” she stated,
adding: “We were alone and I didn’t know what else would happen if I
made a scene. So I was just scared, and after giving some resistance, I
figured well, I guess I’ll get to come home after this”

On the eve of sentencing in 1978, fearing that he might be given jail time, he fled the US and spent more than 30 years as a fugitive, which, just a PS, is illegal. This week, Polanski was arrested on a warrant while trying to enter Switzerland.

This week’s arrest has brought out, well, pretty much everyone. Everyone has an opinion. There are those who are fighting for Polanski’s freedom, saying that he has suffered enough in exile, saying that the girl has moved on and has forgiven him, saying that the girl was asking for it (WHAT?), saying that he suffered a lot of trauma before this, that he is no longer a threat to society, that the judge at the time was super corrupt.

Now, I will admit to you that I think Polanski is a fantastic director, I always have. I saw the movies that he won Oscars for – Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, The Pianist – and thought they were genius. I kind of separated his private life from his professional life and didn’t really think much about. I mean, come on, there are MANY assholes in Hollywood; it’s almost a given.

But then I read. and I read. and I read some more. and I read her testimony.

and, at the end of the day, YES, he’s a genius director. YES, he lost his parents to Nazi death camps. YES, his wife was killed. YES, he may not have realized that she was only 13. YES, it was a long time ago. 

BUT THIS MAN RAPED A CHILD.

As a parent, this is the only thing I keep coming back to. Samantha Geimer, whether she was trying to get in the business or “seducing” Roman Polanski TESTIFIED THAT SHE SAID NO BEFORE, SHE SAID NO DURING, AND SHE SAID NO AFTER.

SHE SAID NO. end of story.