An HBO Documentary Films (in U.S.)/Weinstein Co. (international) release of a Graceful Pictures presentation in association with the BBC of an Antidote Films production. Produced by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, Lila Yacoub, Marina Zenovich. Executive producers, Steven Soderbergh, Randy Wooten. Co-producer, P.G. Morgan.
Directed by Marina Zenovich. Written by Joe Bini, P.G. Morgan, Zenovich.
With: Roman Polanski, Douglas Dalton, Roger Gunson, Samantha (Gailey) Geimer, Lawrence Silver, Laurence J. Rittenband, David Wells, Jim Grodin, Phillip Vannatter, Richard Brenneman, Claus Preute, Andrew Braunsberg, Gene Gutowski, Daniel Melnick, Hawk Koch, Anthea Sylbert, Mia Farrow, Lorenzo Semple Jr., Fred Sidewater, Marilyn Beck, Hans Mollinger, Pierre-Andre Boutang, Istvan Bajat, Arnaud D'Hauterives, Michael M. Crain, Steve Barshop, Ronald Markman, Diane Tschekaloff, Elliot Rittenband, Marlene Roden, Madeline Bessmer.
The toxic influence of the media and the double-edged allure of celebrity form the pervasive themes of "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired," a mesmerizing portrait of the director as acclaimed artist and tortured human being. But documaker Marina Zenovich goes even deeper in her thoroughly researched account of the notorious 1977 statutory rape case, pulling auds into the dense thicket of legal issues and sordid behavior -- not all of it Polanski's -- that led the director to flee to Europe. Picked up by HBO and the Weinstein Co., searing pic will be wanted and desired by discriminating auds, fests and broadcasters worldwide.September 28, 2009
"i did not know that"
Polanski and Emmanuelle Seigner married in 1989. They have two children, daughter Morgane and son Elvis, who is named after Polanski's favorite singer, Elvis Presley.
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired Movie Review From The Sundance Film Festival
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired Movie Review From The Sundance Film FestivalRoman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
(Documentary)
Camera (color/B&W), Tanja Koop; editor, Joe Bini; music, Mark Degli Antoni; sound, Gary Tomaro, Rob Purvis, Tyler Bender, Dan Gleich, Will Hansen, John Iskander, Adam Rabinowitz, Scott Stoltz; re-recording mixer, Michael Klinger; archival researchers, Michelle Sullivan, Nicole Aistleitner, Julianne Keck; associate producer, Sullivan. (English, French dialogue) Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (competing), Jan. 18, 2008. Running time: 100 MIN.
On Feb. 1, 1978, Polanski boarded a plane from Los Angeles to France (where he remains to this day), eluding sentencing after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. Pic recounts the widely reported details of that 1977 episode, in which a magazine photo shoot at Jack Nicholson's home on Mulholland Drive ended with Polanski allegedly administering champagne and quaaludes to 13-year-old Samantha Gailey before assaulting her.
Beautifully structured pic lays out the concrete facts with methodical text scrolls, but complicates the viewer's perception of the case with chilling, contrasting snippets of testimony from Polanski and Gailey herself. And without lightening Polanski's burden of responsibility, Zenovich shows how a rabid press corps and an unfathomably corrupt judge conspired to thwart the case's proper outcome.
Judge Laurence J. Rittenband (he died in 1993) is one of the few figures involved with the case not interviewed here and, unsurprisingly, emerges as the true villain of the piece. He comes across as a self-aggrandizing sleaze who relished high-profile celebrity cases but cared more about his reputation than the interests of justice. It's a perception that might seem caricaturish were it not substantiated by the film's two most measured and authoritative voices: Roger Gunson, the assistant D.A. who prosecuted the case, and Polanski's attorney, Douglas Dalton.
Gunson, Dalton, a host of court reporters and legal experts, and Gailey herself (now Samantha Geimer) absorbingly recount how concern for the girl -- and reluctance to put her on the stand -- led to a plea bargain. Docu might have been stronger with a voice or two questioning the morality of this decision, which reduced Polanski's six counts to the lesser unlawful-sex charge and would have resulted in probation. But Zenovich's film trusts auds to be appropriately repulsed by Polanski's actions, alerting them instead to the less juicy but no less heinous crime -- the reckless abuse of power -- committed in the proceedings.
At great length, pic details how Rittenband intended a much harsher sentence, egged on by an ill-timed photo of a seemingly unrepentant Polanski out on the town. At every step, the film portrays the news media as an insidious presence, locked with Rittenband in a relationship of mutual manipulation. (In a similar vein, considerable screen time is devoted to the 1969 murder of Polanski's wife, Sharon Tate, to which many reporters responded with slanderous suggestions of Polanski's culpability.)
The legal maneuvers and talking heads alone (Geimer, who publicly forgave Polanski in 1997, is among the most eloquent and rational) would have furnished a meaty documentary, but "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" is above all a film fascinated by its subject and his paradoxes. Polanski was celebrated early on for his artistry, success and irresistible charm, yet also viewed by some as a "malignant, twisted dwarf" whose sensual appetites and unapologetic taste for young women add troubling layers to a dense psychological portrait.
Zenovich cleverly if somewhat glibly underscores pic's psychological insights with clips from the director's films, sampling from "Repulsion," "Knife in the Water," "Chinatown," "The Tenant" and, most prominently, "Rosemary's Baby," whose own horrific rape scene and haunting lullaby (a remix of which plays over the end credits) here convey a sense of innocence violated. Best use of all, however, is of his 1961 black-and-white short film "The Fat and the Lean," which wittily sums up the relationship between Rittenband and Polanski.
Pic reps a treasure trove of archival material from the '60s and '70s, with Tate's filmed appearances providing piercing moments. Other tech credits, notably Mark Degli Antoni's score, are top-of-the-line.
Polanski The Predator - The Smoking Gun: Archive
The Smoking Gun: Archive
Polanski The Predator
Recently unsealed grand jury minutes detail 1977 sex assault
MARCH 11--It's been 26 years since Roman Polanski's arrest for sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl, but the director's Oscar nomination and the success of his film "The Pianist" has again focused attention on the March 1977 crime that prompted his French exile.
Polanski, 69, will not discuss the case and his victim, Samantha Geimer, now 39, has recently said that the sex assault should not color his chances with Academy Award voters. But that, of course, does not lessen the severity of the crime, which is graphically detailed in the following grand jury testimony, which was quietly unsealed four months ago by L.A. Superior Court Judge David Wesley.
Two weeks after Polanski plied her with Champagne and a Quaalude, Samantha Gailey appeared before an L.A. grand jury and recalled Polanski's predatory behavior in a Mulholland Canyon home owned by Jack Nicholson.
The teenager's troubling--and contemporaneous--account of her abuse at Polanski's hands begins with her posing twice for topless photos that the director said were for French Vogue. The girl then told prosecutors how Polanski directed her to, "Take off your underwear" and enter the Jacuzzi, where he photographed her naked. Soon, the director, who was then 43, joined her in the hot tub. He also wasn't wearing any clothes and, according to Gailey's testimony, wrapped his hands around the child's waist.
The girl testified that she left the Jacuzzi and entered a bedroom in Nicholson's home, where Polanski sat down beside her and kissed the teen, despite her demands that he "keep away." According to Gailey, Polanski then performed a sex act on her and later "started to have intercourse with me." At one point, according to Gailey's testimony, Polanski asked the 13-year-old if she was "on the pill," and "When did you last have your period?" Polanski then asked her, Gailey recalled, "Would you want me to go in through your back?" before he "put his penis in my butt." Asked why she did not more forcefully resist Polanski, the teenager told Deputy D.A. Roger Gunson, "Because I was afraid of him."
Following his indictment on various sex charges, Polanski agreed to a plea deal that spared him prison time (he had spent about 45 days in jail during a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation). But when it seemed that a Superior Court judge might not honor the deal--and sentence Polanski to prison--the director fled the country.
Below you'll find links to Gailey's grand jury testimony, the heart of which runs 36 pages (we've broken the transcript into two 18-page sections for easier navigation).
Click here for transcript pages 1-18
Click here for transcript pages 19-36
Damaged reputations | Media | MediaGuardian
Damaged reputations | Media | MediaGuardianDamaged reputations
Vanity Fair's editor has done his readers a disservice by writing an article that attempts to gloss over Roman Polanski's libel victory against the magazine, says Roy Greenslade
- MediaGuardian, Tuesday 13 September 2005 15.18 BST
- Article history
I have long admired Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair. He produces a polished, readable magazine that pulls off the neat trick of lending credibility to an array of celebrity trivia while covering a range of serious topics in an accessible, yet intelligent, fashion.
Low-brow meets high-brow in a glossy cultural concoction that contrives to say a great deal about modern America.
And not only the United States. Mr Carter appears both to understand, and have an affection for, Britain. He indulges the Brit polemicist Christopher Hitchens and among his contributing editors are Andrew Neil, AA Gill, Victoria Mather, Janine di Giovanni and Rupert Everett.
The latest issue (October 2005) includes a lengthy and detailed analysis of Britain's newspaper format revolution, heaping praise on the Guardian and its editor.
But that issue, now on sale in Britain, also carries a piece under Mr Carter's own byline about a British court case and its aftermath that is so economical with the truth and so lacking in fairness, that it could well undermine his, and his magazine's, reputation.
Mr Carter is upset that he lost a libel action against Vanity Fair brought in Britain by Roman Polanski, the film director, who lives in France and who gave evidence to the high court by video link because, if he had set foot in London, he would face extradition to the US for having sex with a girl of 13 in 1977.
The libel case hinged on an incident that occurred even further back, in 1969, soon after the murder of Polanski's wife, Sharon Tate.
According to a Vanity Fair article, published in July 2002, Polanski was in the famous New York restaurant, Elaine's, when he made sexual advances to a woman said to resemble Tate. He is alleged to have touched her knee and said he would make her "another Sharon Tate".
Vanity Fair depended for its allegations on the evidence of Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper's magazine, and his friend, Edward Perlberg, a former Wall Street executive.
Lapham claimed to have seen Polanski make the pass at a "Swedish model", who was with Perlberg. Polanski told the court he couldn't remember anything remotely like that having occurred, and was supported by Mia Farrow, who was with him at Elaine's, and who stated in court that it definitely did not happen.
The jury found for Polanski, awarding him £50,000 in damages, and a bill for costs likely to reach £1m. Immediately after the trial Mr Carter cast himself as a wronged man, pointing out that it was astonishing that the court had allowed Polanski to give evidence by video.
One glaringly obvious omission from the trial was the "Swedish model" at the centre of the allegation, Beate Telle. Though supposedly asked to give evidence, she did not do so. But a couple of days after the trial's conclusion the Mail on Sunday tracked her down.
It transpired that she was, in fact, Norwegian. She told the paper that she well remembered seeing Polanski that evening, though she didn't know who he was until told later by Perlberg.
She said that Polanski approached the table where she was sitting but did not speak to her and certainly didn't touch her. "He just stared at me for ages," she said. "Perhaps I reminded him of Sharon Tate."
Though Telle's statement was made in a newspaper interview rather than in court, it is surely germane to how we view the case. She was unequivocally denying that Polanski had been guilty of any bad behaviour towards her and therefore. if what she said was correct, destroyed the credibility of Vanity Fair's sordid tittle-tattle.
So, in the editor's article about the case, I expected him to make some reference to Telle's recollection of events, even if to pose relevant questions about why she had apparently rejected the chance to give evidence. Instead, he never mentioned her name.
He devoted his piece to a gentle debunking of Britain's libel law, for which I have some sympathy, taking cliched side-wipes at the differences between court-room conduct and the jury selection process in Britain and the US.
There are also amusing diversions, such as a pen-portrait of his encounter with the woman who runs the pub behind the high court.
But the insistent message of Mr Carter's article is that Polanski is a villain and the magazine was justified in its allegation.
He neatly skips over his magazine's mistakes, seemingly concealing the fact that it got Telle's nationality wrong by referring to her as a Scandinavian model and arguing that another error - the date of the Elaine's incident was out by two weeks - was of no consequence.
He makes no reference to Telle's denial, thereby robbing Vanity Fair readers of the chance to make up their own minds about the case and blandly concludes: "I was stirred but not shaken by the verdict."
Well, if he wasn't, he should have been. Just because Polanski has a bad reputation, it doesn't mean that journalists should publish false stories about him.
The episode does no credit to Mr Carter or his magazine. Telle's version of events is hugely significant. By failing to mention it, Mr Carter compounds his magazine's previous errors.
If he goes on keeping his readers in the dark he will surely earn his magazine a new nickname: Vanity Unfair.
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