Roman Polanski in front of a giant chessboard in Munich in 1972. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
The surprise detention of Roman Polanski has been met with indignation in Hollywood and sparked a flurry of media speculation over the absolute reason at the back Saturday night’s arrest in Zurich.
Film mogul Harvey Weinstein has got at the back a campaign through French film-makers calling on US authorities not to extradite the Oscar-winning Polish director in connection through a charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor dating back more than three decades.
Weinstein entered the fray at the personal behest of Cannes film festival director Thierry Fremaux and will now use his considerable influence and campaigning heft to enlist the support of Hollywood.
“We’re calling on every film-maker we can to help make firm this terrible situation,” Weinstein said, reviving a theme he adopted earlier in the year after he bought between nations distribution rights at Sundance to the HBO documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.
The film uncovered flaws in the legitimate case opposed to the director, prompting Weinstein to allude to a possible campaign to get the charges against Polanski dropped. At a hearing this year a Los Angeles more eminent court arrive at the truth agreed there was “substantial misconduct” in the original hearing.
Furthermore Samantha Geimer (nee Gailey), the girl whom Polanski raped at the age of 13 and who is at once in her mid-40s, has called on the persons cited as vouchers to dismiss the charges against him.
Writing in the Los Angeles Times this morning, film columnist Patrick Goldstein questioned the ethics of a potential move through the LA County district attorney’s office to spend taxpayer’sitting money on extraditing Polanski at a time of severe statewide budget cuts.
“[A]t a time when California is shredding the safety net that protects the poor and the unemployed, not to cursory reference the budget of the public school system, you’d hope that LA County prosecutors had better things to do than cause an international furor [sic] by hounding a film director for a 32-year-old sex iniquity, especially one that Polanski’s victim wants to put it back her,” Goldstein wrote.
Meanwhile the Washington Post’sitting Anne Applebaum had this to say: “To put him on trial or solemnize him in jail does not serve society in general or his victim in particular. Nor does it prove the doggedness and earnestness of the American legal system.”
Focus has turned to why the arrest has come now, even although Polanski used to own a close in Switzerland and, according to his agent Jeff Berg of ICM, spent a great deal of of this summer in the country editing his latest film, The Ghost.
Matters took an intriguing turn on Sunday when AP accidentally published an internal memo between staffers speculating that political motivations may have led Swiss magistrates to collaborate with the LA County district attorney’s office at this stage.
Unsubstantiated claims are circling that Swiss authorities may be using Polanski as a sacrificial lamb to appease their US counterparts ahead of an unfolding tax-evasion traducement that involves the Swiss banking giant UBS and wealthy US account holders.
An excerpt from the casual AP release reads:
“that’session because they’re under intense pressure more than ubs and penury to throw the U.S. a bone, but can yo ucheck with justice department sources there?”
Swiss justice ministry spokesman Guido Balmer has rejected any notion that the arrest was a political move.
Polanski fled the US in 1978 after pleading guilty to the unlawful sexual connection charges and faces up to 50 years in jail should LA County prosecutors start proceedings and choose to request an extradition.
“Whether the LA County region attorney’s office has its way or not, it is not a story that can obtain a happy ending,” Goldstein added in the Los Angeles Times. “I think Polanski has even now paid a horrible, soul-wrenching price for the villany surrounding his actions. The real tragedy is that he resoluteness always, to the time of his death, be snubbed and stalked and confronted by people who think the worth he has already paid isn’t enough.”
