Roman Polanski: The Dark Side

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will always find a way around the law"

 - Plato


" If you have a great passion it seems that the logical thing is to see the fruit of it, and the fruit are children"

- Roman Polanski



Yeah, I am back. I just couldn't help myself. I was watching cable news this morning smoking a bowl, and Roman's name came scrolling across the bottom of the screen. I found myself thinking again of the worst husband on Earth. The guy who sent his 8 month pregnant wife on a ship sailing across the Ocean, without him, back to stay with people he would later say he didn't trust. To some, this will be a hatchet job on Roman. O.K. I can live with that. However, sprinkled in with my own personal commentary, there will be some hard to ignore points presented to make a case that this man is a very dangerous predator with an extremely dark side. So come with me, for a few minutes if you wish, while I explore what lies in the heart of this man - Roman Polanski. There are two sides to every story, but with some individuals, in some cases, there is a third. The Dark Side.....

( God that was a cheesy line lol maybe I should stop lighting up for the rest of this post lol)

LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles judge on Friday rejected a request by the woman who was raped by director Roman Polanski 40 years ago to have the criminal case against him dismissed. Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon ruled that Polanski remained a fugitive from justice and that the court could not dismiss a case "merely because it would be in the victim's best interest."The ruling follows the first appearance in June in the case by Samantha Geimer, who was 13 years old when Polanski sexually assaulted her in Los Angeles in 1977. 

- Reuters  8/17/17



 In March of 1977, Roman Polanski was charged with 5 offenses against Samantha Gailey a 13-year old girl.  Rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious act upon a child under 14, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor. He was given a plea bargain and all charges were dropped and he pleaded guilty to a single charge of unlawful sexual intercourse. Days before he was sentenced he decided that the judge might go back on the agreement, so he took it upon himself to flee the country in the darkness of night. In the years since, Samantha has asked for it to be dropped. Roman and his Hollywood supporters have asked for it to be dropped, yet once again, the courts have decided not to drop it. You see, even 40 years later it is not for a person to say what another person should be allowed to do to a 13 year old child- even if that child is her. Nor, does the court feel, is it appropriate for Roman to say when enough is enough. Especially, since he never showed up to accept his responsibility in the first place. Roman just ran like a coward. He paid almost no price at all. And there are many who think he has paid enough. Now it is not the intention of this post to decide, or debate the law and arguments that go with that chicken-shit move. Suffice to say, I don't understand how anyone can defend that? He decided for himself that the sentence might not be what he thought was agreed on, or fair, so he decided not to be sentenced at all? Anyway, that is just one reveal of a much darker character. This would not be a one time thing, but a foreshadowing of the type of relationship he would pursue for the rest of his life. Roman is attracted to children more or less. Even as he got older, and the age of his woman rose above the age of legality, there would remain a disparity of never less than 25 or more years to his romantic interests. But first what we learned from Samantha: Roman is a coward. He ran when he felt threatened. Roman gave this 13 year old girl part of a Quaalude, Champagne,  and that despite her saying NO- he had sex with her orally, anally and vaginally. He chose his own sentence, and then just split. He would later make patronizing statement and jokes about the entire situation. Things like:

"If I had 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!"

I disagree Roman. I know plenty of guys who do not want to have sex with 13 yer old children. Most guys I know would be appalled at the idea. It seems to me he never did get that. He has lived his whole life thinking that these desires are normal and acceptable. Maybe that is because he never had to pay a price for what he did? There is a documentary floating around called; "Roman Polanski -Wanted and Desired". It argues very strongly that Roman got a bum deal. They argue that Roman had the right to flee, because after the Government dropped the charges from 5 offenses to 1, and they were going to give him a slap on the wrist with just one lesser charge, Roman still thought he might not get treated fairly enough. So he had no choice, I suppose but to bail. Anyway, you can go learn all about that case by watching that documentary, and maybe you will walk away feeling different than me? I think he should have faced the music for his actions and accepted responsibility for what he did. Roman did not have the right to decide for Roman what was and was not fair punishment for what Roman Did...

Back to Roman....

Next up...

“I fell in love with him at the beginning,” says Nastassja, who met Roman at a party in Germany when she was 15. “He was really a gentleman, not at all like the things I had heard,” she continues. “He introduced me to beautiful books, plays, movies. He educated me.”

-Nastassja Kinsky


 Roman meets Nastassja on the set of Tess. This "relationship" lasts not long because she says he is, "Controlling and aggressive." She also said this:

That's why when Roman [Polanski] came along and gave me Tess, it was like. . . it gave me such dignity, you know what I mean?' Tess (1980) – a reverential, three-hour-long rendering of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles – was the film that turned Kinski into a full-blown international film-star, and Polanski her mentor: "He would be very strict with me and send me books, and send me to school. And then when we did the movie he said, "I really want you to do this for me, because I wanted to do it for my wife [the murdered actress, Sharon Tate], and it means so much to me. But the only way you can do the film is to show you'll learn the [Wessex] accent, so I'm going to send you to England for four, five, six months and when you come back we'll do the test."' Kinski passed that test, and Polanski 'gave me a lot of respect. It was all very serious. He was a very severe person, in the best sense." 

Can this guy use his status to his advantage or what? But it wouldn't be last time Roman used this method. Not at all...

When Emmanuelle Seigner meets Roman Polanski at a dinner in 1985, she is a young model and he is already a celebrated director. In 1988, he turns the model into an actress and reveals her to the public with the film Frantic before the couple gets married in 1989. In 2009, they face, united, the scandal of Roman Polanski’s accusation of sexual crime on a minor - an affair that goes back to 1977 after Roman Polanski had tragically lost his wife Sharon Tate. Emmanuelle Seigner refuses to judge the past of her husband and faces the calumnies at his side. Since, the director has featured his sexy wife in a successful film, Venus in Furs and the cosmopolitan and charismatic Parisian couple continues to stand tall despite the age difference, the highs and lows in an independent spirit true to their somewhat rock n’roll personas.

33 years his junior... He has a couple of kids with this one. Roman is something else when it comes to younger woman. But at least this one agreed to have sexual relations with a guy old enough to be her dad. One must wonder if there were any others over the years who did not agree??

It has been a long time since Charlotte Lewis held a crowd enthralled in Hollywood.

But if she ever dreamed of a return to Los Angeles, where as a young actress she was hailed as a ‘golden child’ – talented, exquisitely beautiful and with a film career unfurling before her – it would never have been like this. On Friday, Charlotte, now 42, called a Press conference in Los Angeles to claim that director Roman Polanski, the man who gave her her first break, had abused her, ‘in the worst possible way’ when she was just 16 years old.

The chic from "The Golden Child"! Not Eddie Murphy's finest hour. The little Asian kid was cute though. Anyway, this is hearsay, as our more legally trained minds will be aware,but I believe her. Partially because I see it as part of a larger pattern, and secondarily because I just watched what happened with Bill Cosby unfold. I'll get to that in one minute, because first I need to point out one more case which will let me introduce what I call the "Glorida Allred Factor".....

"The day after it happened, I did tell one friend that Mr Polanski had done that to me," the woman, identified as Robin, said in a statement on Tuesday. "The reason, with this exception, that I kept it to myself is that I didn't want my father to do something that might cause him to go to prison for the rest of his life." The alleged victim’s lawyer remained tight-lipped about the details of case, but said that it had occurred in southern California. Robin on Tuesday said that she was "infuriated" that Mrs Geimer had forgiven Mr Polanksi and asked in June for the case to be closed."I'm speaking out now so that Samantha and the world will know she is not the only minor Roman Polanski victimized"

- The Tight-lipped lawyer mentioned is Gloria Allred. This happened 5 days ago. The purpose of this was specifically to enable this woman to be a witness at the retrial of Samantha should there be one. This woman is not seeking money ( A typical Allred motivation) She is doing the groundwork to add ammunition to any future trial of Roman about sexual abuse charges. Sounds personal to me. This brings me back to Bill Cosby and the "Gloria Allred Factor". Bill Cosby had fame, friends and power. Similar to Roman. I believe both of them had life-long , nasty, needs that they just couldn't control. I think Fleeing saved Roman's life more than he will ever know. Had he stayed, he would have went on satisfying his craving until, like Cosby, at some point the sheer numbers would have caught up with him at some point, if no one individual could in the short term. BUT....

Roman had to leave. And where did he go? Europe. He spent the rest of his life in countries, and places where they have much more liberal views about these types of things. For example, if you live in Japan, South Korea and Spain, the age of legal consent is 13. In Italy and Austria it is 14. and in France, where Roman has made his home all these years, it is a mere 15. Point being, who knows how many teen age and younger girls Roman has been able to manipulate all these years? But I submit that, had he stayed in the US and something like this came out, whenever it came out, with the resources, celebrity, and Gloria Allred's of the world prying into his background- would Roman not have gone down at some point eventually? That's the "Gloria Allred Factor"....

I will mention that he has his supporters lol. They always do. Hollywood and quite a few Celebrities have defended him over the years. Only a well known public figure can make you see that being a good artist is always an acceptable excuse to drug and annaly rape 13 year olds, but to be fair lets allow them to have their say:

Whoopie Goldberg said:  "I know it wasn't rape-rape. It was something else but I don't believe it was rape-rape. He went to jail and and when they let him out he was like "You know what this guy's going to give me a hundred years in jail I'm not staying, so that's why he left."

Adrian Brody thinks he should get a pass due to his past: “Life is very complicated,” Brody, 43, said. “I look to collaborate with artistic people and to go into an endeavor without judgment and to hopefully be treated with the same. It’s an artistic pursuit, and Polanski for instance had a very complicated and difficult life. It would be unfair of me to delve into something as complicated as the past that was brought up in the media.” 

How about Debra Wingers statement as head of the Zurich Film Fesitval: Winger... on Monday demanded Polanski's release and criticized Swiss authorities for their "philistine collusion" in arresting Polanski as he entered the country. "This fledgling festival has been unfairly exploited, and whenever this happens the whole art world suffers," Winger said in a statement on Monday, standing together with the other four international jury members who wore red badges reading "Free Polanski" as they announced plans to continue the fest.

And famously when he was, temporarily, held in Switzerland- they all came out to sign petitions and make a big stink how unfair it was he might finally pay. And not just Whoopi and Adrian Brody. Some big name players:

A petition was immediately organized calling for his release, signed by prominent fellow directors including Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Darren Aronofsky, Terry Gilliam, Jonathan Demme, Ethan Coen and David Lynch, as well as actresses Penelope Cruz and Tilda Swinton.

Shame on them all I say. 13 to 15 year old girls for god-sakes. Drugs, and alcohol and forced sex. Take out the alcohol, and trade the dirty mattresses' of Spahn, for the hot-tub at Jack Nicholson's and tell me what the difference was between what Charlie was doing versus Roman? Roman has a very dark side and it shows in his work as well. Lets take a quick look at that....

 Roman Polanski knows women because he understands men. He knows both sexes because he understands the games both genders play, either consciously or instinctively. He understands the perversions formed from such relations and translates them into visions that are erotic, disturbing, humorous and, most important, allegorical in their potency. One should not (as so many did with his misunderstood Bitter Moon) take Polanski’s films entirely literally, for they are often heightened versions of what occurs naturally in our world: desire, perversion, repulsion. Film scholar Molly Haskell said that at the core of Polanski’s work is the “image of the anesthetized woman, the beautiful, inarticulate, and possibly even murderous somnambulate.” Her observation is astute, but it’s followed by the criticism that in all of Polanski’s films, including Repulsion, “the titillations of torture are stronger than the bonds of empathy.” Of course. And then, no. And then, of course. Polanski’s removed morality is exactly why he is often brilliant: He is so empathetic to his characters that, like a trauma victim floating above the pain, he is personally impersonal. He insightfully scrutinizes what is so frightening about being human, yet he doesn’t feel the need to be resolute or sentimental about his cognizance. He is also, consciously or subconsciously, aware of the darkness he explores, especially in his female characters, who could be seen as extensions of himself.

- Kim Morgan (Lifework: The Films of Roman Polanski. Chapter 5)

Mr. Polanski's obsessions seem to to have emerged full formed. The series of short films he made in the late 50's and early 60's map out his universe in embryo. His first student film, "Murder" stages in just over a minute a fatal stabbing by penknife: a killing without motive or context, rendered with startling detail and economy. Films like "Teeth Smile, "Break up the Dance," and "The Fat and the Lean", hint at the mind games and power plays. From the start Mr. Polanski was a definitive filmmaker with a penchant for extreme situations. The aura of violence and perversity that surrounded the films suited an enfant terrible who enjoyed notoriety. But the murder of his wife, besides shattering Mr. Polanski's life, turned this convenient master narrative into sick joke. Describing the carnage at his rented Benedict Canyon home, the Satan worship of "Rosemary's Baby" fresh in their minds, journalists could not refrain from comparing it to a movie- specifically a Roman Polanski movie. " It was a scene as grisly as anything depicted in Polanski's film explorations of the dark and melancholy corners of human character," Time Magazine declared. Roger Gunson, the prosecutor assigned to the statutory rape case, prepared for the trial that never happened by taking in a retrospective of his films. " Every Roman Polanski movie has a theme: corruption meeting innocence over water," he says in Marina Zenovich's 2008 documentary " Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired", noting that Mr. Polanski had seduced his underage quarry in a Jacuzzi.

- Dennis Lim ( New York Times)


"Normal love isn't interesting. I assure you that it is incredibly boring."

- Roman Polanski

Strange Fruit. Strange fruit indeed. So I guess this is the part where I point out how hard his childhood was. Doctors of the Psychiatry and Psychology fields would tell you to factor in his upbringing and the extreme hardships he endured. He lost his mother to a concentration camp, and was subject to much prejudiced and shuffling around as a child. He lived in a ghetto, and he pretty much did whatever he could just to get by and survive. But, like many others who went through the same thing, he did survive. After the war he was reunited with his father, who he remained in contact with until the time his father passed in 1984. He had, and has, family contacts to this day. Roman also got into movies very early and was able to enroll in film school and start acting at a young age. He was able to do what he loved and he eventually had tremendous success as a result of it. He had a life that many people would dream of. So, please don't Doctor me to death with the psychology, or cry me a river for Romans childhood. I am sorry for what everyone went through in that age and place, but I do not accept that's a reason for a man to have a life long infatuation with 13 year old girls, or obsess over blood and gore. I can't personally make that leap. But let me tell you more than anything else why I can't stand this bastard:

He had Sharon. He did not value that. He did not protect that. He bragged of infidelity and he made jokes when talking about her slaughter to police. What in the name of Polish ghettos makes that an alright thing to do when you just lost your wife and unborn child?

Polanski's polygraph was conducted by Lieutenant Earl Deemer at Parker Center. ( From H/S)

Q. "Mind if I call you Roman? My name is Earl."

A. "Sure.... I will lie a time or two times during it and I will tell you after, o.k.?"

Really?? I am going to lie, or play coy little games, on my polygraph when we are talking about the very recent slaughter of my wife and unborn child?

Q. "So there was no indication that Sharon went back to Sebring at any time?"

A. "Not a chance! I am the bad one. I always screw around. That was Sharon's big hangup ya know. But Sharon was absolutely not interested in Jay."

Great to brag about being a cheater, Great marriage and family life this guy would have provided for Sharon and his kid... Sigh.

Q. "Do you smoke cigarettes?"

A. Yes." There was a long pause and then Polanski began laughing.

Q. "You know what you are going to do with that screwing around? I/m going to have to start all over again."

A. "Sorry."

Q. "Look at the increase in your heart rate when you lie about the cigarettes.

Are you kidding me? What in the world is funny about anything he is dealing with? What in his past, or which experience justifies goofing off when the police are trying to solve the brutal murder of your family? Please tell me, because this just makes absolutely no sense. This is a man with no soul.

Look it is time to take this home. I do not care who you are in Hollywood, or how many awards you have won. I do not care if Roman Polanski is an amazing Director, or cinematic genius. Roman is as scary a guy as anyone who has ever walked the streets. The warning signs have been flying for 50 years. He has shown us in his actions, movies, words, and "relationships" who he really is. He is not a confused, scarred victim of anything or anyone. He is a smug, arrogant pedophile, who thinks that he has the creative right to do whatever he pleases. We enable him every day that he is allowed to be free. He has the very worst of basic respect and empathy for others and feels no personal responsibility for any actions that he feels are justified to him, regardless of how society and the people who live around him feel about those actions. That is the very definition of a dangerous man. He is capable of doing anything if it suits him. And considering the impulses, fascinations, habits, and history of Roman Polanski- that should scare us all....


                                                               - Your Favorite Saint