High life
Roman joke
Takt
New York My old friend Roman Polanski, the pocket Pole paedophile, is back in the news again. And not because of some hanky panky or a drugs raid. It is Academy Awards time in Hollywood, and he is up for best director for his film Tess. Now I have written about Roman before in these pages, about how he and I had a slight altercation years ago involving the late Bruce Lee in Gstaad. I have seen Roman since his troubles in Hollywood, and I must admit there wasn't much to say. What can one say when a 45-year-old man gets caught doping and bedding down a 13-year-old girlTI am very broad-minded, and heaven knows I love young girls, but I am aware of the old Spartan law: don't get caught. So although I won't cast the first stone, nor will I absolve old Roman from guilt. We may have our fantasies about the young, and people like Balthus even became very famous painting them, and David Hamilton very rich photographing them, but no one as yet has been elevated to the pantheon of manhood for doping them, or sleeping with them. In fact the jails are full of people who abuse children, and there are no civil libertarians breaking down doors to get them out.
Yet there is at present a tremendous wave of sympathy for Polanski. He might even win an Oscar becuase the American authorities have seen fit to jail him for his frailty. Hollywood pretends to be a place that forgives and forgets. In my opinion, however, nothing could be further from the truth. It is an industry that drips with irony. Take for example the case of David Begelman who was convicted of stealing $40,000 three years ago. He pleaded no contest to charges of grand theft while still head of Columbia Studios, and because most of Hollywood testified that he was a sick gambler and needed to steal 40,000 greenbacks to supplement his million-dollar salary (not counting fringe benefits), he got off scot free. His only sentence was to make an anti-drug film, which surprised me. Why did the judge ask him to do an anti-drug instead of an anti-greed film, or an anti' gambling film? But such are the ways °f Tinseltown. After three years Begelman, was named head of the largest and mos' profitable corporation, MGM. Polanski is now touted as the greatest Pole to emerge from that tortured land including the Pope and Lech Walesa because Hollywood biggies like Begelman know a patsy when they see one. Whal. better than for Polanski to win an AcadelnY Award, come back, be forgiven, and then, given work to do on a minimum budget. Roman is known to be a man who watches the budget anyway, and the publicity he has received from his child abuse case has been immeasurable. As everyone knows, HOY; wood thinks that any publicity, even chdu abuse publicity, is good. But it wasn't always like that. Not even t0 the bad old days of mogul tyranny. FattY Arbuckle certainly paid the price, and I believe that Polanski should too. But! mast admit that there are extenuating circurn; stances. The girl was hardly the typlca: 13-year-old, nor was the mother someone would choose to bring up children. Polanski has in a way paid for his sins bY having become a pariah everywhere excePt among film people. In fact, he has become something of a joke. This week, during dr showing of a film called Take Her, She s, Mine, the TV announcer talked ahnul Roman and then announced the Min as Take Her, She's Nine.
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