At lunchtime one Los Angeles day in 1978, I was leaving the trendy Ma Maison restaurant after dining with owner Patrick Terrail when filmmaker Roman Polanski passed me, coming in. We nodded to each other in recognition, since I had interviewed him twice for Newsweek -- as I had interviewed his beautiful late wife, Sharon Tate, on two occasions before she was murdered by the Manson family in 1969.
Polanski's lunch at Ma Maison came on what turned out to be his last day in Hollywood. Hours after my encounter with him, he jumped on a plane to France to avoid the perceived threat of imprisonment on charges of unlawful sex with 13-year-old Samantha Geimer. He has been a fugitive ever since, roaming freely around continental Europe, making movies. He is married to French actress Emanuelle Seigner, with whom he has two children.
To the consternation of nearly everyone, Polanski was arrested Sunday in Zurich, Switzerland, on an arrest warrant submitted by the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. Instead of starring as the red-carpet guest of the Zurich Film Festival, Polanski is behind bars, awaiting possible extradition proceedings that could bring him back to Los Angeles (but not to Ma Maison, which closed years ago).
Polanski is the lead in a remake of "Les Miserables," playing the part of Jean Valjean opposite D.A. Steve Cooley as Inspector Javert.
The director's arrest and possible prosecution are controversial. Should the American legal system leave Polanski alone, even dismissing the old charges? Or should the law take its course against him as it would against any nose-thumbing fugitive?
Those who side with the 76-year-old moviemaker argue that he was getting a raw deal in 1978 from a publicity-obsessed judge, the late Lawrence Rittenband, who was about to renege on an agreement to sentence Polanski only to time already served: 42 days behind bars for "diagnostic testing." Polanski's friends also note that Geimer settled a civil lawsuit with Polanski, forgave him and sides with his efforts to get the charges dismissed.
Polanski, it is also said, merits sympathy because he has had a tortured life: fleeing the Cracow ghetto as a small child to escape the Nazis after his mother was taken to the gas chamber; then, losing his pregnant wife in that horrific 1969 mass slaying (I was at the scene the morning the bodies were discovered, later conducted interviews in that creepy house and covered the Manson trial).
Finally, and much less persuasively, some argue for what amounts to an "artist exception" to the criminal laws. Yes, the argument goes, Polanski acted execrably -- he plied the young girl with champagne and part of a Quaalude during a photo shoot, then forced himself on her -- but he is the great artist who made "Knife in the Water," "Repulsion," "Chinatown," "Rosemary's Baby" and many other films, and his "The Pianist" won an Oscar. And everybody knows that artists are eccentric and not to be treated like you and me.
On the other side, one point is that the law is the law for everyone and Polanski should have returned years ago to take his medicine at a sentencing hearing. Polanski has expressed in the past a willingness to return to the U.S., but only on his own terms. One promising plea deal collapsed years ago because Polanski objected to having TV cameras present in the courtroom -- an objection that seems silly and petty in retrospect. More recently, his lawyers said he would present himself in court only if the charges were first dismissed. Nope, said the new judge in the case, he would not put the cart before the horse. Polanski simply should take his chances with the system, this argument goes.
Both sides have merit to them, and it's far from an easy question. But I come down on the side of leniency. It's an old case. Polanski has settled with the victim, who has forgiven him. He has built a new life and has stayed out of trouble -- like Valjean. The district attorney's office, unfortunately, does not have what the law calls "clean hands" in this case, since an intermeddling deputy D.A. who had nothing to do with the Polanski prosecution had inappropriately counseled Rittenband to get tough with Polanski in sentencing.
It is in the interests of justice, all things considered, that charges should be dismissed. Polanski should be sprung from the Zurich hoosegow and freed to spend the last years of his distinguished career in Hollywood or anywhere else his artistic ideas take him.
Feel free to disagree.
