"A MAN ZEESS ZEXY? HE CANNOT RAPE. EEZ EEMPOSSIBLE"

In Roman Polanski’s last open letter, the absurdly self-regarding one that to me forever signalled “you’re on your own, butthorn”, he claimed the real reason he was being hassled was so that the US could “serve him on a silver platter to the media.”  Gee, Roman, I wonder why the media would want that.

GSTAAD, Switzerland – The chalet doors and windows are wide open. Deck chairs are set up on the patio and the garden is strewn with daffodils and wild flowers.
Roman Polanski appears to be leading a charmed existence under house arrest in the luxury resort of Gstaad, as he awaits word from Swiss authorities on whether he’ll be extradited to the United States for raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

Just read those two paragraphs again.  Start with a gentle breeze and wild flowers, end with the rape of a 13-year-old.  Yeesh, a little Lovely Bones, isn’t it?

For Polanski, confined since December to his Gstaad chalet and garden, life seems to be moving on as well as could be imagined when an electronic monitoring bracelet is wrapped around your ankle.

On a recent afternoon, his home was the very picture of Alpine calm as the wind swept through two sets of open double-doors to his backyard and another to a first-floor balcony. A pair of construction workers were busy on home improvements and the jangling of cowbells could be heard in the offing. The paparazzi were long gone.

Eight months after his arrest, the Swiss Justice Ministry still won’t say when it will decide whether the 76-year-old director should be sent back to Los Angeles to face sentencing for unlawful sexual intercourse. And officials won’t even say what the holdup is. [Yahoo]

How could this possibly take this long?  What else do these lawyers have to do?   It’s f*cking Switzerland.   There’s no crime there, everyone’s too busy eating rich cheese in their decadent vacation homes.  F*ck all of these people.  Every person involved in this story.

I’ve never been to France, but the French people I’ve met have generally been pretty nice, so when I make French jokes, it’s mostly because I’m amused by the English-speaking world’s irrational hatred of all things French. I mean, they have a stupid language that sounds like someone trying to lick my ear drum, but it’s certainly no more silly than Dutch. And I’ll take France over those arrogant, socks-with-sandal-wearing lesbian wannabes in Germany any day.  That said, congratulations, Xavier Beauvois, you are why people hate France personified.

CANNES, France – French director Xavier Beauvois has expressed support for detained filmmaker Roman Polanski by holding up a T-shirt emblazoned with Polanski’s name during a photo call at the Cannes Film Festival.

Beauvois is presenting his film “Of Gods and Men” at the French Riviera festival. He has called Polanski’s situation “Kafkaesque.” [AP]

It’s so true!  Remember when Gregor Samsa turned into a cockroach and then drugged and ass raped that little girl and had to live in his vacation home?  That was my favorite part.

"THE BOTTLES GO THE OTHER WAY."

Given that Roman Polanski is a Holocaust survivor, had his pregnant wife murdered by the Manson family, and we’ve never really heard his account of what happened the night he allegedly raped 13-year-old Samantha Geimer, I was at least willing to hear his side of the story.  But then another girl came forward saying Polanski “forced himself” on her when she was 16, which for some was the final nail in the coffin.  But for Woody Allen, it was the perfect opportunity to again publicly declare his support.

Allen said Polanski “was embarrassed by the whole thing,” “has suffered” and “has paid his dues.” He said Polanski is “an artist and is a nice person” who “did something wrong and he paid for it.” [AP]

Woody Allen is of course still married to a girl who was once his stepdaughter, but in his defense, she was Asian, and Asian chicks are notoriously freaky.  If you’re keeping score at home, that makes Polanski’s biggest advocates Woody Allen, Brett Ratner, and the French*.  If they can just get Joey Buttafuoco on board, I’m sure he’ll be out any day now.

*Sidenote: I’d love to see a PSA about the Polanski case starring Pepe Le Pew.

"Excuse me leetel girl, but would you like to trade shorts?"

Seven months after his initial arrest in Switzerland, Roman Polanski has issued his own statement to the press:

Throughout my seven months since September 26, 2009, the date of my arrest at Zurich Airport, where I had landed with a view to receiving a lifetime award for my work from the representative of the Swiss Minister of Culture*, I have refrained from making any public statements and have requested my lawyers to confine their comments to a bare minimum.
I wanted the legal authorities of Switzerland and the United States, as well as my lawyers, to do their work without any polemics on my part. I have decided to break my silence in order to address myself directly to you without any intermediaries and in my own words.
I have had my share of dramas and joys, as we all have, and I am not going to try to ask you to pity my lot in life. I ask only to be treated fairly like anyone else**.
It is true: 33 years ago I pleaded guilty, and I served time at the prison*** for common law crimes at Chino, not in a VIP prison. That period was to have covered the totality of my sentence. By the time I left prison, the judge had changed his mind and claimed that the time served at Chino did not fulfil the entire sentence, and it is this reversal that justified my leaving the United States.
This affair was roused from its slumbers of over three decades by a documentary film-maker who gathered evidence from persons involved at the time. I took no part in that project, either directly or indirectly.
The resulting documentary not only highlighted the fact that I left the United States because I had been treated unjustly; it also drew the ire of the Los Angeles authorities, who felt that they had been attacked and decided to request my extradition from Switzerland, a country I have been visiting regularly for over 30 years without let or hindrance.
I can now remain silent no longer!
I can remain silent no longer because the American authorities have just decided, in defiance of all the arguments and depositions submitted by third parties, not to agree to sentence me in absentia even though the same Court of Appeal recommended the contrary.
I can remain silent no longer because the California court has dismissed the victim’s numerous requests that proceedings against me be dropped, once and for all, to spare her from further harassment every time this affair is raised once more.
I can remain silent no longer because there has just been a new development of immense significance.
On February 26 last, Roger Gunson, the deputy district attorney in charge of the case in 1977, now retired, testified under oath before Judge Mary Lou Villar in the presence of David Walgren, the present deputy district attorney in charge of the case, who was at liberty to contradict and question him, that on September 16, 1977, Judge Rittenband stated to all the parties concerned that my term of imprisonment in Chino constituted the totality of the sentence I would have to serve.
I can remain silent no longer because the request for my extradition addressed to the Swiss authorities is founded on a lie. In the same statement, retired deputy district attorney Roger Gunson added that it was false to claim, as the present district attorney’s office does in their request for my extradition, that the time I spent in Chino was for the purpose of a diagnostic study.
The said request asserts that I fled in order to escape sentencing by the U.S. judicial authorities, but under the plea-bargaining process I had acknowledged the facts and returned to the United States in order to serve my sentence. All that remained was for the court to confirm this agreement, but the judge decided to repudiate it in order to gain himself some publicity at my expense.
I can remain silent no longer because for over 30 years my lawyers have never ceased to insist that I was betrayed by the judge, that the judge perjured himself, and that I served my sentence.
Today it is the deputy district attorney who handled the case in the 1970s, a man of irreproachable reputation, who has confirmed all my statements under oath, and this has shed a whole new light on the matter.
I can remain silent no longer because the same causes are now producing the same effects. The new District Attorney, who is handling this case and has requested my extradition, is himself campaigning for election and needs media publicity!
I can no longer remain silent because the United States continues to demand my extradition more to serve me on a platter to the media of the world than to pronounce a judgment concerning which an agreement was reached 33 years ago.
I can remain silent no longer because I have been placed under house arrest in Gstaad and bailed in very large sum of money**** which I have managed to raise only by mortgaging the apartment that has been my home for over 30 years*****, and because I am far from my family and unable to work.
Such are the facts I wished to put before you in the hope that Switzerland will recognize that there are no grounds for extradition, and that I shall be able to find peace, be reunited with my family, and live in freedom in my native land. [via Twitch]

Well allow me to retort.

Read the rest of this entry »

"I WANT TO GO TO THIS PRISON."

To recap, 33 years ago, Roman Polanski was arrested for raping a 13-year-old at his house.  He and the judge agreed on a plea bargain where he would spend 90 days in a “diagnostic evaluation.”  Polanski was released after 42 days, and the judge, bowing to public opinion, reneged on the promise and planned to sentence him to a longer term.  Whereupon Polanski fled to Europe for 30 years, until he was arrested in Switzerland in September.  Meanwhile, all along, all the victim said she wanted was for the case to be over quickly.  If you’re keeping score at home, it has now been SEVEN MONTHS since his arrest that nothing has happened, this despite extradition being the only possible reason to arrest him in the first place.  He wasn’t wanted in Switzerland.  Why would you arrest a guy on another country’s behalf and then not send him to that country?  It’s not like they didn’t have time to figure out what they were going to do.  They had THIRTY YEARS.

Where it stands now is, Roman Polanski is on house arrest in his chalet in Gstaad after posting $4.5 million bail. His lawyers have tried to get his case in the US thrown out on account of misconduct twice, and were denied.  Most recently, they requested that Polanski be sentenced in absentia, which was also denied.  Now Swiss legal experts say he’ll most likely be extradited, but that it would likely take “months of legal wrangling.”   You have got to be f*cking kidding me.

Swiss authorities have cited the voluminous paperwork and said they would wait out a California court’s examination of whether Polanski could be sentenced in absentia for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl. But the U.S. court rejected Polanski’s sentencing request Thursday without an opinion. While his attorneys could still appeal to the California Supreme Court, legal experts saw little basis for Swiss authorities to reject handing over Polanski.

“Extradition is likely now,” said Dieter Jann, a former Zurich prosecutor. “Not much has changed, and Switzerland has a legal obligation here.”

The Swiss Justice Ministry said Friday it wouldn’t rush a decision since it still must receive and study the ruling by the California 2nd District Court of Appeal.

Yeah, no, great.  No rush, you f*cks.  Seven months is far too little time to decide whether to extradite the guy you arrested for the sole purpose of extraditing.

Read the rest of this entry »