I haven’t weighed in on the Roman Polanski clusterfuck, because I feel strongly that I shouldn’t add to the noise on any given scandale du jour unless I actually have something original, relevant and new to say. So far, I haven’t. But in trying to find an angle from which I could approach the story, I went back and read my review of Marina Zenovich’s Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which I saw and wrote about at Sundance in 2008. Much of what I could say now about the complexities of the case (and particularly the apparent divide between Polanski’s film industry supporters egotistically “demanding” his release and the — for lack of a better term — normal Americans who hadn’t given thought one to Polanski in decades but are now all over cable news accusing Woody Allen et all of condoning child rape), I already said in that review. So I’m publishing a slightly rewritten version of that review below the jump.
For the record: I had serious problems with the thread of Polanski apologia running through Zenovich’s film, and I personally support his extradition and some sort of jail time, but would hope that there would be a new hearing considering the tangible evidence of judicial misconduct before he’s re-sentenced. That said, I don’t operate under the delusion that my personal opinion actually matters, and the coverage of the case has made me wish that others felt the same.
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I’m not going to offer any argument in the debate over Roman Polanski, who was arrested in Zurich Saturday for a crime that’s older than I am (by 10 days). I’m just going to let this be a straight roundup of blog commentary related to the case, particularly to the divisiveness of support and anger sparked by the arrest and threat of extradition. It was enough that everyone had an opinion on the web yesterday concerning the topic, now it’s time for everyone to lash out against those who disagree with them, especially against the many film industry heavies who’ve signed a petition (and others rallied by the journal La Règle du jeu) asking for Polanski’s release.
Feel free to comment with your own arguments below, but only if you’ve seen the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. See the film even if you don’t wish to share your opinion, though, especially since there’s now a very good possibility we’ll be getting at least one sequel to the doc in the future.
Check out the film blog responses to the Polanski “culture war”* after the jump:
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The shortlist has been announced for the 2009 Cinema Eye Honors. The list includes a number of titles that many felt were unjustifiably snubbed from the Oscars shortlist, some based on qualification quibbles, including Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, My Winnipeg, The Order of Myths, Stranded: I’ve Come From A Plane That Crashed Into The Mountain, and Waltz With Bashir. Omitted: Dear Zachary, a number of Oscar shortlisted titles including I.O.U.S.A., and each of the top five highest grossing non-fiction films of 2008, including Religulous.
I’ve pasted the full shortlist after the jump with links back to previous coverage of the films on SpoutBlog. Though I haven’t personally seen all of these, between everyone on the Spout team we’ve previously covered all but two.
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From Variety:
On Monday, attorney Chad Hummel filed two documents with the Los Angeles Superior Court outlining all the reasons why that court should be disqualified from weighing the director’s decades-old case. A hearing on Polanski’s early December request to have the sexual misconduct case dismissed had been set for Jan. 21.
Polanski fled the United States more than 30 years ago on the eve of sentencing, convinced he would not get a fair shake from Judge Lawrence Rittenband, and has lived in European exile ever since. His fugitive status is central to the latest request.
Hummel said that court expressed a “predetermination” on the issue when it indicated that Polanski would have to appear at the hearing.
Above: Dance of the Vampires, AKA The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me But Your Teeth Are In My Neck.
Discuss.
Talk about movies making a difference. MIchael Cieply reports that attorneys for filmmaker Roman Polanski, who has long lived in European exile rather than face prison time for ancient charges stemming from an incident involving a teenager, quaaludes and Jack Nicholson’s hot tub, have filed motions to have the case dismissed due to new evidence contained within Marina Zenovich’s documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.
The film, which I reviewed at Sundance, strenuously argues that Polanski was the victim of a corrupt justice system and an egomaniacal judge, and thus the director had no choice but to flee from an unjustly excessive sentence. I took issue with the film’s sub-theme that only silly, repressed Americans would so strictly punish Polanski for the collateral damage inflicted by his tortured genius, but the evidence presented regarding the capricious flaunting of procedure by the Los Angeles court system is convincing. We’ll see if a new judge agrees; a hearing is set for January 21.
Also, Jeff Wells is implying that there’s something fishy going on because Zenovich was apparently quoted in Cieply’s story initially, but now is not. For what that’s worth.
AJ Schnack has posted the Academy’s shortlist for the Best Documentary Feature nomination. As expected (at least, by me), Ellen Kuras’ The Betrayal, Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World, Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure, and Sundance winners Man on Wire and Trouble the Wire all made the cut. It’s also nice to see a few smaller films on the list, including In a Dream and They Killed Sister Dorothy. But there are also a few notable omissions, including Religulous and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, both of which had their semi-secret shortlist qualifying runs at the Creative Entertainment Coliseum Quad on 181 Street in the nosebleed section of New York City. Coincidence?!?? Probably! (For what it’s worth, Expelled, Religulous‘ political polar opposite, also failed to make the cut.)
The full list can be found here. Expect chatter and analysis in the days to come (probably not least from the snubbed Bill Maher).
This week we’re taking movies with fans, colleagues, and friends. An e-mail from a listener gets us thinking critically about our love for post-apocalyptic movies, and watching the amazing 1962 French short, La Jetée (pictured above). Kevin talks with David Chen and Devindra Hardawar from /Filmcast about podcasting, Roman Polanski, and really good cartoons. Later we check in with Karina Longworth, where she tells us about overlooked Japanese classic When A Woman Ascends the Stairs and a whimsical WWI quasi-musical, La France.
0:00 - Intro, post-apocalyptic movies, La Jetée
8:00 - /Filmcast’s David Chen and Devindra Hardawar
19:50 - Karina’s Media Diet
FilmCouch 78 [32:40m]:
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(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)
filmcouch-78
Anthony Kaufman brings news that THINKFilm has given up distribution rights on Azazel Jacobs’ Momma’s Man to Kino International. THINK announced their acquisition of the film in early March, about six weeks after the film was unveiled at Sundance. Just last week, THINK’s Mark Urman told Kaufmann that they planned on going through with the release of both Momma’s and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, saying that if the company “didn’t think we could get what they deserve, I wouldn’t be proceeding with them. These films are not cash-intensive films. These films will get everything they need.” No word yet on whether or not the troubled company still thinks they can give Marina Zenovich’s doc what it deserves.
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, a riveting documentary airing June 9 at 9:00pm on HBO, digs into the facts of Polanski’s notorious case around his sexual misconduct with a 13 year old, and how the justice system failed them both. The Promotion–opening tonight–looks like a comedy but is more an unnerving lightning rod for middle class anxiety, a darkly comic portrayal of what the American Dream has become. People expecting John C. Reilly and Seann William Scott to be foolproof laugh material will be surprised.
(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)
FilmCouch #73 - Be careful what you laugh at
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, The Promotion
On Friday, we learned that HBO had quietly opened the Sundance hit doc Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired in one theater on 181st Street in Manhattan, so that the film could qualify for an Oscar nomination before it runs on the cable channel in June. The doc wasn’t screened for the press, because the release is obligatory and presumably TV critics will have at it soon enough. But the New York Times, who have a mandate to review every film that open in any theatrical venue in Manhattan, put Manohla Dargis on an A train up to 181st street and ran her review in today’s paper. The circumstances of the film’s virtual non-release were deemed remarkable enough for inclusion in the review’s second paragraph, where Dargis backhands the doc with praise and notes that the token, Academy-baiting theatrical release could be an exercise in futility. “Its one-week theatrical run will make it eligible for Academy Award consideration, though given that organization’s often pitiful record when it comes to nonfiction film, it seems unlikely that a movie this subtly intelligent would make its short list.”
AJ Schnack argues that a film which so stealthily end-runs an actual theatrical audience doesn’t deserve the slot on the short list that it’s so baldy fishing for. …Read more
This is interesting: a Defamer tipster points out out a tiny ad in what looks like the print edition of the Village Voice, listing screenings beginning today in way, WAY uptown Manhattan of Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. The much-discussed Sundance doc was picked up at that festival, as we noted on our deal chart, for domestic release and Oscar qualifying by HBO. Other than this little ad, there’s been no publicity and no reviews of the film in advance of this New York release; I consulted Moviefone’s AIM movie listings bot, and was told that “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired has not opened yet. It will open on 12-31-10.”
Defamer’s Stu VanAirsdale posits that this secret release is happening as a way of meeting Oscar nomination qualifications––and he’s probably right––but even token qualifying releases are usually given *some* kind of publicity budget. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised: Anne Thompson essentially predicted an in-name-only theatrical release for Wanted when the HBO deal was made at Sundance. As she put it on her blog,
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Two new updates to our Sundance deal chart: Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired has landed US distribution via HBO, who may or may not release the film theatrically; and ESPN has acquired the soccer doc Kicking It. Interesting that it’s day four of the festival and, with the exception of Ballast’s deal for international representation, a) the only films with announced deals are documentaries, and b) no one seems to be talking about how much money they’re putting on the table. Check out our full Sundance 2008 acquisitions chart here.
People here in Park City are going crazy for Marina Zenovich’s Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. According to Variety, the film was courted by four buyers after its first screening last night (the Weinsteins nabbed international rights, but US distribution is still on the table), and not only was there substantial applause at this morning’s packed press and industry screening, but I don’t think I saw a single person leave the theater. For an 8:30 AM Sundance press show, that’s rare.
So the hype train is rolling full steam ahead, but what do we actually have here? For me, Wanted and Desired convinces that this seemingly trivial footnote in cinema history is actually a story about the media’s role in turning the very idea of justice into a farce. Zenovich goes some way towards crafting a valuable historical document, but its credibility on that front is weakened by its clearly imbalanced sympathies.
It’s an methodical but irreverant look at the legal quagmire and media scandal and that erupted in 1977, after a 13 year old girl accused Polanski of raping her in Jack Nicholson’s hottub whilst taking topless photos of her for Men’s Vogue. Polanski admitted to having intercourse with the girl, but said it was consensual; the film tracks how Polanski’s plea on a lesser charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor was mutated by media-hungry Judge Rittenband, ultimately causing Polanski to flee to France in fear of being sentenced to half a century in prison.
Zenovich sets up Rittenband and Polanski as polar opposites in the realm of media-mediated justice. Polanski, a public figure due to his profession but a media star due to a combination of charisma, bad luck, and his admitted personal “recklessness,” is forced to face the reality that even in the anything-goes swirl of Hollywood in the 70s, absolute free will is an impossibility of public life. Meanwhile, hungry for his own taste of media attention, Rittenband drifted towards celebrity court cases (he previously chose to officiate Elvis’ divorce), and allowed his obsession with controlling his own media image to dictate his rulings. Ironically, Rittenband’s push for glory directly led to Polanski fleeing to France, where he was able to escape not just jail time, but the gaze of an unsympathetic media.
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