Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (2008) - full transcript
In 1977, Roman Polanski was arrested in Los Angeles on charges he gave drugs and had sex with a 13-year-old girl he was photographing for Vogue. Eleven months later, having pled guilty to one count, he fled to Europe before sentencing. This film examines that year-long period, using archival footage of the media frenzy and of Polanski's life before the charges, clips from his films, and contemporary interviews with many of the principles - attorneys, the victim, and Polanski's friends and associates. Polanski remains enigmatic, but portraits emerge of the machinations of justice and of a judge more interested in his image than his word or the law.
...of "Ben hur,"
you mean?
Granted that it's
too easy and a cliche
to connect your work
with your life
in such a direct manner.
Let me take the example
of "Chinatown."
"Chinatown" is really a movie
about justice not winning.
Is that what you
had come to believe?
No, not at all.
But if you want your film
to serve any purpose,
if you want to show injustice
or corruption of Los
Angeles in that period,
you have to show that
injustice somehow won
and leave them
with a feeling of frustration.
I hope you don't mind if
I just reach across here
and grab a couple of these nuts.
Me too.
Anyway, that's... that's fiction.
And I think this
probably may be still
in the land of fiction,
edging toward fact.
When they...
When the newspapers and
the magazines and the books
talk about you and little
girls, all right,
is there anything in it?
Well, I like young women,
let's put it this way.
I think most of men do,
actually.
Yeah, but the question turns on how
young, doesn't it?
Well, yes.
Here you've come
to a concrete case
for which I have been
behind bars.
That's what you want
to talk about.
But what exactly
would you like me to tell you?
Mr. Polanski!
A question here,
Mr. Polanski!
The Los Angeles
police department
today announced the arrest
of Raymond polanski
as a result of a complaint
filed by the mother
of a 13-year-old female.
It was a year of anxiety,
a year of drama for me,
and I thought
that was simply enough.
Enough is enough.
And that was
my decision to leave.
You ran away, Roman.
You ran away.
Well, I, as you say, ran away,
because I think
that I was very unfortunate
to have a judge
who misused justice.
And he was playing with me
for the period of a year.
I think that I was
some kind of mouse
with which
some abominable cat
begins a sport.
Get that out of our face.
Please please.
We're trying to get through.
People were not in the habit
of calling me
at 2:00 in the morning.
So I was sleeping.
I picked up the phone
and they said,
"Roman's been arrested."
And I said, "what for?"
And they said,
"rape."
I said...
I just could not...
It just made no sense.
I mean, this is somebody
who could not be
a rapist, you know?
I mean, it's somebody I know
really really well.
- I was working west L.A.
- homicide
and I also handled sex crimes.
And I came in to work
and I had a crime report
on my desk
of a rape
that had been reported.
And Roman polanski was
the named suspect in it.
After I received the report
I started the follow-up.
I went to interview
the victim and her mother.
I did an extensive
interview with them,
made sure that any
physical evidence
would have been recovered
from her that she had,
and then I went
and talked to the district
attorney's office.
Vannatter came into the office
and we sat down and
he ran the case by me.
He showed me the incident
report, a crime report
taken by a couple
of patrol officers,
which is a narrative
of the facts and stuff.
Time was kind of of the essence,
so we got the search warrant.
It was for two locations...
It was for
Jack Nicholson's house
where the crime occurred
and also for polanski's suite
on the second floor of
the Beverly Wilshire hotel.
Me and my partner,
along with a narcotics officer,
proceeded with the search
warrant to the hotel.
We were walking in
and he was walking out
with a group of people,
obviously going out for the evening.
And I told Phil,
I said, "there he is."
And we stopped
because he would have
walked right on by us.
So we said, "Mr. Polanski, l.A.P.D.
We have to talk."
And he came out and he says,
"is this is gonna be
more than a few minutes?
If it is, I'll let my people go."
We said, "yes, it's going to
be more than a few minutes."
We proceeded up to his room and
completed the search warrant,
which... we did find
the camera equipment,
the film that we
ultimately had developed.
And it did show nude
pictures of the victim.
Totally nude?
Well, she was in a spa.
You could see the upper
portion of her body.
You couldn't see her whole body
because she was in the water.
But they were nude pictures.
Polanski was nervous.
He was upset.
And he is one of those
people that just talk.
And I suspect
he figures,
"well, if I talk and talk
I can probably talk my
way out of this thing."
He was like on a hyper high.
And he's constantly talking,
constantly fidgeting.
And he didn't perceive
having intercourse
with a 13-year-old girl
as against the law.
That was not in his culture.
You know, "so what?"
Type thing.
He didn't realize, I guess,
the laws of our country
as compared to other countries.
I'm not so sure that
Mr. Polanski was aware
of what being arrested
in America meant.
I know it's a very large
piece of news for all of you.
It's a lot of sensational stuff.
But try to go beyond it
and understand my position.
It's not the best
type of publicity,
not something I desire.
I have not much to tell you
except that I'm innocent.
When the case arrived here
there was an absolute
mob of publicity...
The associated press,
u.P.I.,
"New York times,"
"Los Angeles times,"
celebrity mags,
German reporters,
French reporters,
British reporters.
I had never seen
a media feeding frenzy before
and this courtroom embodied it.
You couldn't meet anybody,
whether he was known
or not known at all
who didn't have an opinion
about this case.
And it was one of
the biggest cases.
I didn't work
for weeks and months
on anything else but this case.
As the case progressed,
I was struck...
You know, how could
the same man be
two different things to two
different sets of press?
The European reporters
looked on polanski
as this tragic, brilliant
historic figure.
Here was this man
who had survived the holocaust,
who had survived
the gassing of his mother
and then had come here
and developed his own voice,
had maintained his integrity
against the power
of the Hollywood machine.
And the American press
tended to look at him
as this sort of
malignant twisted dwarf
with this dark vision.
Roman was the perfect
villain for them.
He was a foreigner.
He had a thick accent.
He made lots of money
in the movie business.
He was short.
He was perfect.
In California at that time,
had he not been who he was...
In other words, a famous
controversial director
with the legacy
of his wife's murder behind him,
the whole thing would have been
completely different.
Roman polanski is 32.
He has just completed
his fourth feature film,
"the vampire killers,"
set in the snow-covered
mountains of transylvania.
He both directs
and plays one
of the leading parts.
Hold it, boys.
Sharon, Sharon.
Looking at him, not at me.
Okay?
Yeah.
You know where.
Yeah.
Roman polanski
was born in France
of Polish parents.
They left there when he was three
and went to live in Poland.
I don't know, I think
I'm a nomad, you know?
But I...
I'm really strongly attached
to Polish background.
I've grown up in Poland.
My mother was killed
by Germans very soon
and my father was taken
to the concentration camp
after two years of war.
And then I was by myself.
One of the first films I've seen
was "snow white," you know?
And I think it influenced me
enormously forever.
And as you see, it's an enormous
influence in my work
like "repulsion"
and "cul-de-sac."
I always wanted
to be a director.
I knew I wanted to make movies.
I knew I wanted to be
a part of it.
I knew I wanted to create this.
An American producer
of Polish origin
suggested that I come to London
and make a film there.
London was fabulous.
You cannot imagine what it meant
for someone who lived
in the grey, drab
communist reality.
It was a very civilized
way of living,
rooms always full
of friendly faces.
You saw your friends every day
and there were lots of them...
Life without limits.
I got a phone call
from a friend of ours,
a mutual friend
who was a film producer.
And he said,
"I've got this friend"
who's coming to London
and he doesn't speak
any English.
"Can you take care
of him?"
I said, "sure,
send him round."
Roman was totally exceptional.
I was really drawn to him,
and so was everybody else.
Already an established
film director...
No one in London
had heard of him.
Few people had seen his films.
Yes yes yes.
Go, go again.
That was funny.
From coming as
a complete unknown,
I would say within six months
everybody knew him.
He was a charismatic fellow.
There are very few directors
who have Roman's personality
and also his appetite for life...
His appetite for life.
They met in London
because of a film that he made
called "the dance
of the vampires."
She was a remarkable person...
Beautiful, gentle,
unsophisticated
in the best sense of the word,
really a genuine human being.
They were great together
and of course it created
this fantastic love affair.
And it truly was a love affair.
Look, it all started
so long ago.
My real problems started then,
with the murder of Sharon Tate.
I was all right with the press
before that.
They... they wouldn't let it go.
So it's just the story
that will never go.
- Pardon me?
- Why did you want a gag order?
We didn't ask for a gag order.
Who did, Mr. Dalton?
No one asked for a gag order.
Then why did the judge
bring it up at this stage?
Well, maybe the judge
can answer that.
The topic of publicity
was discussed
and certain measures
were discussed
to try to control the publicity,
but no one asked
for a gag order as such.
There was an hour-long
discussion in the chambers.
Did that deal principally
with publicity problems?
Yes, a great part of it did.
What do you see as the problems
with publicity right now?
Well, the problem
with publicity is
there's been too much of it.
And of course for me
to go on television
and complain about publicity
is a little inconsistent.
Excuse me.
I've never spoken publicly
about this case before.
But if the story is to be told,
I want it to be told factually.
I know the facts.
I was there.
Can you give us your reaction
to the delay of
the start of the trial?
- My reaction to it?
- Yeah.
Well, I'm pleased.
In what way?
Well, there's a good deal
of work-up
that goes into any major case...
People have the right
to their own opinions
about what happened,
but they don't have the
right to their own facts.
The fact of polanski
leaving the country and so forth
seems to have eclipsed
the really important part
of this case
about what actually happened
to the system of justice.
I remain astounded
after all these years.
This case will never leave me.
Defense attorney Doug Dalton
had a very lincolnesque
quality about him,
dignified,
not given
to flamboyant gestures.
He doesn't raise his
voice in the courtroom.
He maintains this calm demeanor.
And he was the master
of negotiations.
The fact that Doug
Dalton was the attorney
indicated to me
that there would be
a negotiated plea arrived at
between the prosecution,
the defense and the judge.
Douglas Dalton was
a first-class lawyer
but he was definitely matched
by Roger gunson.
The district attorney's office
put gunson on the case...
A 37-year-old,
very straight-thinking mormon.
We are concerned with protecting
the privacy of the girl...
The complaining witness
in this case...
And it's my understanding
that there have been
foreign reporters
and investigators
who have attempted to contact
her and have interviews...
Gunson was the model
of rectitude.
He had that same kind of
handsome-schoolboy,
sparkling good looks
as Robert redford.
The rumor in the district
attorney's office was
that they picked gunson
to handle the case
because he was a mormon
and because he was the only
member of the d.A.'S office
who hadn't had sex
with an underage girl.
I heard some jokes about
why they gave it to me,
but I can't imagine
those are accurate.
There were a lot of prosecutors
who had an interest
in high-publicity cases.
Although I had had one
very high publicity case,
I was not one
that looked for them.
They were the perfect attorneys
to handle a case like this
where the evidence
and the players
were sensational,
were dramatic, flamboyant.
So you want two attorneys
who kept an even keel.
They were in that regard
very strikingly different
from the judge in the case.
When the grand jury
came back with the indictment,
judge rittenband,
who was very interested
in handling celebrity cases
obviously saw it
and realized that he wanted it
and went to the presiding judge
and said, "hey,
I want this case."
He was of course the senior
judge in Santa Monica,
which was the choice
location for any judge
because that's where you get
a lot of these
high-publicity cases.
Judge rittenband had handled
a Cary Grant paternity suit.
He had handled, well,
the Priscilla and Elvis divorce,
the Marlon Brando custody suit
that went on forever.
There were quite a few.
I spoke to judge rittenband
very frequently.
And he liked
being among the stars
but I don't think
he was starstruck.
Rittenband loved the press,
always had comments
for the press.
He wanted to shape
the way the press covered him.
Sitting up there on the bench,
he acted like a director,
a tyrannical director
calling the shots,
telling people when
to make their entrances,
what to say,
where to position themselves.
Well, we misspoke
ourselves, your honor.
There's obviously other
basis for the motion.
Yes, we don't need that anymore.
There were a lot of similarities
between judge rittenband
and Roman polanski.
Not too tall in stature.
He liked the ladies
and he loved to dance.
He had his friends
in the movie industry
which he'd see every day
at the hillcrest country club.
When I first met him
I was answering phones.
And he used to say
"I'm going to hillcrest.
I'm going to hillcrest."
And finally I stop and I says,
"what is going on
at hillcrest?"
You know,
"is your wife there?"
Because I didn't know
if he was married or not.
And he said,
"oh, I'm not married."
And I said,
"oh, okay."
I was 20 years old.
He was 34 years older.
He was 54 when I met him.
And we became friends.
Oh, golly,
practically every evening
he'd come here
and he'd sit over in that chair.
And he loved champagne.
So I'd get champagne
by the case.
"Judge rittenband," I said,
"what would you at your
age do with a girlfriend?"
He said, "I'd do the
same thing that you did"
and probably better."
And I said,
"tell me about it."
He said, "I got one that cooks"
and one that does
the other things."
Rittenband was known
as a hammer.
That means that
he was a tough judge
and a tough sentencer.
If you didn't make a deal
and you didn't have
the deal in place
when you went in there,
you were in trouble.
I don't remember any judge
that liked publicity
like rittenband did.
He had his bailiff
maintain a scrapbook
that went back many years
and if an article
appeared anywhere
about something involving
Lawrence j. Rittenband
it wound up in the scrapbook.
It was kept
somewhere in the court,
I think in the bailiff's desk,
and on occasion
would come out...
And be displayed.
Judge rittenband
was receiving requests
from people all over the world,
from news agencies
wanting one of the seats
in his courtroom.
He was soliciting reservations
for each one of these chairs.
So it was going to be
a real circus.
If you gentlemen would
just stand still,
Mr. Polanski
will stay here
and you can get your shot.
Because another trial
in the same courtroom
is taking much longer
than expected,
the rape trial of Roman polanski
has been delayed
until August 9th,
exactly eight years to the day
his late wife,
actress Sharon Tate,
was brutally murdered.
At that time rape victims' names
didn't get reported
in the press,
much less the names of minors
who were involved in sex cases.
But with the European
press there,
her name would come out,
exposed in the press,
her background exposed.
The fact that she had
had a prior relationship,
that she had taken
quaaludes before...
All of this
would have gotten out
and would have
forever haunted her.
Once we knew her name,
we knew where her school was,
we knew where her house was.
The French competition
were after this girl.
They were hunting this girl.
It was awful.
Everybody knew at school.
People came to school
with cameras
and things were being
said and printed.
The worst part was,
no one believed me.
Everybody thought
I was making it up.
It was so traumatic,
starting that night when
my mom called the police.
And the police come over and
they take you to the hospital,
then they take you
to the police station.
And the next morning we're getting
up at 6:30, we're going to court
where they're gonna sneak
you in and all these men
are gonna ask you
exactly what happened.
Then they're gonna
sit a lady behind you
you can't even see,
because then there's
a lady there.
All that stuff was so traumatic
that I never even had a chance
to really, you know,
worry about, you know,
what happened
that night with him.
It was like...
It just...
I had to worry about
surviving the next day.
The facts indicate that
before the alleged act
in this case
this girl had engaged
in sexual activity.
That's contained in reports
that we now have.
We want to know about it.
We want to know who was involved when.
We want to know
why these other people
were not prosecuted.
And this is a thing
we want to fully develop.
I would just as soon
have walked away from it
the next day.
But you can't stop it
once it starts.
I mean,
I just...
I just went in my room,
pretty much,
and just turned it off.
In "Chinatown,"
he exposed the dark side
of corruption.
In "repulsion,"
he explored a warped mind.
In "Rosemary's baby,"
he examined the occult.
Now something altogether new,
altogether chilling...
No one does it to you
like Roman polanski.
I wanted to find more out
about Mr. Polanski.
And luck have it,
the nuart theatre
right down the street
on Santa Monica boulevard
had a polanski film festival
right after the indictment
and before trial.
Murder and treason!
What have you done to its eyes?
Forget it, Jake.
It's Chinatown.
Every Roman polanski movie
has the theme...
Corruption meeting innocence
over water.
I says, "oh, well,
that's sort of what we have here..."
Corruption, Roman polanski,
meeting innocence,
the 13-year-old girl,
over water, meaning the jacuzzi.
I felt I was going to be able
to pretty well convey
to some jurors
that this happened
and he had directed a scene
very similar to this
in his real life.
You'd better have
your legs tied down
in case of convulsions.
"Rosemary's baby"
was such a great movie
and was so well made
that people took it
for the real thing.
This is no dream!
This is really happening!
After that Roman had
this reputation
of maybe having been
a little bit
in league with the devil
himself.
It didn't hurt him.
People were very intrigued
and it was
kind of sexy in a way.
He had a tremendous power
over people.
You had to fall in love
with him, you know.
It was completely infectious.
There was no resisting him.
And every day was so vibrant
because he felt so passionately
about what he was doing
and he was on an adventure.
One of the things that
you are renowned for
is your recklessness.
You say that you're a reckless person.
- Do I say that?
- You say that very frequently
to all sorts of people you talk
to, though clearly
you're going to deny every
single syllable of it tonight.
- Really?
- Mm.
I mean, are you
a reckless person?
Are you afraid of anything?
I am reckless,
but I don't tell people about it.
Roman found California
fantastic.
Of Los Angeles he says...
Everything is easy here.
You want to learn karate...
You can learn karate.
You want to play chess...
You can play chess.
You want to drive racing cars...
You can drive racing cars.
Everything is accessible
in this town.
"Rosemary's baby"
was a huge hit.
Roman was on top of the world.
Nothing could have been better.
He was in love with Sharon.
They were having great parties.
He was going all over the world.
When he was the toast
of the industry,
he was hanging out
with all the people
that everybody wanted
to hang out with.
Everybody wanted
a piece of Roman
because the work
was so original.
- Roman, Sharon.
- Hi.
This is the very
beautiful Sharon Tate
who I am sure
you've seen in films.
And her husband,
very talented Roman polanski,
best known for his original
film "knife in the water,"
which he wrote and directed.
And he's also responsible
for "Rosemary's baby,"
the picture.
And I think a little
later we'll get a chance
to sit down and
talk a little bit
- about sex and films.
- Anytime.
Certainly it was a happy time
for all of us.
Roman was happy.
He was with beautiful Sharon.
Everyone loved her.
He loved her.
I loved her.
We all loved her.
He was so insecure
about so many things.
Knowing about his childhood...
He didn't have
the blueprint for life
that others had.
One hoped for Roman, you know,
that this brand-new life
with a woman who loved him
and who seemed so right for him,
with a baby,
that there would be
this security
that he had not had in his life,
and in a new homeland.
I mean, the future was his,
we thought.
And then everything
just collapsed.
Well, we were preparing a film
that I was going to produce
called "the day
of the dolphin."
We were writing
the script in London.
Roman was a perfectionist.
He was always,
"we'll finish it in a couple of days
and then do the rest
in L.A."
It was a Saturday.
And the phone rang
and I picked it up.
It was our agent bill tennant
who was on the phone.
And I immediately realized
that something was
terribly wrong.
I mean, he was a very
stable kind of guy.
He was absolutely distraught.
And I said,
"what is it?"
And he said, you know,
something like "they're all dead.
They're all dead."
I realized something
awful had happened
and I gave the phone to Roman.
And...
I've never seen
anything like it.
You know, I saw somebody
just disintegrate
in front of my eyes.
This was at the home
of movie director Roman polanski
and it was his wife Sharon Tate
who was one of the victims.
She too had
repeated stab wounds.
One of the victims had a
hood placed over his head.
And the word "pig" was
written in blood on the door.
- We flew to L.A.
- the next day.
He was devastated,
devastated to a point
that I've never seen
any other human being
in that kind of condition.
And I remember
picking up
the sunday newspapers.
I was already reasonably aware
of how the press functions.
Their business is
selling newspapers.
The story was basically
how Roman had flown
to Los Angeles,
murdered them all
and then come back.
I mean, this was actually
in the newspapers,
in the headlines.
The nature of the murders,
you know, satanism,
"Rosemary's baby,"
"this is the guy who made
'Rosemary's baby.'"
he knew so much about it.
He couldn't have known
so much about it without
actually being involved in it.
And so he must have been
part of the cult.
And there was a cult.
And they were murdered.
"And who gets murdered
in this kind of way?"
It was a typical example
of the victim's
being responsible
for their own death.
It was shocking.
It was truly unbelievable.
The last day I talked to her
was a few hours before
the tragedy happened.
You are certainly curious
about my relationship
with Sharon
within last few months.
I can tell you
that the last few months
as much as the last few years
I spent with her...
Were the only time
of true happiness in my life.
And facts
which will be coming out
day after day
will make ashamed
a lot of newsmen
who for a selfish reason
write unbearable for me,
horrible things
about my wife.
After Sharon was murdered
really everybody was
totally freaked out.
It was a very weird time,
the highest paranoia,
the transition
of this sort of hippie
kind of existence in L.A.
To this brutal awakening
of an understanding
that these kind of absolutely
horrible events can happen.
No one locked their doors.
No one thought about
that there was
any kind of threat.
That ended at the end
of the '60s
and simultaneously
changed everything
overnight in L.A.
It was the end
of a fairy tale, really,
in Roman's life,
in everybody's life.
He would have been
a father of a son
who would have now been,
what, 30 years old?
Maybe he would have had
other children,
probably would have continued
living in California.
Who knows?
How does one survive?
When you know his childhood...
He's a very very strong
human being.
I think that the idea
of the magnet of tragedy
started after the Tate murders.
He was living out in Malibu
and the neighbors were all,
like, horrified
because somehow if he was
in the house next door
there was going to be
another mass murder.
I mean, people are
just too weird.
I tell you, it's crazy.
- Hold it there, kitty-cat!
- Hold it.
Hello, Claude.
Where did you get the midget?
You're a very nosy fellow,
kitty-cat.
Do you know what happens
to nosy fellows?
Huh? No?
Wanna guess?
Huh? No?
Okay, they lose their noses.
Next time you'll lose
the whole thing...
Cut if off and feed it
to my goldfish.
Roman was different
when I met him
on "Chinatown."
He was still a guy
that loved life.
There was just
this real dark shadow
that he had to deal with
every day...
That, you know,
there were people who were constantly,
"so what was it like, you know,
when Sharon...
When your wife was killed?"
Do you hate certain
members of the press
for the way you were treated
after your wife's murder?
Well, yes, to be honest, I do.
But I wouldn't call it
a hatred now, you see.
It's somehow evolved
to just indifference.
And I simply don't read it
and try to avoid it.
Yeah.
But in general,
I despise the press tremendously
for its inaccuracy,
for its irresponsibility
and for its
often even deliberate cruelty.
And all this is
for lucrative purposes.
If one of your complaints
is the way the press
misrepresents you...
And that is one of your
complaints, isn't it?
Then surely it would be
a good tactic
to give them the minimum
possible target.
Yes, but then you have to...
You have to change
your lifestyle
completely and go into hiding.
It seems like, say,
six months after the murders
you're in the alps
and consorting
with these girls from the
finishing school and so on.
I can see how you would sort of
try to lose yourself like that.
But is it wise to say so?
Yes, it is wise to say so.
Why not?
Why wouldn't it be
wise to say so?
That's the way it was.
And that's the way it is.
You know, I mean, just...
Different people
have different way
of seeing life
and relationships.
It's not necessarily the
same with you than me.
And people react
in different ways to grief.
Some go to a monastery,
others start
visiting whorehouses.
He decided he was gonna survive,
and the way he was gonna survive
is through his talent
and having fun.
Whether it was dinner for four
and he was holding court
with some idea he had,
or whether it was a group
of 30 or 40 or 50,
he liked to be
the center of it all.
He was a wonderful host,
almost like a dance master.
He kept it all sort of stirred.
It gave him enormous pleasure.
And after Sharon
I think he didn't want
to be alone too much.
It's not so good to be alone.
Everybody knows
the best way to get
close to your dream
is to get to know
a star, a real star.
Polanski after "Chinatown"
was not only a real star,
he was "the Roman polanski,"
a big name.
She wouldn't mind
being discovered
by a man like Roman polanski.
After all, she had seen
in the French "vogue"
pictures of nastassja kinski
who was 15 when she started
her affair with Roman polanski,
or Roman started it with her.
And everybody had the opinion
if polanski wouldn't have done
this photo layout
with nastassja,
she would have never become
such a well-known young star.
He was a friend of a guy
my sister was dating.
And he wanted girls to model.
And I was modeling and acting
and wanted, you know,
to be in the business.
So that was a great
opportunity, you know.
We signed right up.
"Sure, have my pictures taken
by Roman polanski.
Sounds great."
Susie gaily,
the mother
of the alleged victim,
introduced herself
as an actress to polanski.
And she had done
some work in films.
Well, I was innocent, see.
And that's the truth.
What else can I say?
I remember vaguely
meeting the mother
at some party...
You know,
like, "hi."
And then I was away
and then heard
about all of this.
But just in what I was told
and what I read,
I kept going back
to the same question...
"why did the mother
bring her 13-year-old
daughter into this group?"
Especially if she had
spent time with them
and all the things
that she said subsequently
were true... wouldn't you keep
your 13-year-old daughter
away from that?
You know, this was a guy
that had a pretty
wild reputation.
He was known as a womanizer.
He's a partygoer.
He certainly had a lot
of women over the years
and he loved young women.
Why would her mother allow her
to be alone with polanski?
I don't like... you always
get the "where was your mom?"
It's like, you know,
give my mom a break.
You know, it's not her fault.
And so...
You know, I don't like hearing
anybody's opinion on it.
Like, every time
someone brings it up,
and they're doing their little,
you know, banter on t.V.
It's like, you weren't there.
You don't know.
What are you talking about?
You're saying how I felt,
what happened,
how you feel about polanski.
You have no idea.
And you're on the news
making all these statements
and thousands of people are
listening to you and... shut up.
Another hearing
on the admissibility
of the Beverly Wilshire
hotel records
has been set for next Friday.
From Santa Monica,
fernell Chapman,
news center 4.
I was instrumental
in arranging the plea bargain
because as I looked
at this family and Samantha,
I thought...
At the time some
people knew her name
and some of the kids at
school knew who she was.
I thought it was important
to try to maintain
her anonymity,
anonymity which
would have disappeared
if the case had gone to trial.
And so I tried to persuade
the district attorney
who had a new
plea bargaining policy,
a tough plea bargaining policy.
I said, "I'm not gonna do it."
I have no interest
in doing it."
And so what he decided was...
He says, "well,
I'm gonna do it myself."
The l.A.P.D. Brought
the evidence envelope
to this courthouse building
and brought it in,
actually, to this room.
There were about
five, six or seven men
standing around,
looking, peering down
at this evidence envelope
and someone takes it
and turns it and opens it
and out falls
these little girl's panties.
And so there was
this enormous court battle
over property
that belonged to her
as to what was
to be done with them.
And judge rittenband decided
to cut it in half
and give half to the prosecution
and half to the defense.
The defense expert went over
and put on his latex gloves
and came back and then started
operating on these
copper panties.
If you can imagine the humor
of about seven men
sitting around a table...
...trying to identify
any stains
and to make sure that
the cut, or the piece,
includes part of that stain.
And they were fighting...
"no no, it has to be"
just a little to this way.
No, it should be over here.
"We shouldn't cut that way
at all, we should cut..."
so finally they made the cut.
What we understood was
that Dalton was going
to take his half
and submit it to a lab.
I also understood that the lab
was about to give
its report in two weeks.
And two weeks
and three days later
Dalton called me on the phone,
clearly now, I think,
having the results
of the lab report,
saying, you know,
"what do you think would happen"
if we pursued a plea bargain
"with the prosecution?"
At which point...
At that point I realized
that now polanski
had an interest,
that the stain in the panties
was going to be brutal
evidence for them.
The prosecution
had loaded polanski up
with multiple charges.
The only one
he was willing to admit
and to plead guilty to
was that he had had
consensual sex with the minor.
Mr. Dalton asked,
"could it be a misdemeanor..."
and I says, "no."
"... That he not go
to state prison?"
I says, "no, that's got
to be open."
And so he agreed to all those
and we agreed that it'd be
unlawful sexual intercourse...
The lowest count
that related to the gravamen.
The agreement was
that polanski would plead guilty
to the one count,
that he would be sentenced
based upon the probation report
and the argument of counsel.
At that time the sentence
for unlawful
sexual intercourse was
what they characterized as
an indeterminate sentence,
so you're sent to state prison
for anywhere from six
months to 50 years.
I checked and
there hadn't been anyone
sent to prison for a
conviction of this offense
in the year preceding
Roman polanski's case.
I thought it was
a very good disposition,
for the reason
that it vindicated
the family and the girl
and it exposed
Mr. Polanski
to significant time in custody
based upon a probation report.
By entering his guilty plea,
polanski avoided going to trial,
a trial that was
to have begun tomorrow,
the eighth anniversary
of his wife's death
at the hands of
the Charles manson family.
Standing with his lawyer
Douglas Dalton,
polanski was asked by deputy
district attorney Roger gunson
to what count he pleaded guilty.
"I had intercourse"
with a female person,
not my wife,
"who was under
18 years of age."
"How old did you think
the girl was?"
"I understood she was 13."
The plea bargaining
was the result
of a request by attorney
Lawrence silver,
representing the girl's family.
Silver asked
judge Lawrence rittenband
to accept the plea
and protect the girl
from the glare of publicity.
"A stigma would attach
to her for a lifetime
and justice is not made
of such stuff."
Judge rittenband
in accepting the guilty plea
ordered polanski to be
examined by two psychiatrists.
Sentencing will come after that,
when the judge could
declare the director
a mentally disordered
sex offender.
That could result in commitment
to a state mental hospital.
Other possible sentences include
one year in county jail,
up to 50 years
in a state prison,
deportation or probation.
We took our chances,
obviously, here
because we had no idea
or no way of knowing
what the probation department
would conclude.
Judge rittenband appointed me
to evaluate Mr. Polanski
for purposes of determining
whether he was at that time
a mentally disordered
sex offender,
which was a legal term
having to do with an individual
who, by reason
of a mental disorder,
was predisposed
to the commission
of sexual offenses
that rendered him a danger
to the health and safety
of others.
He was a very congenial
but somewhat reserved guy
who was very straightforward
in the interview.
As experiences go,
Roman polanski has had more
than what would impact
on a dozen people,
in terms of his life
as a child, confusion.
And ultimately he gets
what he feels
is a stable relationship
and that's taken away from him
at the snap of a finger.
He had difficulty
in developing relationships
with women after that.
I think he felt
very very hesitant,
maybe out of fear.
My opinion paralleled
the recommendation
of the probation department.
I didn't talk about whether he
should or should not go to jail.
I really focused solely
on the psychiatric issues.
And it was my opinion
that Mr. Polanski
did not qualify as a mentally
disordered sex offender
and should not be
handled as such.
My feeling was
the guy belonged
in state prison.
Rittenband had asked me
about it.
I said, "judge,
you're gonna give this guy probation."
He said, "no no, I want
to send him to jail."
I said, "you'll never do it."
Because the first thing
that's gonna happen
"when you sentence him is,
he's gonna appeal it."
"I'm gonna give him
a year in a county jail"...
That would be the sentence
they'd appeal immediately.
"I'm gonna give him weekends
in a county jail"...
Immediate appeal.
No matter what the sentence was
if it included a day in jail,
Dalton, and correctly so,
would have appealed it.
And it's gonna go all the way up
to the state supreme court.
He has the money
and he'll take it
to the U.S. supreme court
if he thinks he can.
He says, "well, what am I
going to do?"
The judge called me
into chambers.
He looked at me and said,
"dick, tell me,
what the hell do I do
with polanski?"
I went, "whoa, your honor",
that's your decision,
that's not mine.
I'm a reporter.
"I can't advise you
on something like that."
I hadn't been covering
courts that long,
but I knew a decision by a judge
was supposed to be
a decision by a judge
and was not to take in
any advice
from any other person
other than what was there
in the law books,
what had been entered
into evidence in the case.
He says, "well, what am I
going to do?"
Or what should I do?"
I said, "you know,
what you should do"
is send him up
for 90-day observation."
A "12.03.03"
is a diagnostic study
where a defendant
on a felony case
is sent to chino
for a 90-day observation.
It's like an in-depth
probation report.
And he said, "well,
what will that do?"
I said, "it's not
a final sentence."
He can't appeal it.
He has to go."
We were very pleased
when we got
the probation report.
It recommended
that polanski serve
no time in custody
and receive a straight
probationary sentence.
However, we received a call
from judge rittenband
asking us to come to chambers,
that he wanted to discuss
the matter with us.
A probation officer,
Roger gunson and I
all went into his chambers
for a meeting.
At that time the judge said
he was not going to follow
the recommendation
of the probation department.
He had decided
that as punishment for polanski
he was going to send him to
the state prison at chino
for a diagnostic study.
Gunson and the probation
officer both protested.
I told him that the law was
that the diagnostic study
was not to be used as punishment
or as someone's sentence.
The courts are not
supposed to use that.
And his response was,
"I don't want
to send Mr. Polanski"
to county jail
because I don't want
to be responsible
"if he were to be injured
or killed."
I said, "judge,
we had not expected this."
Polanski is engaged right now
in directing a large movie
that involves many people,
millions of dollars.
"This is going to cause
a tremendous hardship."
And he suggested
that I request a stay,
the "stay" meaning "to defer"
or put off this diagnostic study
in order for polanski to be able
to complete his work
on the film.
What he wanted to do was
have us go out into open court
and pretend as though...
I don't know if he used
the word "pretend,"
but not to divulge that we knew
what was going to happen.
He said, "I want you to go out",
gunson, and you argue
that polanski should be
placed in custody.
And Dalton, you go out
and you argue
that he should be
put on probation.
Then I will make my remarks
and I will sentence him to chino
for the diagnostic study.
And the press need not know
anything more about this.
If you do not tell
the press about this
and if polanski receives
a good report
from the probation department,
which we all are
quite sure he will,
"that will conclude
his punishment."
I wasn't going to argue
about it.
Polanski's fate
hung in the balance.
If I started protesting
about the diagnostic study
rittenband could well have said,
"well, I'll just
send him to prison.
How would you
like that?"
That was
the... fabrication
that he...
The scenario that he
wanted to present
and he did present.
This thing had reached the point
where it was actually
becoming surreal.
Gunson and I walked
into the courtroom
which was packed
with newsmen and spectators.
We took our places
at the counsel table,
sat down and waited
for the entrance
of judge rittenband.
I argued first.
It was a very strange feeling
to be arguing
when I knew exactly
what the result was going to be.
It was like having a mock trial.
In law school we did this,
we had staged trials
and so forth,
but even then we didn't know
what result was going to be.
But we dutifully went out.
I argued for probation.
I tried to make it sound
as authentic as I could.
Gunson got up
and made his argument.
And then rittenband proceeded
to give his closing remarks
which had been obviously
prepared in advance.
He argued much better
than either one of us.
And as I sat there
and listened, I thought,
"I think I see
what's happening here."
He knows that this is
a probation case.
The probation department
has recommended probation.
Chino will very likely
recommend the same thing.
And he wants to condition
the press and public to the fact
that when he puts polanski
on probation,
that they see
the basis that he used
"in arriving
at that conclusion."
After 20 minutes in court
before superior judge
Lawrence rittenband,
film director Roman polanski
and his lawyer Douglas Dalton
emerged from the courtroom
amidst a crush of
reporters and cameramen.
Dalton had asked the court
to place polanski on probation,
arguing that, though the crime
of unlawful intercourse
is a serious one,
it is not a unique crime.
The prosecutor,
deputy district attorney Roger gunson,
asked that polanski
be placed in custody,
though it was noted
that the 13-year-old girl
in the case and her family
had asked the court not to
incarcerate the film director.
On the basis of two
psychiatric evaluations,
the judge ruled
that polanski was not
a mentally disordered
sex offender,
but he did order polanski
to undergo
90-days' further
psychiatric testing
at chino state prison,
postponing a final sentence
until the testing is completed.
Judge rittenband
granted polanski
a three-month stay to
conclude his present work.
At the end of that time
the film director
will go to chino state prison
for 90-days' diagnostic testing.
Robin groth, n.B.C. News,
Santa Monica.
- Why are you leaving the country, sir?
- Sorry?
- Why are you leaving the country?
- Where?
You're gonna leave the
country on a business trip?
- Yes.
- Can you tell us about that trip?
I'm going to Paris.
Will you come back?
Will I come back?
I certainly will.
Don't worry.
Dino just called up and said,
"wonderful news.
My god, Lorenzo, we got Roman.
We got Roman."
It was a potboiler...
Pearl divers getting
caught in a giant clam
and all that stuff.
And Roman had reasonable
contempt for the script...
Not a picture that
Roman would have done.
And I imagine... again,
I didn't discuss it,
but basically nobody else,
I presume,
would hire him at that time.
And de laurentiis,
seeing a chance to get
a great director
who otherwise he couldn't
possibly have approached
for this project,
stepped in immediately.
It was a coup, a triumph,
you know, taking advantage
of this guy's troubles
to some extent.
Better luck for Roman
would have been a judge
that never allowed him
to go to Europe at all.
Roman called me and said,
"listen,
I'm here in Munich.
Can we meet?"
I said,
"of course."
And we decided to go
in the evening
to see the oktoberfest.
Roman actually didn't want to go
but we said,
"you have to see that"
because this is unbelievable.
You have never seen
10,000 people
in a tent, drunken.
"I mean,
you must see that."
He said, "okay,
I'll go with you."
So finally we went
to a special box.
I was with my girlfriend
and two other girlfriends,
you know?
Most unfortunately,
he was photographed,
caught in a pose
sitting in between two girls.
It was quite innocent, but,
you know, photographs...
They say a photograph
doesn't lie.
Nothing lies
more than a photograph.
Lorenzo semple,
Jr.: Roman always did have bad luck.
This is the kind of thing
that a cautious person
would not have dreamed of doing.
I mean, they would
have had themselves
photographed in the cathedral
or doing something like that.
That one photograph
changed everything.
I took it into rittenband
because I figured it was
something he ought to see.
And what I told him was,
"you know, judge,"
you've made so many mistakes,
I think, in this case.
Lookit, he's giving you the finger.
He's flipping you off.
"Haven't you had
enough of this?"
He says,
"what? What?
He's not getting away
with that."
The judge became furious
when this appeared in the paper.
He was interviewed
by a Hollywood gossip
columnist, Marilyn Beck.
Rittenband told me
that he had been duped.
I really believe
he had been duped.
In the interview he said
that very possibly he wanted
polanski back in the country
and polanski could be on
his way to prison now.
That photograph
embarrassed the judge.
Mr. Polanski
is supposed to be
very focused and intent
when he's working.
And this photograph demonstrated
that at that moment
in time he was not.
Why was he in Germany?
He should have been
working hard on a movie.
Could you clear up that
current misunderstanding?
The judge ordered Roman
to come back to the states
and he called dino in
to testify.
Dino explained
through me as the translator
that we were going on
with the production
and the preparation
of the production,
and that this was just part
of the whole thing
of making movies.
Mr. De laurentiis,
could you explain
why you sent Mr. Polanski
to Germany?
Roman was still working
when he was in Munich
because the distributor
convinced Roman
to come there
and spend the night
or go out for a few drinks
and at the same time
talk about "hurricane."
I've already explained.
I've already explained.
I don't think
the judge knew that
or understood that.
And most of all,
he didn't believe it.
- Okay, now step aside, please.
- Let 'em through.
De laurentiis testified,
Roman testified.
There was no evidence
at all to the contrary.
I rested my case.
And the ruling had to be,
of course,
that he was there
on business purposes.
And that was the finding
of the judge.
I told him, you know,
"you just have to bear up"
and go through this
and remember
at the conclusion of this
this case will be over.
You'll have no further
time in custody
"and it will all be
behind you."
That's Dalton?
Yeah, that was Dalton,
his lawyer.
Mr. Dalton, has Mr. Polanski
talked to you
about his reaction
to coming here
for this almost
three-month period?
Yes, he has.
Excuse me,
I have some business
to conduct in here.
Has he indicated to you as
to what his feelings are?
Mr. Polanski, do you have
any statement at all?
Mr. Polanski,
do you have any statement at all?
Mr. Polanski,
do you have any statement at all
regarding this 90-day psychiatric
study that you've come in for?
- No.
- No statement whatsoever?
What are your immediate
thoughts right now?
Any thoughts that
you have at all?
Will he be given any special
consideration here?
Nothing other than anybody
else that would come in.
When we talk about
special housing
and special consideration,
what we're talking about is...
Everybody that comes in,
we screen them
for possible protective
custody housing.
But we're concerned
for his safety.
- There were sketches.
- There were locations.
People had been up to
chino and talked to Roman.
I mean, he was prepping
the movie from chino.
Dino and I went to visit Roman.
Dino, of course, was concerned
as to what was going
to happen with his film.
I was kind of shocked
when we saw Roman.
We were sitting outside
at a table,
outside of the prison.
He was nervous,
always looking over his shoulder
to see what was in back of him.
He said that he was
concerned about
what the other prisoners
would do to him
if they could get near him
because he was accused
of being a child molester.
It was very grim
and it was a very
frightening place.
You know, this is a hard core...
You know, murderers.
Roman was not safe there.
People get killed there.
Polanski of course
was delighted.
He felt, as properly he should,
that he had lived up
to his obligations in the case...
He had admitted his guilt,
he served the sentence
that had been imposed...
And now it was over and he
could go on with his life.
I was quite surprised.
Everyone in the criminal
justice system is aware
that 90-day diagnostic studies
take less than 90 days.
There are not very many
people, I would guess,
who have had the experience
of it only being 42.
That's not a punishment.
A punishment...
You know, he was charged
with very serious crimes.
You're talking about crimes
that would incur
state prison time,
maybe 10, 15, 20 years
in state prison.
A 13-year-old girl,
where he had sexual
intercourse with her,
sodomized her, gave her drugs,
gave her alcohol.
He got off with nothing.
Mr. Gunson, it's usually
the practice
of the district
attorney's office
to prosecute the defendant
to the fullest degree.
You've deviated apparently
in this case. Why?
Why did you agree to
copping out on the plea
if he should have had a
full trial with charges?
What do you mean, "copping out"?
Between the time
that the judge agreed
that the 90-day diagnostic
study be his sentence,
there had been lots
of news media reports
very critical of the judge.
And now that it appears
that Mr. Polanski
will be walking away from a rape
after just serving 42 days,
it's going to be
embarrassing to the judge
and he needs to overcome it.
My father was at the
hillcrest country club
washing his hands
in the locker room,
and standing next to him
was judge rittenband.
And one of gentlemen
at hillcrest
came up to rittenband and said,
"are you really gonna
let that little Polish
blah-blah-blah off?"
And rittenband said,
"well, he thinks so, but no way."
We're gonna put that
little blank-blank away
"for the rest
of his life."
When we met in his chambers,
at this time
judge rittenband said
that he wasn't going to honor
the promise that he had made
about releasing polanski
upon completion
of the diagnostic study.
He gave as his reason
that he was getting
too much criticism.
The judge says that 42 days
is not enough time in custody,
that he expected him
to be in there 90 days.
And so somehow he has to make up
these 48 days
of the intended sentence of 90.
Now gunson at this point said,
"if it's 48 more days you want,"
why don't you
just give him 48 days
in the county jail?
And then you will have
accomplished
"him serving the full
90 days in jail."
And rittenband said,
no, he was not willing
to do that
because the perception
of a prison sentence
must be maintained
for the press.
He told me
that if I would
come back to court
after the press was gone
and the public was gone,
that he would then
recall polanski
and he would be
released from prison.
It became obvious to me
that he wanted him deported
because he did not
want him around here
embarrassing the judge
any more than he already had.
He wanted Roman to agree
that he would voluntarily waive
any rights he may have
regarding deportation.
Rittenband had no jurisdiction
over such matters.
And it is illegal
to impose an illegal condition
upon somebody
serving time in custody.
And so we now are in a category
of actual illegal conduct.
This was getting
rather contentious,
as you might understand,
and I said, "if we're
going to do that, judge",
I want to have a hearing
regarding the sentencing
as we're entitled to do.
And I want to have
witnesses here
"and I want
to have a hearing."
And he said, "well,
I'm going to sentence him anyway."
And if you still insist
on having your hearing
then I may withdraw these things
that I told you that I would do
if you went along
with this thing
"that I'm going
to do tomorrow."
The proceeding
was concluded by...
Judge rittenband,
as he had done before,
directed me to argue
for probation.
He wanted gunson to, again,
argue for time in custody.
And then he would
impose the sentence
that he had discussed with us.
I certainly was not arguing
for state prison in chambers,
nor did I intend to argue
that he should send him
to state prison
to participate in this sham
that the judge was involved in.
We got up, we walked
out of the room.
I remember
saying immediately to gunson,
"I'm not going to do this again."
No matter what he does,
"I'm not gonna participate
in this thing."
And gunson said, "I'm not
going to do it either."
As we walked down the aisle
past the chairs of an empty
courtroom at that time,
Doug Dalton
turned to me and said,
"do you think that I can
trust the judge?"
And I said
something that I wish
I hadn't said.
Maybe it did or didn't
make a difference,
but I shouldn't have said it.
And what I said to him was,
"I don't know why not.
You trusted him once."
I didn't know
what I was going to do
the following day.
I did know that I was no
longer going to participate
in a proceeding that was
being designed solely
to advance the purposes
of judge rittenband.
I told Mr. Dalton
that I would be available to...
Disclose this information
to anyone at any place
at any time.
I contacted Roman
and I said for them
to come to my office
and discuss what was
going to happen
the following morning.
I told them it was my opinion
that the sentence
would be illegal,
that we could probably
obtain relief on appeal,
but that would involve
a long procedure
and polanski would be
incarcerated
during that period of time.
I said that the judge had said
that if Roman agreed to waive
any deportation hearing
and be deported,
that he would then be released
if he also had by then
served 48 days.
Roman said to me,
"can we trust him?"
And I said,
"no, we can't trust him."
We have no idea what he may do.
We've all agreed
that he can no longer be trusted
"and what he represents
to us is worthless."
With that, Roman got up,
looked at me
and I believe he said,
"I'll see you guys later."
And he left the room.
There were two or three
other people there.
And I gave Roman an envelope,
which I thought was script notes
or something else.
The general feeling I had is,
"why is everybody
so nervous?"
There was an electricity
in the air.
...have to do with
what was my conversation
with Mr. Polanski.
My conversation with him
is protected
by the attorney/client
privilege.
I can't divulge to you
the substance or the content
of my conversation with him.
Only to say
what I said in court...
That he did call me
this morning at my home
and he told me
he would not be here.
I asked him to call me again
because I wanted to discuss
this with him further
and attempt to
persuade him to return.
He said he would call me again.
Doug, the court asked you
whether you thought
you might be able to talk
him into coming back.
What was your response?
I said I thought I had
a reasonable chance
of being successful.
How will you try to do it?
Can you tell us
what makes you think
- he's out of the country?
- No, I can't tell you that.
My belief is that
he's not in the country.
What happens if he does not come
back, Mr. Dalton?
Then the court goes ahead and...
Roman polanski is in seclusion,
his friends say,
inside this fashionable building
in downtown Paris where
he keeps an apartment.
He skipped the country
early yesterday
only hours before he was to be sentenced
for illegally having sex with...
He had given her
champagne and a quaalude.
He has told a friend here
his refrigerator is full,
and he does not intend to leave.
Many feel the aura of tragedy
and sensationalism
that surrounds polanski
obscures his brilliance
as a director.
The judge in the Roman
polanski morals case
said today he intended to
send polanski back to prison.
"A year of torture
is enough."
...has begun proceedings
to force polanski
back to the United States.
However, authorities are not
optimistic about succeeding.
Unfortunately, I'm advised
that the treaty with France
might not allow for his
return to this country,
at our request,
to be sentenced on this charge.
Why is that?
As far as I can tell,
the treaty only specifies,
number one, rape.
As you know, Mr. Polanski
was not convicted of rape.
He was convicted of
unlawful sexual intercourse,
and that's a different
crime than rape.
Secondly, the treaty specifies
that it's discretionary
on the part of France
to return French citizens.
In other words,
they have an option.
They can or they can't,
depending on how they feel
about a particular case or maybe
even possibly a particular person.
Whether the d.A.
Succeeds in extraditing polanski or not,
judge Lawrence rittenband plans
to impose polanski's
sentence on February 14th,
with or without
the filmmaker's presence.
The length of time
of course would depend
upon whether or not
there would be a deportation,
or if not deported
involuntarily,
he would agree with the
director of immigration
to consent in writing
to leaving the country...
In which case,
any balance of his stay
in state prison
would be cut short.
But it was to be no less
than the full period of 90 days.
The judge held
a press conference.
Shock waves went through
the judicial community.
A judge holding
a press conference
regarding a pending case...
Totally unheard of.
He said that he intended now
to sentence polanski
in absentia.
So I prepared
a challenge for cause
to disqualify a judge.
If you do this,
you're required to prove
that there are actual prejudices
existing by the judge
and that you can't have
a fair trial
or a fair hearing before him.
I showed the declaration
to Roger gunson.
He read it very carefully.
He agreed...
"that's true.
That's what happened.
I will back you up
if need be."
The judge was furious.
He knew the statements in the
declaration were all true.
He knew that I knew it,
he knew that gunson knew it
and he knew that Larry
silver knew parts of it.
And so there was nothing
he could do but step aside.
He was through and he knew it.
I was young,
but the way I felt was,
the judge was enjoying
the publicity
and he didn't care about
what happened to me
and he didn't care about
what happened to polanski.
He was, like,
orchestrating some little show,
you know, that I didn't
want to be in.
I clearly hold no brief
for Mr. Polanski.
And obviously what he did to
Samantha, my client,
was wrong and outrageous,
but nevertheless, he was supposed
to be treated fairly in court
and he clearly was not.
I'm not surprised that he left
under those circumstances.
Really?
Yeah.
Jesus. Wow.
Clive, I think it was
a wonderful idea
to do this interview
over this lunch,
but the lunch is getting
into a dinner now.
And in case if you have in mind
finishing this interview,
I wanted to ask you
whether you intend
to end on this note,
or do you think there's
something more to my life
than my relations
with young women?
He rebuilt his life in France
with great honor.
He's a member of
the academie francaise.
And in France he's desired,
and in America he's wanted.
Permettez-moi de vous adresser
un tres chaleureux merci.
And the Oscar...
Goes to Roman polanski
for "the pianist."
The academy congratulates
Roman polanski
and accepts this award
on his behalf.
you mean?
Granted that it's
too easy and a cliche
to connect your work
with your life
in such a direct manner.
Let me take the example
of "Chinatown."
"Chinatown" is really a movie
about justice not winning.
Is that what you
had come to believe?
No, not at all.
But if you want your film
to serve any purpose,
if you want to show injustice
or corruption of Los
Angeles in that period,
you have to show that
injustice somehow won
and leave them
with a feeling of frustration.
I hope you don't mind if
I just reach across here
and grab a couple of these nuts.
Me too.
Anyway, that's... that's fiction.
And I think this
probably may be still
in the land of fiction,
edging toward fact.
When they...
When the newspapers and
the magazines and the books
talk about you and little
girls, all right,
is there anything in it?
Well, I like young women,
let's put it this way.
I think most of men do,
actually.
Yeah, but the question turns on how
young, doesn't it?
Well, yes.
Here you've come
to a concrete case
for which I have been
behind bars.
That's what you want
to talk about.
But what exactly
would you like me to tell you?
Mr. Polanski!
A question here,
Mr. Polanski!
The Los Angeles
police department
today announced the arrest
of Raymond polanski
as a result of a complaint
filed by the mother
of a 13-year-old female.
It was a year of anxiety,
a year of drama for me,
and I thought
that was simply enough.
Enough is enough.
And that was
my decision to leave.
You ran away, Roman.
You ran away.
Well, I, as you say, ran away,
because I think
that I was very unfortunate
to have a judge
who misused justice.
And he was playing with me
for the period of a year.
I think that I was
some kind of mouse
with which
some abominable cat
begins a sport.
Get that out of our face.
Please please.
We're trying to get through.
People were not in the habit
of calling me
at 2:00 in the morning.
So I was sleeping.
I picked up the phone
and they said,
"Roman's been arrested."
And I said, "what for?"
And they said,
"rape."
I said...
I just could not...
It just made no sense.
I mean, this is somebody
who could not be
a rapist, you know?
I mean, it's somebody I know
really really well.
- I was working west L.A.
- homicide
and I also handled sex crimes.
And I came in to work
and I had a crime report
on my desk
of a rape
that had been reported.
And Roman polanski was
the named suspect in it.
After I received the report
I started the follow-up.
I went to interview
the victim and her mother.
I did an extensive
interview with them,
made sure that any
physical evidence
would have been recovered
from her that she had,
and then I went
and talked to the district
attorney's office.
Vannatter came into the office
and we sat down and
he ran the case by me.
He showed me the incident
report, a crime report
taken by a couple
of patrol officers,
which is a narrative
of the facts and stuff.
Time was kind of of the essence,
so we got the search warrant.
It was for two locations...
It was for
Jack Nicholson's house
where the crime occurred
and also for polanski's suite
on the second floor of
the Beverly Wilshire hotel.
Me and my partner,
along with a narcotics officer,
proceeded with the search
warrant to the hotel.
We were walking in
and he was walking out
with a group of people,
obviously going out for the evening.
And I told Phil,
I said, "there he is."
And we stopped
because he would have
walked right on by us.
So we said, "Mr. Polanski, l.A.P.D.
We have to talk."
And he came out and he says,
"is this is gonna be
more than a few minutes?
If it is, I'll let my people go."
We said, "yes, it's going to
be more than a few minutes."
We proceeded up to his room and
completed the search warrant,
which... we did find
the camera equipment,
the film that we
ultimately had developed.
And it did show nude
pictures of the victim.
Totally nude?
Well, she was in a spa.
You could see the upper
portion of her body.
You couldn't see her whole body
because she was in the water.
But they were nude pictures.
Polanski was nervous.
He was upset.
And he is one of those
people that just talk.
And I suspect
he figures,
"well, if I talk and talk
I can probably talk my
way out of this thing."
He was like on a hyper high.
And he's constantly talking,
constantly fidgeting.
And he didn't perceive
having intercourse
with a 13-year-old girl
as against the law.
That was not in his culture.
You know, "so what?"
Type thing.
He didn't realize, I guess,
the laws of our country
as compared to other countries.
I'm not so sure that
Mr. Polanski was aware
of what being arrested
in America meant.
I know it's a very large
piece of news for all of you.
It's a lot of sensational stuff.
But try to go beyond it
and understand my position.
It's not the best
type of publicity,
not something I desire.
I have not much to tell you
except that I'm innocent.
When the case arrived here
there was an absolute
mob of publicity...
The associated press,
u.P.I.,
"New York times,"
"Los Angeles times,"
celebrity mags,
German reporters,
French reporters,
British reporters.
I had never seen
a media feeding frenzy before
and this courtroom embodied it.
You couldn't meet anybody,
whether he was known
or not known at all
who didn't have an opinion
about this case.
And it was one of
the biggest cases.
I didn't work
for weeks and months
on anything else but this case.
As the case progressed,
I was struck...
You know, how could
the same man be
two different things to two
different sets of press?
The European reporters
looked on polanski
as this tragic, brilliant
historic figure.
Here was this man
who had survived the holocaust,
who had survived
the gassing of his mother
and then had come here
and developed his own voice,
had maintained his integrity
against the power
of the Hollywood machine.
And the American press
tended to look at him
as this sort of
malignant twisted dwarf
with this dark vision.
Roman was the perfect
villain for them.
He was a foreigner.
He had a thick accent.
He made lots of money
in the movie business.
He was short.
He was perfect.
In California at that time,
had he not been who he was...
In other words, a famous
controversial director
with the legacy
of his wife's murder behind him,
the whole thing would have been
completely different.
Roman polanski is 32.
He has just completed
his fourth feature film,
"the vampire killers,"
set in the snow-covered
mountains of transylvania.
He both directs
and plays one
of the leading parts.
Hold it, boys.
Sharon, Sharon.
Looking at him, not at me.
Okay?
Yeah.
You know where.
Yeah.
Roman polanski
was born in France
of Polish parents.
They left there when he was three
and went to live in Poland.
I don't know, I think
I'm a nomad, you know?
But I...
I'm really strongly attached
to Polish background.
I've grown up in Poland.
My mother was killed
by Germans very soon
and my father was taken
to the concentration camp
after two years of war.
And then I was by myself.
One of the first films I've seen
was "snow white," you know?
And I think it influenced me
enormously forever.
And as you see, it's an enormous
influence in my work
like "repulsion"
and "cul-de-sac."
I always wanted
to be a director.
I knew I wanted to make movies.
I knew I wanted to be
a part of it.
I knew I wanted to create this.
An American producer
of Polish origin
suggested that I come to London
and make a film there.
London was fabulous.
You cannot imagine what it meant
for someone who lived
in the grey, drab
communist reality.
It was a very civilized
way of living,
rooms always full
of friendly faces.
You saw your friends every day
and there were lots of them...
Life without limits.
I got a phone call
from a friend of ours,
a mutual friend
who was a film producer.
And he said,
"I've got this friend"
who's coming to London
and he doesn't speak
any English.
"Can you take care
of him?"
I said, "sure,
send him round."
Roman was totally exceptional.
I was really drawn to him,
and so was everybody else.
Already an established
film director...
No one in London
had heard of him.
Few people had seen his films.
Yes yes yes.
Go, go again.
That was funny.
From coming as
a complete unknown,
I would say within six months
everybody knew him.
He was a charismatic fellow.
There are very few directors
who have Roman's personality
and also his appetite for life...
His appetite for life.
They met in London
because of a film that he made
called "the dance
of the vampires."
She was a remarkable person...
Beautiful, gentle,
unsophisticated
in the best sense of the word,
really a genuine human being.
They were great together
and of course it created
this fantastic love affair.
And it truly was a love affair.
Look, it all started
so long ago.
My real problems started then,
with the murder of Sharon Tate.
I was all right with the press
before that.
They... they wouldn't let it go.
So it's just the story
that will never go.
- Pardon me?
- Why did you want a gag order?
We didn't ask for a gag order.
Who did, Mr. Dalton?
No one asked for a gag order.
Then why did the judge
bring it up at this stage?
Well, maybe the judge
can answer that.
The topic of publicity
was discussed
and certain measures
were discussed
to try to control the publicity,
but no one asked
for a gag order as such.
There was an hour-long
discussion in the chambers.
Did that deal principally
with publicity problems?
Yes, a great part of it did.
What do you see as the problems
with publicity right now?
Well, the problem
with publicity is
there's been too much of it.
And of course for me
to go on television
and complain about publicity
is a little inconsistent.
Excuse me.
I've never spoken publicly
about this case before.
But if the story is to be told,
I want it to be told factually.
I know the facts.
I was there.
Can you give us your reaction
to the delay of
the start of the trial?
- My reaction to it?
- Yeah.
Well, I'm pleased.
In what way?
Well, there's a good deal
of work-up
that goes into any major case...
People have the right
to their own opinions
about what happened,
but they don't have the
right to their own facts.
The fact of polanski
leaving the country and so forth
seems to have eclipsed
the really important part
of this case
about what actually happened
to the system of justice.
I remain astounded
after all these years.
This case will never leave me.
Defense attorney Doug Dalton
had a very lincolnesque
quality about him,
dignified,
not given
to flamboyant gestures.
He doesn't raise his
voice in the courtroom.
He maintains this calm demeanor.
And he was the master
of negotiations.
The fact that Doug
Dalton was the attorney
indicated to me
that there would be
a negotiated plea arrived at
between the prosecution,
the defense and the judge.
Douglas Dalton was
a first-class lawyer
but he was definitely matched
by Roger gunson.
The district attorney's office
put gunson on the case...
A 37-year-old,
very straight-thinking mormon.
We are concerned with protecting
the privacy of the girl...
The complaining witness
in this case...
And it's my understanding
that there have been
foreign reporters
and investigators
who have attempted to contact
her and have interviews...
Gunson was the model
of rectitude.
He had that same kind of
handsome-schoolboy,
sparkling good looks
as Robert redford.
The rumor in the district
attorney's office was
that they picked gunson
to handle the case
because he was a mormon
and because he was the only
member of the d.A.'S office
who hadn't had sex
with an underage girl.
I heard some jokes about
why they gave it to me,
but I can't imagine
those are accurate.
There were a lot of prosecutors
who had an interest
in high-publicity cases.
Although I had had one
very high publicity case,
I was not one
that looked for them.
They were the perfect attorneys
to handle a case like this
where the evidence
and the players
were sensational,
were dramatic, flamboyant.
So you want two attorneys
who kept an even keel.
They were in that regard
very strikingly different
from the judge in the case.
When the grand jury
came back with the indictment,
judge rittenband,
who was very interested
in handling celebrity cases
obviously saw it
and realized that he wanted it
and went to the presiding judge
and said, "hey,
I want this case."
He was of course the senior
judge in Santa Monica,
which was the choice
location for any judge
because that's where you get
a lot of these
high-publicity cases.
Judge rittenband had handled
a Cary Grant paternity suit.
He had handled, well,
the Priscilla and Elvis divorce,
the Marlon Brando custody suit
that went on forever.
There were quite a few.
I spoke to judge rittenband
very frequently.
And he liked
being among the stars
but I don't think
he was starstruck.
Rittenband loved the press,
always had comments
for the press.
He wanted to shape
the way the press covered him.
Sitting up there on the bench,
he acted like a director,
a tyrannical director
calling the shots,
telling people when
to make their entrances,
what to say,
where to position themselves.
Well, we misspoke
ourselves, your honor.
There's obviously other
basis for the motion.
Yes, we don't need that anymore.
There were a lot of similarities
between judge rittenband
and Roman polanski.
Not too tall in stature.
He liked the ladies
and he loved to dance.
He had his friends
in the movie industry
which he'd see every day
at the hillcrest country club.
When I first met him
I was answering phones.
And he used to say
"I'm going to hillcrest.
I'm going to hillcrest."
And finally I stop and I says,
"what is going on
at hillcrest?"
You know,
"is your wife there?"
Because I didn't know
if he was married or not.
And he said,
"oh, I'm not married."
And I said,
"oh, okay."
I was 20 years old.
He was 34 years older.
He was 54 when I met him.
And we became friends.
Oh, golly,
practically every evening
he'd come here
and he'd sit over in that chair.
And he loved champagne.
So I'd get champagne
by the case.
"Judge rittenband," I said,
"what would you at your
age do with a girlfriend?"
He said, "I'd do the
same thing that you did"
and probably better."
And I said,
"tell me about it."
He said, "I got one that cooks"
and one that does
the other things."
Rittenband was known
as a hammer.
That means that
he was a tough judge
and a tough sentencer.
If you didn't make a deal
and you didn't have
the deal in place
when you went in there,
you were in trouble.
I don't remember any judge
that liked publicity
like rittenband did.
He had his bailiff
maintain a scrapbook
that went back many years
and if an article
appeared anywhere
about something involving
Lawrence j. Rittenband
it wound up in the scrapbook.
It was kept
somewhere in the court,
I think in the bailiff's desk,
and on occasion
would come out...
And be displayed.
Judge rittenband
was receiving requests
from people all over the world,
from news agencies
wanting one of the seats
in his courtroom.
He was soliciting reservations
for each one of these chairs.
So it was going to be
a real circus.
If you gentlemen would
just stand still,
Mr. Polanski
will stay here
and you can get your shot.
Because another trial
in the same courtroom
is taking much longer
than expected,
the rape trial of Roman polanski
has been delayed
until August 9th,
exactly eight years to the day
his late wife,
actress Sharon Tate,
was brutally murdered.
At that time rape victims' names
didn't get reported
in the press,
much less the names of minors
who were involved in sex cases.
But with the European
press there,
her name would come out,
exposed in the press,
her background exposed.
The fact that she had
had a prior relationship,
that she had taken
quaaludes before...
All of this
would have gotten out
and would have
forever haunted her.
Once we knew her name,
we knew where her school was,
we knew where her house was.
The French competition
were after this girl.
They were hunting this girl.
It was awful.
Everybody knew at school.
People came to school
with cameras
and things were being
said and printed.
The worst part was,
no one believed me.
Everybody thought
I was making it up.
It was so traumatic,
starting that night when
my mom called the police.
And the police come over and
they take you to the hospital,
then they take you
to the police station.
And the next morning we're getting
up at 6:30, we're going to court
where they're gonna sneak
you in and all these men
are gonna ask you
exactly what happened.
Then they're gonna
sit a lady behind you
you can't even see,
because then there's
a lady there.
All that stuff was so traumatic
that I never even had a chance
to really, you know,
worry about, you know,
what happened
that night with him.
It was like...
It just...
I had to worry about
surviving the next day.
The facts indicate that
before the alleged act
in this case
this girl had engaged
in sexual activity.
That's contained in reports
that we now have.
We want to know about it.
We want to know who was involved when.
We want to know
why these other people
were not prosecuted.
And this is a thing
we want to fully develop.
I would just as soon
have walked away from it
the next day.
But you can't stop it
once it starts.
I mean,
I just...
I just went in my room,
pretty much,
and just turned it off.
In "Chinatown,"
he exposed the dark side
of corruption.
In "repulsion,"
he explored a warped mind.
In "Rosemary's baby,"
he examined the occult.
Now something altogether new,
altogether chilling...
No one does it to you
like Roman polanski.
I wanted to find more out
about Mr. Polanski.
And luck have it,
the nuart theatre
right down the street
on Santa Monica boulevard
had a polanski film festival
right after the indictment
and before trial.
Murder and treason!
What have you done to its eyes?
Forget it, Jake.
It's Chinatown.
Every Roman polanski movie
has the theme...
Corruption meeting innocence
over water.
I says, "oh, well,
that's sort of what we have here..."
Corruption, Roman polanski,
meeting innocence,
the 13-year-old girl,
over water, meaning the jacuzzi.
I felt I was going to be able
to pretty well convey
to some jurors
that this happened
and he had directed a scene
very similar to this
in his real life.
You'd better have
your legs tied down
in case of convulsions.
"Rosemary's baby"
was such a great movie
and was so well made
that people took it
for the real thing.
This is no dream!
This is really happening!
After that Roman had
this reputation
of maybe having been
a little bit
in league with the devil
himself.
It didn't hurt him.
People were very intrigued
and it was
kind of sexy in a way.
He had a tremendous power
over people.
You had to fall in love
with him, you know.
It was completely infectious.
There was no resisting him.
And every day was so vibrant
because he felt so passionately
about what he was doing
and he was on an adventure.
One of the things that
you are renowned for
is your recklessness.
You say that you're a reckless person.
- Do I say that?
- You say that very frequently
to all sorts of people you talk
to, though clearly
you're going to deny every
single syllable of it tonight.
- Really?
- Mm.
I mean, are you
a reckless person?
Are you afraid of anything?
I am reckless,
but I don't tell people about it.
Roman found California
fantastic.
Of Los Angeles he says...
Everything is easy here.
You want to learn karate...
You can learn karate.
You want to play chess...
You can play chess.
You want to drive racing cars...
You can drive racing cars.
Everything is accessible
in this town.
"Rosemary's baby"
was a huge hit.
Roman was on top of the world.
Nothing could have been better.
He was in love with Sharon.
They were having great parties.
He was going all over the world.
When he was the toast
of the industry,
he was hanging out
with all the people
that everybody wanted
to hang out with.
Everybody wanted
a piece of Roman
because the work
was so original.
- Roman, Sharon.
- Hi.
This is the very
beautiful Sharon Tate
who I am sure
you've seen in films.
And her husband,
very talented Roman polanski,
best known for his original
film "knife in the water,"
which he wrote and directed.
And he's also responsible
for "Rosemary's baby,"
the picture.
And I think a little
later we'll get a chance
to sit down and
talk a little bit
- about sex and films.
- Anytime.
Certainly it was a happy time
for all of us.
Roman was happy.
He was with beautiful Sharon.
Everyone loved her.
He loved her.
I loved her.
We all loved her.
He was so insecure
about so many things.
Knowing about his childhood...
He didn't have
the blueprint for life
that others had.
One hoped for Roman, you know,
that this brand-new life
with a woman who loved him
and who seemed so right for him,
with a baby,
that there would be
this security
that he had not had in his life,
and in a new homeland.
I mean, the future was his,
we thought.
And then everything
just collapsed.
Well, we were preparing a film
that I was going to produce
called "the day
of the dolphin."
We were writing
the script in London.
Roman was a perfectionist.
He was always,
"we'll finish it in a couple of days
and then do the rest
in L.A."
It was a Saturday.
And the phone rang
and I picked it up.
It was our agent bill tennant
who was on the phone.
And I immediately realized
that something was
terribly wrong.
I mean, he was a very
stable kind of guy.
He was absolutely distraught.
And I said,
"what is it?"
And he said, you know,
something like "they're all dead.
They're all dead."
I realized something
awful had happened
and I gave the phone to Roman.
And...
I've never seen
anything like it.
You know, I saw somebody
just disintegrate
in front of my eyes.
This was at the home
of movie director Roman polanski
and it was his wife Sharon Tate
who was one of the victims.
She too had
repeated stab wounds.
One of the victims had a
hood placed over his head.
And the word "pig" was
written in blood on the door.
- We flew to L.A.
- the next day.
He was devastated,
devastated to a point
that I've never seen
any other human being
in that kind of condition.
And I remember
picking up
the sunday newspapers.
I was already reasonably aware
of how the press functions.
Their business is
selling newspapers.
The story was basically
how Roman had flown
to Los Angeles,
murdered them all
and then come back.
I mean, this was actually
in the newspapers,
in the headlines.
The nature of the murders,
you know, satanism,
"Rosemary's baby,"
"this is the guy who made
'Rosemary's baby.'"
he knew so much about it.
He couldn't have known
so much about it without
actually being involved in it.
And so he must have been
part of the cult.
And there was a cult.
And they were murdered.
"And who gets murdered
in this kind of way?"
It was a typical example
of the victim's
being responsible
for their own death.
It was shocking.
It was truly unbelievable.
The last day I talked to her
was a few hours before
the tragedy happened.
You are certainly curious
about my relationship
with Sharon
within last few months.
I can tell you
that the last few months
as much as the last few years
I spent with her...
Were the only time
of true happiness in my life.
And facts
which will be coming out
day after day
will make ashamed
a lot of newsmen
who for a selfish reason
write unbearable for me,
horrible things
about my wife.
After Sharon was murdered
really everybody was
totally freaked out.
It was a very weird time,
the highest paranoia,
the transition
of this sort of hippie
kind of existence in L.A.
To this brutal awakening
of an understanding
that these kind of absolutely
horrible events can happen.
No one locked their doors.
No one thought about
that there was
any kind of threat.
That ended at the end
of the '60s
and simultaneously
changed everything
overnight in L.A.
It was the end
of a fairy tale, really,
in Roman's life,
in everybody's life.
He would have been
a father of a son
who would have now been,
what, 30 years old?
Maybe he would have had
other children,
probably would have continued
living in California.
Who knows?
How does one survive?
When you know his childhood...
He's a very very strong
human being.
I think that the idea
of the magnet of tragedy
started after the Tate murders.
He was living out in Malibu
and the neighbors were all,
like, horrified
because somehow if he was
in the house next door
there was going to be
another mass murder.
I mean, people are
just too weird.
I tell you, it's crazy.
- Hold it there, kitty-cat!
- Hold it.
Hello, Claude.
Where did you get the midget?
You're a very nosy fellow,
kitty-cat.
Do you know what happens
to nosy fellows?
Huh? No?
Wanna guess?
Huh? No?
Okay, they lose their noses.
Next time you'll lose
the whole thing...
Cut if off and feed it
to my goldfish.
Roman was different
when I met him
on "Chinatown."
He was still a guy
that loved life.
There was just
this real dark shadow
that he had to deal with
every day...
That, you know,
there were people who were constantly,
"so what was it like, you know,
when Sharon...
When your wife was killed?"
Do you hate certain
members of the press
for the way you were treated
after your wife's murder?
Well, yes, to be honest, I do.
But I wouldn't call it
a hatred now, you see.
It's somehow evolved
to just indifference.
And I simply don't read it
and try to avoid it.
Yeah.
But in general,
I despise the press tremendously
for its inaccuracy,
for its irresponsibility
and for its
often even deliberate cruelty.
And all this is
for lucrative purposes.
If one of your complaints
is the way the press
misrepresents you...
And that is one of your
complaints, isn't it?
Then surely it would be
a good tactic
to give them the minimum
possible target.
Yes, but then you have to...
You have to change
your lifestyle
completely and go into hiding.
It seems like, say,
six months after the murders
you're in the alps
and consorting
with these girls from the
finishing school and so on.
I can see how you would sort of
try to lose yourself like that.
But is it wise to say so?
Yes, it is wise to say so.
Why not?
Why wouldn't it be
wise to say so?
That's the way it was.
And that's the way it is.
You know, I mean, just...
Different people
have different way
of seeing life
and relationships.
It's not necessarily the
same with you than me.
And people react
in different ways to grief.
Some go to a monastery,
others start
visiting whorehouses.
He decided he was gonna survive,
and the way he was gonna survive
is through his talent
and having fun.
Whether it was dinner for four
and he was holding court
with some idea he had,
or whether it was a group
of 30 or 40 or 50,
he liked to be
the center of it all.
He was a wonderful host,
almost like a dance master.
He kept it all sort of stirred.
It gave him enormous pleasure.
And after Sharon
I think he didn't want
to be alone too much.
It's not so good to be alone.
Everybody knows
the best way to get
close to your dream
is to get to know
a star, a real star.
Polanski after "Chinatown"
was not only a real star,
he was "the Roman polanski,"
a big name.
She wouldn't mind
being discovered
by a man like Roman polanski.
After all, she had seen
in the French "vogue"
pictures of nastassja kinski
who was 15 when she started
her affair with Roman polanski,
or Roman started it with her.
And everybody had the opinion
if polanski wouldn't have done
this photo layout
with nastassja,
she would have never become
such a well-known young star.
He was a friend of a guy
my sister was dating.
And he wanted girls to model.
And I was modeling and acting
and wanted, you know,
to be in the business.
So that was a great
opportunity, you know.
We signed right up.
"Sure, have my pictures taken
by Roman polanski.
Sounds great."
Susie gaily,
the mother
of the alleged victim,
introduced herself
as an actress to polanski.
And she had done
some work in films.
Well, I was innocent, see.
And that's the truth.
What else can I say?
I remember vaguely
meeting the mother
at some party...
You know,
like, "hi."
And then I was away
and then heard
about all of this.
But just in what I was told
and what I read,
I kept going back
to the same question...
"why did the mother
bring her 13-year-old
daughter into this group?"
Especially if she had
spent time with them
and all the things
that she said subsequently
were true... wouldn't you keep
your 13-year-old daughter
away from that?
You know, this was a guy
that had a pretty
wild reputation.
He was known as a womanizer.
He's a partygoer.
He certainly had a lot
of women over the years
and he loved young women.
Why would her mother allow her
to be alone with polanski?
I don't like... you always
get the "where was your mom?"
It's like, you know,
give my mom a break.
You know, it's not her fault.
And so...
You know, I don't like hearing
anybody's opinion on it.
Like, every time
someone brings it up,
and they're doing their little,
you know, banter on t.V.
It's like, you weren't there.
You don't know.
What are you talking about?
You're saying how I felt,
what happened,
how you feel about polanski.
You have no idea.
And you're on the news
making all these statements
and thousands of people are
listening to you and... shut up.
Another hearing
on the admissibility
of the Beverly Wilshire
hotel records
has been set for next Friday.
From Santa Monica,
fernell Chapman,
news center 4.
I was instrumental
in arranging the plea bargain
because as I looked
at this family and Samantha,
I thought...
At the time some
people knew her name
and some of the kids at
school knew who she was.
I thought it was important
to try to maintain
her anonymity,
anonymity which
would have disappeared
if the case had gone to trial.
And so I tried to persuade
the district attorney
who had a new
plea bargaining policy,
a tough plea bargaining policy.
I said, "I'm not gonna do it."
I have no interest
in doing it."
And so what he decided was...
He says, "well,
I'm gonna do it myself."
The l.A.P.D. Brought
the evidence envelope
to this courthouse building
and brought it in,
actually, to this room.
There were about
five, six or seven men
standing around,
looking, peering down
at this evidence envelope
and someone takes it
and turns it and opens it
and out falls
these little girl's panties.
And so there was
this enormous court battle
over property
that belonged to her
as to what was
to be done with them.
And judge rittenband decided
to cut it in half
and give half to the prosecution
and half to the defense.
The defense expert went over
and put on his latex gloves
and came back and then started
operating on these
copper panties.
If you can imagine the humor
of about seven men
sitting around a table...
...trying to identify
any stains
and to make sure that
the cut, or the piece,
includes part of that stain.
And they were fighting...
"no no, it has to be"
just a little to this way.
No, it should be over here.
"We shouldn't cut that way
at all, we should cut..."
so finally they made the cut.
What we understood was
that Dalton was going
to take his half
and submit it to a lab.
I also understood that the lab
was about to give
its report in two weeks.
And two weeks
and three days later
Dalton called me on the phone,
clearly now, I think,
having the results
of the lab report,
saying, you know,
"what do you think would happen"
if we pursued a plea bargain
"with the prosecution?"
At which point...
At that point I realized
that now polanski
had an interest,
that the stain in the panties
was going to be brutal
evidence for them.
The prosecution
had loaded polanski up
with multiple charges.
The only one
he was willing to admit
and to plead guilty to
was that he had had
consensual sex with the minor.
Mr. Dalton asked,
"could it be a misdemeanor..."
and I says, "no."
"... That he not go
to state prison?"
I says, "no, that's got
to be open."
And so he agreed to all those
and we agreed that it'd be
unlawful sexual intercourse...
The lowest count
that related to the gravamen.
The agreement was
that polanski would plead guilty
to the one count,
that he would be sentenced
based upon the probation report
and the argument of counsel.
At that time the sentence
for unlawful
sexual intercourse was
what they characterized as
an indeterminate sentence,
so you're sent to state prison
for anywhere from six
months to 50 years.
I checked and
there hadn't been anyone
sent to prison for a
conviction of this offense
in the year preceding
Roman polanski's case.
I thought it was
a very good disposition,
for the reason
that it vindicated
the family and the girl
and it exposed
Mr. Polanski
to significant time in custody
based upon a probation report.
By entering his guilty plea,
polanski avoided going to trial,
a trial that was
to have begun tomorrow,
the eighth anniversary
of his wife's death
at the hands of
the Charles manson family.
Standing with his lawyer
Douglas Dalton,
polanski was asked by deputy
district attorney Roger gunson
to what count he pleaded guilty.
"I had intercourse"
with a female person,
not my wife,
"who was under
18 years of age."
"How old did you think
the girl was?"
"I understood she was 13."
The plea bargaining
was the result
of a request by attorney
Lawrence silver,
representing the girl's family.
Silver asked
judge Lawrence rittenband
to accept the plea
and protect the girl
from the glare of publicity.
"A stigma would attach
to her for a lifetime
and justice is not made
of such stuff."
Judge rittenband
in accepting the guilty plea
ordered polanski to be
examined by two psychiatrists.
Sentencing will come after that,
when the judge could
declare the director
a mentally disordered
sex offender.
That could result in commitment
to a state mental hospital.
Other possible sentences include
one year in county jail,
up to 50 years
in a state prison,
deportation or probation.
We took our chances,
obviously, here
because we had no idea
or no way of knowing
what the probation department
would conclude.
Judge rittenband appointed me
to evaluate Mr. Polanski
for purposes of determining
whether he was at that time
a mentally disordered
sex offender,
which was a legal term
having to do with an individual
who, by reason
of a mental disorder,
was predisposed
to the commission
of sexual offenses
that rendered him a danger
to the health and safety
of others.
He was a very congenial
but somewhat reserved guy
who was very straightforward
in the interview.
As experiences go,
Roman polanski has had more
than what would impact
on a dozen people,
in terms of his life
as a child, confusion.
And ultimately he gets
what he feels
is a stable relationship
and that's taken away from him
at the snap of a finger.
He had difficulty
in developing relationships
with women after that.
I think he felt
very very hesitant,
maybe out of fear.
My opinion paralleled
the recommendation
of the probation department.
I didn't talk about whether he
should or should not go to jail.
I really focused solely
on the psychiatric issues.
And it was my opinion
that Mr. Polanski
did not qualify as a mentally
disordered sex offender
and should not be
handled as such.
My feeling was
the guy belonged
in state prison.
Rittenband had asked me
about it.
I said, "judge,
you're gonna give this guy probation."
He said, "no no, I want
to send him to jail."
I said, "you'll never do it."
Because the first thing
that's gonna happen
"when you sentence him is,
he's gonna appeal it."
"I'm gonna give him
a year in a county jail"...
That would be the sentence
they'd appeal immediately.
"I'm gonna give him weekends
in a county jail"...
Immediate appeal.
No matter what the sentence was
if it included a day in jail,
Dalton, and correctly so,
would have appealed it.
And it's gonna go all the way up
to the state supreme court.
He has the money
and he'll take it
to the U.S. supreme court
if he thinks he can.
He says, "well, what am I
going to do?"
The judge called me
into chambers.
He looked at me and said,
"dick, tell me,
what the hell do I do
with polanski?"
I went, "whoa, your honor",
that's your decision,
that's not mine.
I'm a reporter.
"I can't advise you
on something like that."
I hadn't been covering
courts that long,
but I knew a decision by a judge
was supposed to be
a decision by a judge
and was not to take in
any advice
from any other person
other than what was there
in the law books,
what had been entered
into evidence in the case.
He says, "well, what am I
going to do?"
Or what should I do?"
I said, "you know,
what you should do"
is send him up
for 90-day observation."
A "12.03.03"
is a diagnostic study
where a defendant
on a felony case
is sent to chino
for a 90-day observation.
It's like an in-depth
probation report.
And he said, "well,
what will that do?"
I said, "it's not
a final sentence."
He can't appeal it.
He has to go."
We were very pleased
when we got
the probation report.
It recommended
that polanski serve
no time in custody
and receive a straight
probationary sentence.
However, we received a call
from judge rittenband
asking us to come to chambers,
that he wanted to discuss
the matter with us.
A probation officer,
Roger gunson and I
all went into his chambers
for a meeting.
At that time the judge said
he was not going to follow
the recommendation
of the probation department.
He had decided
that as punishment for polanski
he was going to send him to
the state prison at chino
for a diagnostic study.
Gunson and the probation
officer both protested.
I told him that the law was
that the diagnostic study
was not to be used as punishment
or as someone's sentence.
The courts are not
supposed to use that.
And his response was,
"I don't want
to send Mr. Polanski"
to county jail
because I don't want
to be responsible
"if he were to be injured
or killed."
I said, "judge,
we had not expected this."
Polanski is engaged right now
in directing a large movie
that involves many people,
millions of dollars.
"This is going to cause
a tremendous hardship."
And he suggested
that I request a stay,
the "stay" meaning "to defer"
or put off this diagnostic study
in order for polanski to be able
to complete his work
on the film.
What he wanted to do was
have us go out into open court
and pretend as though...
I don't know if he used
the word "pretend,"
but not to divulge that we knew
what was going to happen.
He said, "I want you to go out",
gunson, and you argue
that polanski should be
placed in custody.
And Dalton, you go out
and you argue
that he should be
put on probation.
Then I will make my remarks
and I will sentence him to chino
for the diagnostic study.
And the press need not know
anything more about this.
If you do not tell
the press about this
and if polanski receives
a good report
from the probation department,
which we all are
quite sure he will,
"that will conclude
his punishment."
I wasn't going to argue
about it.
Polanski's fate
hung in the balance.
If I started protesting
about the diagnostic study
rittenband could well have said,
"well, I'll just
send him to prison.
How would you
like that?"
That was
the... fabrication
that he...
The scenario that he
wanted to present
and he did present.
This thing had reached the point
where it was actually
becoming surreal.
Gunson and I walked
into the courtroom
which was packed
with newsmen and spectators.
We took our places
at the counsel table,
sat down and waited
for the entrance
of judge rittenband.
I argued first.
It was a very strange feeling
to be arguing
when I knew exactly
what the result was going to be.
It was like having a mock trial.
In law school we did this,
we had staged trials
and so forth,
but even then we didn't know
what result was going to be.
But we dutifully went out.
I argued for probation.
I tried to make it sound
as authentic as I could.
Gunson got up
and made his argument.
And then rittenband proceeded
to give his closing remarks
which had been obviously
prepared in advance.
He argued much better
than either one of us.
And as I sat there
and listened, I thought,
"I think I see
what's happening here."
He knows that this is
a probation case.
The probation department
has recommended probation.
Chino will very likely
recommend the same thing.
And he wants to condition
the press and public to the fact
that when he puts polanski
on probation,
that they see
the basis that he used
"in arriving
at that conclusion."
After 20 minutes in court
before superior judge
Lawrence rittenband,
film director Roman polanski
and his lawyer Douglas Dalton
emerged from the courtroom
amidst a crush of
reporters and cameramen.
Dalton had asked the court
to place polanski on probation,
arguing that, though the crime
of unlawful intercourse
is a serious one,
it is not a unique crime.
The prosecutor,
deputy district attorney Roger gunson,
asked that polanski
be placed in custody,
though it was noted
that the 13-year-old girl
in the case and her family
had asked the court not to
incarcerate the film director.
On the basis of two
psychiatric evaluations,
the judge ruled
that polanski was not
a mentally disordered
sex offender,
but he did order polanski
to undergo
90-days' further
psychiatric testing
at chino state prison,
postponing a final sentence
until the testing is completed.
Judge rittenband
granted polanski
a three-month stay to
conclude his present work.
At the end of that time
the film director
will go to chino state prison
for 90-days' diagnostic testing.
Robin groth, n.B.C. News,
Santa Monica.
- Why are you leaving the country, sir?
- Sorry?
- Why are you leaving the country?
- Where?
You're gonna leave the
country on a business trip?
- Yes.
- Can you tell us about that trip?
I'm going to Paris.
Will you come back?
Will I come back?
I certainly will.
Don't worry.
Dino just called up and said,
"wonderful news.
My god, Lorenzo, we got Roman.
We got Roman."
It was a potboiler...
Pearl divers getting
caught in a giant clam
and all that stuff.
And Roman had reasonable
contempt for the script...
Not a picture that
Roman would have done.
And I imagine... again,
I didn't discuss it,
but basically nobody else,
I presume,
would hire him at that time.
And de laurentiis,
seeing a chance to get
a great director
who otherwise he couldn't
possibly have approached
for this project,
stepped in immediately.
It was a coup, a triumph,
you know, taking advantage
of this guy's troubles
to some extent.
Better luck for Roman
would have been a judge
that never allowed him
to go to Europe at all.
Roman called me and said,
"listen,
I'm here in Munich.
Can we meet?"
I said,
"of course."
And we decided to go
in the evening
to see the oktoberfest.
Roman actually didn't want to go
but we said,
"you have to see that"
because this is unbelievable.
You have never seen
10,000 people
in a tent, drunken.
"I mean,
you must see that."
He said, "okay,
I'll go with you."
So finally we went
to a special box.
I was with my girlfriend
and two other girlfriends,
you know?
Most unfortunately,
he was photographed,
caught in a pose
sitting in between two girls.
It was quite innocent, but,
you know, photographs...
They say a photograph
doesn't lie.
Nothing lies
more than a photograph.
Lorenzo semple,
Jr.: Roman always did have bad luck.
This is the kind of thing
that a cautious person
would not have dreamed of doing.
I mean, they would
have had themselves
photographed in the cathedral
or doing something like that.
That one photograph
changed everything.
I took it into rittenband
because I figured it was
something he ought to see.
And what I told him was,
"you know, judge,"
you've made so many mistakes,
I think, in this case.
Lookit, he's giving you the finger.
He's flipping you off.
"Haven't you had
enough of this?"
He says,
"what? What?
He's not getting away
with that."
The judge became furious
when this appeared in the paper.
He was interviewed
by a Hollywood gossip
columnist, Marilyn Beck.
Rittenband told me
that he had been duped.
I really believe
he had been duped.
In the interview he said
that very possibly he wanted
polanski back in the country
and polanski could be on
his way to prison now.
That photograph
embarrassed the judge.
Mr. Polanski
is supposed to be
very focused and intent
when he's working.
And this photograph demonstrated
that at that moment
in time he was not.
Why was he in Germany?
He should have been
working hard on a movie.
Could you clear up that
current misunderstanding?
The judge ordered Roman
to come back to the states
and he called dino in
to testify.
Dino explained
through me as the translator
that we were going on
with the production
and the preparation
of the production,
and that this was just part
of the whole thing
of making movies.
Mr. De laurentiis,
could you explain
why you sent Mr. Polanski
to Germany?
Roman was still working
when he was in Munich
because the distributor
convinced Roman
to come there
and spend the night
or go out for a few drinks
and at the same time
talk about "hurricane."
I've already explained.
I've already explained.
I don't think
the judge knew that
or understood that.
And most of all,
he didn't believe it.
- Okay, now step aside, please.
- Let 'em through.
De laurentiis testified,
Roman testified.
There was no evidence
at all to the contrary.
I rested my case.
And the ruling had to be,
of course,
that he was there
on business purposes.
And that was the finding
of the judge.
I told him, you know,
"you just have to bear up"
and go through this
and remember
at the conclusion of this
this case will be over.
You'll have no further
time in custody
"and it will all be
behind you."
That's Dalton?
Yeah, that was Dalton,
his lawyer.
Mr. Dalton, has Mr. Polanski
talked to you
about his reaction
to coming here
for this almost
three-month period?
Yes, he has.
Excuse me,
I have some business
to conduct in here.
Has he indicated to you as
to what his feelings are?
Mr. Polanski, do you have
any statement at all?
Mr. Polanski,
do you have any statement at all?
Mr. Polanski,
do you have any statement at all
regarding this 90-day psychiatric
study that you've come in for?
- No.
- No statement whatsoever?
What are your immediate
thoughts right now?
Any thoughts that
you have at all?
Will he be given any special
consideration here?
Nothing other than anybody
else that would come in.
When we talk about
special housing
and special consideration,
what we're talking about is...
Everybody that comes in,
we screen them
for possible protective
custody housing.
But we're concerned
for his safety.
- There were sketches.
- There were locations.
People had been up to
chino and talked to Roman.
I mean, he was prepping
the movie from chino.
Dino and I went to visit Roman.
Dino, of course, was concerned
as to what was going
to happen with his film.
I was kind of shocked
when we saw Roman.
We were sitting outside
at a table,
outside of the prison.
He was nervous,
always looking over his shoulder
to see what was in back of him.
He said that he was
concerned about
what the other prisoners
would do to him
if they could get near him
because he was accused
of being a child molester.
It was very grim
and it was a very
frightening place.
You know, this is a hard core...
You know, murderers.
Roman was not safe there.
People get killed there.
Polanski of course
was delighted.
He felt, as properly he should,
that he had lived up
to his obligations in the case...
He had admitted his guilt,
he served the sentence
that had been imposed...
And now it was over and he
could go on with his life.
I was quite surprised.
Everyone in the criminal
justice system is aware
that 90-day diagnostic studies
take less than 90 days.
There are not very many
people, I would guess,
who have had the experience
of it only being 42.
That's not a punishment.
A punishment...
You know, he was charged
with very serious crimes.
You're talking about crimes
that would incur
state prison time,
maybe 10, 15, 20 years
in state prison.
A 13-year-old girl,
where he had sexual
intercourse with her,
sodomized her, gave her drugs,
gave her alcohol.
He got off with nothing.
Mr. Gunson, it's usually
the practice
of the district
attorney's office
to prosecute the defendant
to the fullest degree.
You've deviated apparently
in this case. Why?
Why did you agree to
copping out on the plea
if he should have had a
full trial with charges?
What do you mean, "copping out"?
Between the time
that the judge agreed
that the 90-day diagnostic
study be his sentence,
there had been lots
of news media reports
very critical of the judge.
And now that it appears
that Mr. Polanski
will be walking away from a rape
after just serving 42 days,
it's going to be
embarrassing to the judge
and he needs to overcome it.
My father was at the
hillcrest country club
washing his hands
in the locker room,
and standing next to him
was judge rittenband.
And one of gentlemen
at hillcrest
came up to rittenband and said,
"are you really gonna
let that little Polish
blah-blah-blah off?"
And rittenband said,
"well, he thinks so, but no way."
We're gonna put that
little blank-blank away
"for the rest
of his life."
When we met in his chambers,
at this time
judge rittenband said
that he wasn't going to honor
the promise that he had made
about releasing polanski
upon completion
of the diagnostic study.
He gave as his reason
that he was getting
too much criticism.
The judge says that 42 days
is not enough time in custody,
that he expected him
to be in there 90 days.
And so somehow he has to make up
these 48 days
of the intended sentence of 90.
Now gunson at this point said,
"if it's 48 more days you want,"
why don't you
just give him 48 days
in the county jail?
And then you will have
accomplished
"him serving the full
90 days in jail."
And rittenband said,
no, he was not willing
to do that
because the perception
of a prison sentence
must be maintained
for the press.
He told me
that if I would
come back to court
after the press was gone
and the public was gone,
that he would then
recall polanski
and he would be
released from prison.
It became obvious to me
that he wanted him deported
because he did not
want him around here
embarrassing the judge
any more than he already had.
He wanted Roman to agree
that he would voluntarily waive
any rights he may have
regarding deportation.
Rittenband had no jurisdiction
over such matters.
And it is illegal
to impose an illegal condition
upon somebody
serving time in custody.
And so we now are in a category
of actual illegal conduct.
This was getting
rather contentious,
as you might understand,
and I said, "if we're
going to do that, judge",
I want to have a hearing
regarding the sentencing
as we're entitled to do.
And I want to have
witnesses here
"and I want
to have a hearing."
And he said, "well,
I'm going to sentence him anyway."
And if you still insist
on having your hearing
then I may withdraw these things
that I told you that I would do
if you went along
with this thing
"that I'm going
to do tomorrow."
The proceeding
was concluded by...
Judge rittenband,
as he had done before,
directed me to argue
for probation.
He wanted gunson to, again,
argue for time in custody.
And then he would
impose the sentence
that he had discussed with us.
I certainly was not arguing
for state prison in chambers,
nor did I intend to argue
that he should send him
to state prison
to participate in this sham
that the judge was involved in.
We got up, we walked
out of the room.
I remember
saying immediately to gunson,
"I'm not going to do this again."
No matter what he does,
"I'm not gonna participate
in this thing."
And gunson said, "I'm not
going to do it either."
As we walked down the aisle
past the chairs of an empty
courtroom at that time,
Doug Dalton
turned to me and said,
"do you think that I can
trust the judge?"
And I said
something that I wish
I hadn't said.
Maybe it did or didn't
make a difference,
but I shouldn't have said it.
And what I said to him was,
"I don't know why not.
You trusted him once."
I didn't know
what I was going to do
the following day.
I did know that I was no
longer going to participate
in a proceeding that was
being designed solely
to advance the purposes
of judge rittenband.
I told Mr. Dalton
that I would be available to...
Disclose this information
to anyone at any place
at any time.
I contacted Roman
and I said for them
to come to my office
and discuss what was
going to happen
the following morning.
I told them it was my opinion
that the sentence
would be illegal,
that we could probably
obtain relief on appeal,
but that would involve
a long procedure
and polanski would be
incarcerated
during that period of time.
I said that the judge had said
that if Roman agreed to waive
any deportation hearing
and be deported,
that he would then be released
if he also had by then
served 48 days.
Roman said to me,
"can we trust him?"
And I said,
"no, we can't trust him."
We have no idea what he may do.
We've all agreed
that he can no longer be trusted
"and what he represents
to us is worthless."
With that, Roman got up,
looked at me
and I believe he said,
"I'll see you guys later."
And he left the room.
There were two or three
other people there.
And I gave Roman an envelope,
which I thought was script notes
or something else.
The general feeling I had is,
"why is everybody
so nervous?"
There was an electricity
in the air.
...have to do with
what was my conversation
with Mr. Polanski.
My conversation with him
is protected
by the attorney/client
privilege.
I can't divulge to you
the substance or the content
of my conversation with him.
Only to say
what I said in court...
That he did call me
this morning at my home
and he told me
he would not be here.
I asked him to call me again
because I wanted to discuss
this with him further
and attempt to
persuade him to return.
He said he would call me again.
Doug, the court asked you
whether you thought
you might be able to talk
him into coming back.
What was your response?
I said I thought I had
a reasonable chance
of being successful.
How will you try to do it?
Can you tell us
what makes you think
- he's out of the country?
- No, I can't tell you that.
My belief is that
he's not in the country.
What happens if he does not come
back, Mr. Dalton?
Then the court goes ahead and...
Roman polanski is in seclusion,
his friends say,
inside this fashionable building
in downtown Paris where
he keeps an apartment.
He skipped the country
early yesterday
only hours before he was to be sentenced
for illegally having sex with...
He had given her
champagne and a quaalude.
He has told a friend here
his refrigerator is full,
and he does not intend to leave.
Many feel the aura of tragedy
and sensationalism
that surrounds polanski
obscures his brilliance
as a director.
The judge in the Roman
polanski morals case
said today he intended to
send polanski back to prison.
"A year of torture
is enough."
...has begun proceedings
to force polanski
back to the United States.
However, authorities are not
optimistic about succeeding.
Unfortunately, I'm advised
that the treaty with France
might not allow for his
return to this country,
at our request,
to be sentenced on this charge.
Why is that?
As far as I can tell,
the treaty only specifies,
number one, rape.
As you know, Mr. Polanski
was not convicted of rape.
He was convicted of
unlawful sexual intercourse,
and that's a different
crime than rape.
Secondly, the treaty specifies
that it's discretionary
on the part of France
to return French citizens.
In other words,
they have an option.
They can or they can't,
depending on how they feel
about a particular case or maybe
even possibly a particular person.
Whether the d.A.
Succeeds in extraditing polanski or not,
judge Lawrence rittenband plans
to impose polanski's
sentence on February 14th,
with or without
the filmmaker's presence.
The length of time
of course would depend
upon whether or not
there would be a deportation,
or if not deported
involuntarily,
he would agree with the
director of immigration
to consent in writing
to leaving the country...
In which case,
any balance of his stay
in state prison
would be cut short.
But it was to be no less
than the full period of 90 days.
The judge held
a press conference.
Shock waves went through
the judicial community.
A judge holding
a press conference
regarding a pending case...
Totally unheard of.
He said that he intended now
to sentence polanski
in absentia.
So I prepared
a challenge for cause
to disqualify a judge.
If you do this,
you're required to prove
that there are actual prejudices
existing by the judge
and that you can't have
a fair trial
or a fair hearing before him.
I showed the declaration
to Roger gunson.
He read it very carefully.
He agreed...
"that's true.
That's what happened.
I will back you up
if need be."
The judge was furious.
He knew the statements in the
declaration were all true.
He knew that I knew it,
he knew that gunson knew it
and he knew that Larry
silver knew parts of it.
And so there was nothing
he could do but step aside.
He was through and he knew it.
I was young,
but the way I felt was,
the judge was enjoying
the publicity
and he didn't care about
what happened to me
and he didn't care about
what happened to polanski.
He was, like,
orchestrating some little show,
you know, that I didn't
want to be in.
I clearly hold no brief
for Mr. Polanski.
And obviously what he did to
Samantha, my client,
was wrong and outrageous,
but nevertheless, he was supposed
to be treated fairly in court
and he clearly was not.
I'm not surprised that he left
under those circumstances.
Really?
Yeah.
Jesus. Wow.
Clive, I think it was
a wonderful idea
to do this interview
over this lunch,
but the lunch is getting
into a dinner now.
And in case if you have in mind
finishing this interview,
I wanted to ask you
whether you intend
to end on this note,
or do you think there's
something more to my life
than my relations
with young women?
He rebuilt his life in France
with great honor.
He's a member of
the academie francaise.
And in France he's desired,
and in America he's wanted.
Permettez-moi de vous adresser
un tres chaleureux merci.
And the Oscar...
Goes to Roman polanski
for "the pianist."
The academy congratulates
Roman polanski
and accepts this award
on his behalf.