This guy is ridiculous. And a pervert.
Via Vanity Fair:
As Roman Polanski’s new film, An Officer and a Spy, opens at the 76th Venice Film Festival, controversy has understandably stirred. And now that the director has given a new interview in the film’s press notes, the ire seems likely to intensify.
In 1977, Polanski—then living in California—pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, having been arrested for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl, after accepting a plea bargain. When he heard the case’s judge planned to ignore the plea bargain, Polanski fled to Europe to avoid serving a longer sentence. Although his victim, Samantha Geimer, has said that she has accepted his private apology, Polanski’s continued presence on the film scene—albeit from France, where he lives as a fugitive of the United States—continues to rankle his detractors. In 2018, at the height of its post-#MeToo reckoning, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences expelled Polanski from its ranks; Polanski responded by suing the Academy this spring.
Now, in a new interview with Bitter Moon author Pascal Bruckner—who at one point asks Polanski how he will “survive the present-day neo-feminist McCarthyism”—Polanski draws parallels between his own story and the Dreyfus affair.