Posted on 07/18/2005 2:57:46 PM PDT by Liz
Roman Polanski said Monday he was in a "state of shock" when he read ..... in Vanity Fair magazine alleging he tried to seduce a woman while on his way to his slain wife's funeral in 1969.
The film director, at times choking with emotion, spoke to a packed London court via video link from Paris, the first libel claimant to use such technology......
Polanski was speaking from Paris to avoid the risk of extradition from Britain to the US, where he is wanted after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.
He cannot be extradited from his native France for the crime.
"I was in a state of shock," the 71-year-old said........."This was the worst thing ever written about me......because it dishonors my memory of Sharon".....
Tate was murdered by followers of the Charles Manson clan in 1969, when she was 8 1/2 months pregnant.
Polanski was in London at the time, and Vanity Fair alleged he hit on a "Swedish beauty" on his way to the funeral.
The director admitted he was sexually unfaithful to Tate before and during his marriage, but took offence at the allegation he had used her name to seduce the woman.
SEXUAL ANTICS
Tom Shields, lawyer for Conde Nast, Vanity Fair's publishers in Britain, drilled Polanski about his promiscuous lifestyle.
Asked whether he had seduced another woman within four weeks of his wife's death, Polanski replied: "Maybe I was seduced by someone ... I never considered sex, particularly at that pre-AIDS period, as something harmful. Quite the contrary."
When Shields recalled the 1977 case in the US, he added: "What I did was wrong, and I do not see why I should go back to this for the purposes of this trial."
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(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.netscape.cnn.com ...
Nice guy (gag). And why did this priapic dwarf leave his wife alone in her last month of pregnancy, galivanting in Europe, probably with underage women?
He also raped a child.
Looking at this ugly 4'8" dwarf, it's clear women would not be attracted to the creep, except that he can get them in films.
That's common in Hollywarped----gorgeous girls like Sharon Tate marry way beneath themselves b/c the guy is a producer or director.
Mia Farrow did the same with ugly Woody Allen who shafted her but good, seducing then marrying her adopted daugther.
It's fair to say that Polanski was never really a Hollywood figure. Only a couple of his films were made there.
Nonsense, Polanski's been lionized by Hollywood as paradigm auteur----director, prince of filmakers, an artiste who exerts tremendous control over his films, often co-writing the screenplays and sometimes acting in them.
Even after he got nailed with the child molestation charge, they gave him an Academy Award for The Pianist.
In 1979, Polanski was arrested in California on charges of unlawful sexual intercourse with a thirteen-year-old girl. He spent forty-two days in prison under observation.
Before further criminal proceedings could get underway, Polanski fled the United States.
He made his next film, Tess (1979), an acclaimed version of the Thomas Hardy novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles, in France.
He got nominated for Tess, Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby.
I didn't say he wasn't respected as a great filmmaker. I said he was never a Hollywood filmmaker.
At least not for more then a couple of films made for hire.
I gathered from your post that you implied Polanski was far removed from the Hollywod milieu----I disgree with that assumption.
My only point was that throughout his career, Polanski's films have been made with foreign money...not Hollywood studio money. With a couple of notable exceptions (Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown)
Perhaps, but in the end, tout Hollywood survives on foreign money----even when films bomb in the USA, they are distributed worldwide, and we assume, they recoup some or all of their costs in foreign markets.
Snort----"cultural imperalism", my Aunt Tilly---they'd give their eyeteeth to live like an ordinary American.
No one ever said jealousy wasn't a large part of it.
Did you hear? Polanski won the libel suit.
Yep. I was waiting for someone to post it.
Look for Farrow to get a part for testifying on RP's behalf.
She owes whatever movie stardom she had to Polanski and Allen. Well that and the fact that her father John Farrow was a director ('The Big Clock' and the John Wayne western 'Hondo'). Famous because of two perverts and nepotism. I wonder how that feels!
Her choice of male companions is poor----she says now she wishes she never met child molester Woody---Frank dumped her---and Previn was a womanizer.
Her father, John Farrow was also a notorious womanizer.
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