I’m shocked—I shouldn’t be, but I am—shocked at all the Hollywood celebs who are standing up for Roman Polanski. I think Polanski is a truly great film artist, a genius, I really do and I have sympathy for a man who went through what he went through with the Manson murders, but this does not excuse what he did. Towering cinematic great, yes, but he’s also a man who drugged and anally raped a 13-year old child! Time doesn’t really erase a crime like that—or shouldn’t.

I thought it was poor taste when everyone suddenly had amnesia about Michael Jackson, too. Musical genius, sure, but it was the first time I ever found myself 100% in agreement with Bill O’Reilly, I just could not stomach the sight of people lauding this kiddly fiddler like he was fucking Gandhi!!!  It stank to high heaven and so does this Polanski episode. Once again, I find myself in agreement with O’Reilly and even with his guest, the utterly insufferable, Dennis Miller. I don’t like it any more than you do, but they ARE right:

[An old friend of mine, Michael Kurcfeld, introduced Polanski and Miller in Paris. Miller refers to this in the clip.]

Not long after I watched the above segment, I then read an article on the Daily Beast titled Polanski’s Victim And Me by the celebrated novelist Robert Goolrick. It’s a horrifying, eyes wide-open confessional so skillfully written it breaks your heart. Trust me, you won’t be on the fence about Roman Polanski’s fate after you read it. Bravo to Goolrick for the essay. I think it will set a lot of people straight on this one.

 
After getting nabbed in Switzerland over the weekend, film director Roman Polanski is now “wanted and desired” back in the States.  Judging, though, by the picture above, extraditing Polanski won’t be easy.  As the Huffington Post corroborates, he still looks “very determined to defend himself!”

In the Huffington Post: Polanski To FIGHT Extradition

(Spotted via TrendHunter)

 
Yes, Woodstock, but last week also saw the 40th anniversary of LA’s darkest campfire tale.  You probably know the story by now (and if you don’t, you can read about it here, or here), but the shorthand goes like this…

On the night of August 8, 1969, Charles Manson disciples Susan Atkins, Charles “Tex” Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian stormed the rented home of Roman Polanski on 10050 Cielo Drive.  Once behind its gates, they brutally and systematically took the lives of 5 people—including the life of Polanski’s eight-and-a-half months pregnant girlfriend, actress Sharon Tate.  Tate was the last to die, knived by Watson while she was pinned down by Atkins, who then took some of Tate’s blood and used it to scrawl “PIG” on the porch wall.  Manson had ordered her to leave behind a sign, “something witchy.”

The tragic events of that night, spilled into the following night and continued to ripple out through the decade(s) to come.  Even today, the events of August ‘69 provided Pynchon with the darkly seismic backdrop to his new novel, Inherent Vice.  The fallout was felt everywhere—even I had nightmares.  Not about the events themselves (I was too young to remember those), but about Manson someday going free, and moving down the block. 

After losing his wife and unborn child, Polanski was understandably devastated, and his life, eight years later, would go on to take another troubled turn.  And Sharon Tate’s legacy?  Beyond a still-loyal fanbase, all she left behind is a smattering of films and the promise of what might have been.  And that promise, in my eyes, is at its most tangible in Tate’s American debut, Don’t Make Waves. 
 

 
What’s it all about?  Not much beyond The Byrds’ winning title track and Tony Curtis’ “Carlo Cofield” moving to Malibu and mixing it up with the town’s free-lovin’ oddballs.  It was directed by Brit Alexander Mackendrick, a decade past his Sweet Smell of Success, and features one of my all-time favorite character actors, the criminally underappreciated Robert Webber.  Curtis and Webber aside, though, it’s Tate who steals the show as the always-bikinied skydiver, “Malibu.”  In fact, Tate made such a strong impression, she served as the inspiration for Mattel’s “Malibu Barbie.”
 
A physical copy of Waves is hard to come by.  But you can still catch it for yourself, in its 10-part entirety, on YouTube.  Part 1 starts right here.  The trailer follows below.

 
In The LA Times: Restoring Sharon Tate