Here’s the CNN summary: “He’s a brilliant guy, and he made a little mistake 32 years ago.”
Funny how things have changed in eight years. Back then, it was OK to be a brilliant Hollywood director and to have had sex with a 13-year-old.
t’s a reputation Polanski’s earned and maintained, despite his 1977 guilty plea on a statutory rape charge of unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl.
The celebrated director fled the United States and settled in France to escape jail, but by the standards of those in Hollywood, the case is ancient history.
“We hope today that this latest order will be dropped,” Winger said. “It is based on a three decade old case that is all but dead, except for a minor technicality.“
Matthew Belloni, who has has been following the Polanski case for The Hollywood Reporter’s legal blog, said the outpouring of support from the film industry is not surprising.
“It is a criminal conviction of a terrible crime, but it is something that the industry is willing to look the other way on,” Belloni said. “If Hollywood really gets to look at itself and judge the personal character of a lot of the artists in the community, there would be a lot of empty seats at the Oscars because a lot of people have personal problems. This sort of is at the extreme level of that.”
And here we are today, because of that kind of logic.