Fugitive Filmmaker Roman Polanski Revisited in Documentary

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080120/ts_alt_afp/entertainmentusfilmfestivalsundancejusticepolanski_080120171030

Fugitive filmmaker Roman Polanski returns to US in documentary
by Michel Comte
Sun Jan 20, 12:10 PM ET

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Chronicled in newspapers around the world then, the "sensational" case was "one of the first examples of journalists hunting people for a tabloid story," Zenovich told AFP. "There was no Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood back then (on US television), but there was a lot of interest in this case. And once they found out (victim Samantha Gailey)'s name, they found out where she went to school, where she lived, and they hunted her -- and Polanski."

And, according to Zenovich, they botched the story.

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In puritan America then, Zenovich argues in the film, Polanski was viewed with suspicion and contempt, a short foreigner with perverse ways. In Europe, he was depicted as a tragic figure, whose mother died in the Holocaust and whose lovely wife Sharon Tate was slaughtered by Charles Manson's cult followers in California.

Behind the scenes, it became clear to the attorneys involved and even the victim that the presiding judge was "directing" a miscarriage of justice by trying to severely punish Polanksi for having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor he had photographed for the French edition of Vogue magazine, when most involved believed he deserved probation. The judge had several twenty-something girlfriends, more than half his age.

The prosecutor, a Mormon with "Robert Redford good looks," was said to have been assigned to the case because he was the only justice department attorney who had not slept with an underage girl. He empathizes with Polanski in the film. And Gailey, now a mother of three, said in the film she would have preferred to abandon the case after facing the blinding glare of the media spotlight.

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