Last week, this writer, when assessing Roman Polanski’s career, attempted to avoid passing comment on the rights and wrongs of the recent unpleasantness in Switzerland, but still managed to receive some angry e-mails. Clearly, the issue of Polanski’s arrest for statutory rape remains an enormously sensitive one.
Following the Swiss authorities’ decision to arrest the director, pending an extradition warrant from the US, a band of distinguished film-makers stood up to voice their objections. Woody Allen, Harvey Weinstein, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Pedro Almodóvar and Ethan Coen all cried foul.
Then Whoopi Goldberg made a twit of herself by saying that the original offence was “not rape-rape”. The effect has been the reverse of what the insiders might have hoped. Right- wing blowhards and liberal feminists have come together to declare Hollywood out-of- step on issues of morality.
Even Bill Maher, reliable scourge of the right, found time to take a piece out of his buddies on his TV show Real Time. "Hollywood defending Roman Polanski?" he said to a nervous Janeane Garofalo. "I can sort of see why that would make a Muslim guy want to blow us up."
On British TV, documentarist Nick Broomfield, who smelt a conspiracy, was scowled at by Andrew Neil and Michael Portillo. Surely, now is the time for a sequel to Team America: World Police. We demand to know the Film Actors Guild's view.
