"MAN LAUGHS" "..Of Ben-Hur..." "CLIVE JAMES:" "Granted, it's too easy and cliched to connect your work with your life in such a direct manner." "Let me take the example of Chinatown." "Chinatown is really a movie about justice not winning." "Is that what you would come to believe?" "No, not at all, but if you want your film to serve any purpose, if you want to show injustice or corruption of Los Angeles in that period, you have to show that injustice somehow won and leave them with a feeling of, um, frustration." "I hope you won't mind if I reach across and grab a couple of these... these nuts.Me, too." "Anyway, that's...that's fiction." "And I think this probably... maybe still in the land of fiction, edging towards fact, when the...when the newspapers and the magazines and the books talk about you and little girls..." "Is there anything in it?" "Well, I like young women, let's put it this way." "And I think most men do, actually." "Yeah, but the question turns on how young, doesn't it?" "Well, yes." "Well, if you come to a concrete case for which I have been behind bars, and that's what you want to talk about, um...but what exactly would you like me to tell you?" "BARRAGE OF QUESTIONS" "The Los Angeles Police Department today announced the arrest of Raymond Polanski as a result of a complaint filed by the mother of a 13-year-old female." "It was a year of anxiety, a year of drama for me, and I thought that was simply enough." "Enough is enough." "And that was my decision to leave." "You ran away, Roman." "You ran away." "Well, I, as you say, ran away, because I think that I was very unfortunate... to have a judge who misused justice." "I mean, he was playing with me for a period of a year." "I think that...that I was some kind of mouse... ..with which some abominable cat begins a sport." "Get out of our face, please." "Please!" "BARRAGE OF QUESTIONS" "'People were not in the habit of calling me at two o'clock in the morning, so..." "'I was sleeping.'" "I picked up the phone and they said, "Roman's been arrested."" "And I said, "What for?"" "And they said, "Rape."" "I said..." "I just could not..." "It just made no sense." "I mean, this is somebody who could not be a rapist, you know?" "I mean, it's somebody I know really, really well." "I was working Westerly Homicide and I also handled sex crimes, and I came into work and had a crime report on my desk of a rape that had been reported, and Roman Polanski was the named suspect in it." "After I received the report, I started the follow-up." "I went to interview the victim and her mother." "I did an extensive interview with them, made sure that any physical evidence would have been recovered from her, and then I went and talked to the District Attorney's office." "Vannatter came into the office and we sat down and he ran the case by me." "He showed me the incidence report, a crime report, taken by a couple of patrol officers, which is a narrative of the facts and stuff." "Time was kind of of the essence so we got that search warrant, and it was for two locations." "It was for Jack Nicholson's house, where the crime occurred, and also for Polanski's suite on the second floor of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel." "Me and my partner, along with a narcotics officer, proceeded with search warrant to the hotel." "We were walking in, and he was walking out with a group of people, obviously going out for the evening, and I told Phil." "I said, "There he is."" "And we stopped, cos he would have walked right on by us." "So we said, "Mr Polanksi, LAPD." "We have to talk."" "And he said, "Is this going to be more than a few minutes?" "If it is, I'll let my people go."" ""Yes, it's going to be more than a few minutes!"" "We proceeded up to his room and completed the search warrant, in which we did find the camera equipment, the film that we ultimately had developed, and it did show nude pictures of the victim." "INTERVIEWER:" "Totally nude?" "Well, she was in a spa." "You could see the upper portion of her body." "You couldn't see her whole body, because she was in the water, but they were nude pictures." "Polanksi was nervous, he was upset, and he's one of those people that just talk, and I suspect he figures, "Well, if I talk and talk, I can probably talk my way out of this thing."" "He was, like, on a hyper-high, and he's constantly talking, constantly fidgeting, and he...he didn't perceive having intercourse with a 13-year-old girl as against the law." "That was not in his culture." "You know, "So what?" type thing." "He didn't realise, I guess, the laws of our country as compared to other countries." "I'm not so sure that Mr Polanski was aware of what being arrested in America meant." "HUBBUB" "I know it's very much a piece of news for all of you." "It's a lot of sensational stuff." "Try to go beyond it and understand my position." "It's not the best type of publicity." "I have not much to tell you, except that I am innocent." "Thank you." "Thank you." "'When the case arrived here, there was an absolute mob of publicity" " The Associated Press, UPI, 'the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, 'celebrity mag, German reporters, French reporters, British reporters.'" "I had never seen a media feeding-frenzy before, and this courtroom embodied it." "You couldn't meet anybody, whether he was known or not known, who didn't have an opinion about this case." "And it was one of the biggest cases." "I didn't work for weeks and months on anything else but this case." "As the case progressed, I was struck, you know, how could this same man be two different things to two different sets of press?" "The European reporters looked on Polanksi as this tragic, brilliant, historic figure." "Here was this man who had survived the Holocaust, who had survived the gassing of his mother, and then had come here and developed his own voice, had maintained his integrity against the power of the Hollywood machine," "and the American press tended to look at him at this sort of malignant, twisted dwarf with this dark vision." "Roman was the perfect villain for them." "He was a foreigner, he had a thick accent, he made lots of money in the movie business, he was short." "He was perfect!" "In California, at that time, had he not been who he was - in other words, a famous, controversial director with the legacy of his wife's murder behind him - the whole thing would have been completely different." "Roman Polanski is 32." "He has just completed his fourth feature film," "The Vampire Killers, set in the snow-covered mountains of Transylvania." "He both directs and plays one of the leading parts." "INDISTINCT" "Sharon." "Sharon!" "You're looking at him, not at me." "OK?" "OK." "You know?" "Yeah." "Roman Polanski was born in France of Polish parents." "They left there when he was three and went to live in Poland." "I don't know..." "I think I'm a nomad, you know?" "But I, er..." "I'm really strongly attached to the Polish background." "I've grown up in Poland." "My mother was killed by Germans very soon and my father was taken to the concentration camp after two years of war, and then I was by myself." "One of the first films I saw was Snow White, you know?" "And I think that it influenced me enormously for ever." "And as you see, there's an enormous influence of it in my work, like Repulsion, you could say." "I always wanted to be a director." "I knew I wanted to make movies, I knew I wanted to be a part of it." "I knew I wanted to create this." "An American producer of Polish origin suggested that I come to London and make a film there." "London was fabulous." "You cannot imagine what it meant for someone who lived in that grey, drab Communist reality." "It was a very civilised way of living." "The room's always full of friendly faces, you saw your friends every day and there were lots of them." "Life without limits." "I got a phone call from a friend of ours, a mutual friend, who was a film producer." "He said, "I've got this friend who's coming to London" ""and he doesn't speak any English." "Can you take care of him?"" "I said, "Sure, send him round."" "Roman was totally exceptional." "I was really drawn to him, and so was everybody else." "Already an established film director, no-one in London had heard of him." "Few people had seen his films." "Yes, yes, yes!" "Go again." "THEY SPEAK IN FRENCH" "HE LAUGHS That was funny, huh?" "From coming as a complete unknown, I'd say within six months, everybody knew him." "He was a charismatic fellow." "There are very few directors who have Roman's personality, and also his appetite for life." "His appetite for life." "Pardon me?" "Our gag order." "We didn't ask for a gag order." "You did, Mr Dalton.No-one asked for a gag order." "Then why did the judge bring it up at this stage?" "Well, maybe the judge can answer that." "The topic of publicity was discussed, and certain measures were discussed to try to control the publicity." "But no-one asked for a gag order as such." "There was an hour-long discussion in chambers - does that deal principally with publicity problems?" "Yes." "A great part of it, yes." "What do you see as the problem with publicity right now?" "Well, the problem with publicity is, there's been too much of it." "And of course, for me to go on television and complain about publicity is a little inconsistent!" "REPORTERS LAUGH" "I've never spoken publicly about this case before." "But if the story is to be told," "I want it to be told factually." "I know the facts, I was there." "Can you give us your reaction to the delay at the start of the trial?" "My reaction?" "Yeah." "Well, I'm pleased." "In what way?" "Well, there's a good deal of work that goes into any major case." "'People have the right to their own opinions about what happened, 'but they don't have the right to their own facts.'" "The fact of Polanski leaving the country and so forth seems to have eclipsed the really important part of this case about what actually happened to the system of justice." "'I remain astounded, after all these years." "'This case will never leave me.'" "Defence attorney Doug Dalton had a very Lincolnesque quality about him." "Dignified, not given to flamboyant gestures, he doesn't raise his voice in the courtroom, he maintains this calm demeanour." "And he was the master of negotiations." "The fact that Doug Dalton was the attorney indicated to me that there would be a negotiated plea arrived at between the prosecution, the defence and the judge." "Douglas Dalton was a first-class lawyer, but he was definitely matched by Roger Gunson." "The District Attorney's office put Gunson on the case - a 37-year-old, very straight-thinking Mormon." "We are concerned with protecting the privacy of the girl, the complaining witness in this case, and it's my understanding that there have been foreign reporters and investigators who have attempted to contact her..." "Gunson was the model of rectitude." "He had that same kind of handsome schoolboy, sparkling good looks as Robert Redford." "The rumour in the District Attorney's office was that they picked Gunson to handle the case because he was a Mormon and he was the only person in the DA's office who hadn't had sex with an underage girl!" "I heard some jokes about why they gave it to me, but I can't imagine those are accurate." "There were a lot of prosecutors who had an interest in high-publicity cases." "Although I'd had one very high-publicity case," "I was not one that looked for them." "They were the perfect attorneys to handle a case like this, where the evidence and the players were sensational, were dramatic, flamboyant." "So you want two attorneys who kept an even keel." "They were, in that regard, very strikingly different from the judge in the case!" "When the Grand Jury came back with the indictment," "Judge Rittenband, who was very interested in handling celebrity cases, obviously saw it and realised that he wanted it, and went to the presiding judge and said, "Hey, I want this case."" "He was, of course, the senior judge in Santa Monica, which is a choice location for any judge, because that's where you get a lot of these high-publicity cases." "Judge Rittenband had handled a Cary Grant paternity suit, he had handled the Priscilla and Elvis divorce, the Marlon Brando custody suit that went on for ever..." "There were quite a few." "I spoke to Judge Rittenband very frequently and he liked being among the stars, but I don't think he was star struck." "Court in order, the proceedings are now in session." "Rittenband loved the press." "Always had comments for the press." "He wanted to shape the way the press covered him." "Sitting up there on the bench, he acted like a tyrannical director, calling the shots, telling people when to make their entrances, what to say, where to position themselves." "We mis-spoke ourselves, Your Honour." "There's obviously other bases for the motion." "Yes, we don't need that any more." "'There were a lot of similarities between Rittenband and Polanski.'" "He was meticulous." "Not too tall in stature." "He like the ladies and he loved to dance." "He had his friends in the movie industry, which he'd see every day at the Hillcrest Country Club." "When I first met him, I was answering phones and he used to say, "I'm going to Hillcrest."" "And finally, I stopped and said, "What's going on in Hillcrest?" ""Is your wife there?"" "Because I didn't know if he was married or not." "He said, "Oh, I'm not married." And I said, "Oh!" "OK..."" "I was 20 years old." "He was 34 years older, he was 54 when I met him." "And we became friends." "Oh, golly!" "Practically every evening, he'd come here and sit over in that chair, and he'd have champagne." "So I'd get champagne by the case!" ""Judge Rittenband," I said, "What would you at your age do with a girlfriend?"" "He said, "I'd do the same thing you did, and probably better!"" "I said, "Tell me about it."" "He said, "I've got one that cooks and one that does the other things."" "Rittenband was known as a hammer." "That means that he was a tough judge and a tough sentencer." "If you didn't make a deal and you didn't have the deal in place when you went in there, you were in trouble." "I don't remember any judge that liked publicity like Rittenband." "He had his bailiff maintain a scrapbook that went back many years and if an article appeared about something involving Rittenband, it wound up in the scrapbook." "It was kept somewhere in the court, I think in the bailiff's desk, and on occasion, it would come out and be displayed." "Judge Rittenband was receiving requests from people all over the world, from news agencies wanting one of the seats in his courtroom." "He was soliciting reservations for each one of these chairs." "So it was going to be a real circus!" "Because another trial in the same courtroom is taking much longer than expected, the rape trial of Roman Polanski has been delayed until August 9th, exactly eight years to the day his late wife, actress Sharon Tate," "was brutally murdered." "At that time, rape victims' names didn't get reported in the press." "Much less the names of minors who were involved in sex cases." "But with the European press there, her name would come out, exposed in the press, her background exposed, the fact that she had had a prior relationship, that she had taken Quaaludes before - all of this gotten out and would have for ever haunted her." "Once we knew her name... we knew where her school was, we knew where her house was..." "The French competition were after this girl." "They were hunting this girl." "It was awful." "Everybody knew at school." "People came to school with cameras and things were being said and printed." "The worst part was no-one believed me." "Everybody thought I was making it up." "It was so traumatic, starting that night when my mom called the police and they come up and take you to hospital and the police station." "Next morning we'll get up at 6.30, go to court, they'll sneak you in and all these men will ask you exactly what happened." "They'll sit a lady behind you you can't even see." "There's a lady there." "All that stuff was so traumatic that I never even had a chance to really...you know, worry about, you know, what happened that night with him." "It was like...it just..." "I had to worry about surviving the next day." "The facts indicate that, before the alleged act, in this case this girl had engaged in sexual activity." "That's contained in reports that we now have." "We want to know about it, who was involved, when, why these other people were not prosecuted." "This is a thing we want to fully develop." "I would have just walked away from it the next day... but you can't stop it once it starts." "I mean..." "I just..." "I just went in my room... pretty much, and just turned it off." "In Chinatown, he exposed the dark side of corruption." "In Repulsion, he explored a warped mind." "In Rosemary's Baby, he examined the occult." "Now, something altogether new, altogether chilling." "No-one does it to you like Roman Polanski." "I wanted to find more out about Mr Polanski." "And, luck have it, the Nuart Theatre, right down the street on Santa Monica Boulevard, had a Polanski film festival right after the indictment and before trial." "Murder and treason!" "What have you done to its eyes?" "!" "WOMAN SCREAMS" "No, no!" "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown." "Every Roman Polanski movie has a theme - corruption leading innocence over water." "Oh, that's sort of what we have here." "Corruption" " Roman Polanski - leading innocence - a 13-year-old girl - over water, meaning the Jacuzzi." "I felt I was gonna be able to pretty well convey to the jurors that this happened, and he had directed a scene very similar to this in his real life." "'You'd better have your legs tied down in case of convulsions.'" "Rosemary's Baby was such a great movie and was so well made that people took it for the real thing." "This is no dream, this is really happening!" "After that, Roman had this reputation of maybe having been a little bit in league with the devil himself." "It didn't hurt him." "People were very intrigued and it was kind of sexy, in a way." "He had a tremendous power over people." "You had to fall in love with him, you know." "He was completely infectious." "There was no resisting him and every day was so vibrant because he felt so passionately about what he was doing and he was on an adventure." "One of the things you are renowned for is your recklessness." "You say you are a reckless person." "Did I say that?" "You say that frequently to everybody, but clearly you're going to deny it tonight." "Really?" "Hmm." "Are you a reckless person?" "Are you afraid of anything?" "I am reckless, but I don't tell people about it." "Roman found California fantastic." "Of Los Angeles he says..." "Everything is easy here." "You want to learn karate, you can learn karate, you want to play chess, you can play chess, you want to drive racing cars, you can drive racing cars." "Everything is accessible in this town." "Rosemary's Baby was a huge hit." "Roman was on top of the world." "Nothing could have been better." "He was in love with Sharon, had great parties, went all over the world." "He was the toast of the industry." "He hung out with all the people everybody wanted to hang out with." "Everybody wanted a piece of Roman because the work was so original." "Roman?" "Hi." "This is the very beautiful Sharon Tate, who I'm sure you've seen in films, and her husband, very talented Roman Polanski, best known for his original film Knife In The Water, which he wrote and directed." "He's also responsible for Rosemary's Baby...the picture." "And a little later we'll get a chance to sit down and talk about sex and films..." "'Certainly it was a happy time... 'for all of us.'" "Roman was happy." "He was with the beautiful Sharon." "Um...everyone loved her." "He loved her." "I loved her." "We all loved her." "He was so insecure about so many things." "Knowing about his childhood, he didn't have the blueprint for life that others had." "One hoped for Roman, you know, that this brand-new life with a woman who loved him and who seemed so right for him, with a baby, that there would be this security that he had not had in his life." "And in a new homeland." "I mean, the future was his... we thought." "And then everything just collapsed." "We were preparing a film that I was going to produce called The Day Of The Dolphin." "We were writing the script in London." "Roman was a perfectionist." "It's just... "We'll finish it in a couple of days, then do the rest in LA."" "It was a Saturday." "And the phone rang and I picked it up." "And it was our agent, Bill Tennant, who was on the phone." "And I immediately realised that something was terribly wrong." "I mean, he was a very stable kind of a guy and he was absolutely distraught." "And I said, "What is it?"" "And he said something like, "They're all dead, they're all dead."" "And I realised something awful had happened and I gave the phone to Roman." "And, er..." "..I've never seen anything like it." "You know, I saw somebody just disintegrate in front of my eyes." "NEWSCAST: 'This was at the home of movie director Roman Polanski." "'It was his wife, Sharon Tate, who was one of the victims." "'She too had repeated stab wounds." "'One of the victims had a hood placed over his head 'and the word "Pig" was written in blood on the door.'" "We flew to LA the next day." "He was, er...devastated." "Devastated to a point that I've never seen any other human being in that kind of condition." "And I remember picking up Sunday newspapers." "I was already reasonably... aware of how the press functions." "Their business is selling newspapers." "The story was basically how Roman had flown to Los Angeles, murdered them all and then come back." "I mean, this was actually in the newspapers... in the headlines." "The nature of the murders - you know, Satanism, Rosemary's Baby - this was the guy who made Rosemary's Baby." "He knew so much about it." "He couldn't have known so much about it without being involved in it, so he must have been part of the cult." "They were murdered." "And "Who gets murdered in this kind of way?"" "It was a typical example of the victims being responsible for their own deaths." "It was shocking." "It was truly unbelievable." "The last day I talked to her was a few hours before the tragedy happened." "You are certainly curious... about my relationship with Sharon within the last...few months." "I can tell you that the last few months, as much as the last few years I spent with her..." ".. were the only time of true happiness in my life... ..in facts that will be coming out day after day will make a shame a lot of newsmen who for... a selfish reason write, unbearable for me," "horrible things about my wife." "After Sharon was murdered, really everybody was totally freaked out." "It was a very weird time." "Highest paranoia." "The transition of this sort of hippy kind of existence in LA to this brutal... awakening of, er... an understanding that these kind of absolutely horrible events can happen." "No-one locked their doors." "No-one thought that there was any kind of threat." "That ended at the end of the '60s and simultaneously changed everything overnight in LA." "It was the end of a fairy tale, really... in Roman's life." "In everybody's life." "He would've been a father of... a son who would've now been" "30 years old." "Maybe he would have had other children, probably would've continued living in California." "Who knows?" "How does one survive when you know his childhood?" "He's a very, very strong human being." "I think that the idea of the magnet of tragedy started after the Tate murders." "He was living out in Malibu and the neighbours were all, like, horrified because, somehow, if he was in the house next door, there was gonna be another mass murder." "I mean, people are just too weird, I tell you..." "It's crazy." "Hold it there, kittycat." "Hold it." "Hello, Claude." "Where did you get the midget?" "Oof!" "You're a nosey fella, kittycat, huh?" "You know what happens to nosey fellas?" "Huh?" "No?" "Wanna guess?" "Huh?" "No?" "OK." "They lose their noses." "HE GROANS" "Next time, you lose the whole thing." "Cut it off and feed it to my goldfish." "'Roman was different when I met him on Chinatown.'" "He was still a guy that loved life, there was just this real dark shadow that he had to deal with every day." "There were people who were constantly, "So, what was it like when your wife was killed?"" "Do you hate certain members of the press for the way they... the way you were treated after your wife's murder?" "Well... yes." "To be honest, I do." "But I wouldn't call it a hatred now, it's somehow evolved to just indifference and I simply don't read it and try to avoid..." "Yeah." "But, in general, I despise the press tremendously for its inaccuracy, for its irresponsibility and for its..." "Often even its deliberate cruelty and all this is for lucrative purposes." "If one of your complaints is the way the press misrepresent you..." "It is a complaint, isn't it?" "Surely, it'd be a good tactic to give them the minimum possible target?" "Yes, but then you have to change your lifestyle completely and go into hiding." "Six months after the murders, you're in the Alps and consorting with girls from a finishing school." "I mean..." "I could see how you'd sort of try to lose yourself like that." "But is it wise to say so?" "Yes, it is wise to say so." "Why not?" "Why wouldn't it be wise to say so?" "That's the way it was." "And that's the way it is." "I mean..." "Different people have different ways of seeing life and relationships." "It's not necessarily the same with you than me." "And people react in different ways to grief." "Some go to a monastery... others start...visiting whorehouses." "He decided he was gonna survive." "The way he was gonna survive is through his talent and having fun." "Whether it was dinner for four, and he was holding court with some idea he had, or whether it was a group of 30 or 40 or 50, he liked to be the centre of it all." "He was a wonderful host - almost like a dance master." "He kept it all sort of stirred." "It gave him enormous pleasure, and after Sharon," "I think he didn't want to be alone too much." "It's not so good to be alone." "Everybody knows the best way to get close to your dream is to get to know a star, a real star." "Polanski after Chinatown, was not only a real star, he was THE Roman Polanski - a big name." "She wouldn't mind being discovered by a man like Roman Polanski." "After all, she had seen in the French Vogue, pictures of Nastassja Kinski, who was 15 when she started her affair with Roman Polanski, or Roman started it with her, and everybody had the opinion if Polanski hadn't done this photo layout" "with Nastassja, she would have never become such a well-known young star." "He was a friend of a guy my sister was dating and he wanted girls to model." "I was modelling and acting and wanted to be in the business, so that was a great opportunity." "Was signed right up. "Sure, have my pictures taken by Roman Polanski, sounds great."" "Susie Gailey the mother of the alleged victim introduced herself as an actress to Polanski." "And she had done some work in films." "Well, I was innocent, see." "And that's the truth." "What else can I say?" "I remember vaguely meeting the mother at some party, you know, like, "Hi."" "And then I was away." "And then heard about all of this." "But just in what I was told and what I read," "I kept going back to the same question - why did the mother bring her 13-year-old daughter into this group?" "Especially if she had spent time with him and all the things she said subsequently were true." "Wouldn't you keep your 13-year-old daughter away from that?" "This was a guy that had a pretty wild reputation." "He was known as a womaniser, a party-goer, he certainly had a lot of women over the years, and he loved young women." "Why would her mother allow her to be alone with Polanski?" "You always get, "Where was your mom?"" "And it's like, "Give my mom a break, it's not her fault."" "And so..." "I don't like hearing anybody's opinion on it." "Every time someone brings it up, when they're doing their little... banter on TV, it's like, "You weren't there, you don't know." "What are you talking about?"" "You're saying how I felt, how you feel about Polanski." "You have no idea." "You're on the news making statements and thousands are listening to you..." "Just shut up!" "Another hearing on the admissibility of the Beverly Wilshire hotel records has been set for next Friday." "From Santa Monica, Furnell Chapman, NewsCenter 4." "I was instrumental in arranging the plea bargain because as I looked at this family and Samantha," "I thought at the time some people knew her name and some of the kids at school knew who she was." "I thought it was important to try to maintain her anonymity, anonymity which would've disappeared if the case had gone to trial." "So I tried to persuade the district attorney, who had a new plea-bargaining policy - a tough plea-bargaining policy." "I said, "I'm not gonna do it." "I have no interest in doing it."" "And so what he decided was, "Well, I'm gonna do it myself."" "SIREN" "The LAPD brought the evidence envelope to this courthouse and brought it in, actually to this room." "There were about five, six or seven men standing around... looking, peering down at this evidence envelope and someone takes it and turns it and opens it and out falls these... little girl's panties." "And so, there was this enormous court battle over property that belonged to her, as to what was to be done with them and..." "Judge Rittenband decided to...cut it in half and give half to the prosecution and half to the defence." "The defence expert went over and put on his latex gloves and came back and then... started...er... operating on these copper panties." "If you can imagine the humour of about seven men sitting around a table..." "Trying to identify any stains and to make sure that the cut or the piece includes part of that stain." "They were fighting, "No, it has to be a little this way." "No, over here."" ""We shouldn't cut that way..."" "So, finally, they made the cut." "What we understood was Dalton was going to take his... half and submit it to a lab." "I also understood that the lab was about to give its report in two weeks." "Two weeks and three days later, Dalton called me on the phone, clearly, now, I think, having the results of the lab report, saying, "What do you think would happen if we pursued a plea bargain" ""with the prosecution?"" "At that point, I realised that Polanski had an interest, that... the stain in the panties was gonna be brutal evidence for them." "The prosecution had loaded Polanski up with multiple charges." "The only one he was willing to admitand to plead guilty to was that he had had consensual sex with the minor." "Mr Dalton asked, "Could there be a misdemeanour?" I said, "No."" ""He'll not go to state prison?"" "I said, "No, it's got to be open."" "Um, so he agreed to all those, and we agreed it'd be unlawful sexual intercourse, the lowest count that related to the gravamen." "The agreement was that Polanski would plead guilty to the one count, that he would be sentenced based upon the probation report and the argument of counsel." "At that time the sentence for unlawful sexual intercourse was what they characterised as an indeterminate sentence, so you're sent to state prison from anywhere from six months to 50 years." "I checked and there hadn't been anyone sent to prison for conviction of this offence in the year preceding Roman Polanski's case." "I thought it was a very good disposition, for the reason that it vindicated the family and the girl, and it exposed Mr Polanski to significant time in custody based upon a probationary board." "NEWSREADER:" "By entering his guilty plea, Polanski avoided going to trial, a trial that was to have begun tomorrow, the eighth anniversary of his wife's death at the hands of the Charles Manson Family." "Standing with his lawyer Douglas Dalton," "Polanski was asked by Deputy District Attorney Roger Gunson to what count he pleaded guilty." "Polanski: "I had intercourse with a female person not my wife" ""who was under 18 years of age."" "Gunson: "How old did you think the girl was?"" "Polanski: "I understood she was 13."" "The plea bargaining was the result of a request by attorney Lawrence Silver, representing the girl's family." "Silver asked Judge Laurence Rittenband to accept the plea and protect the girl from the glare of publicity." "Silver: "A stigma would attach to her for a lifetime" ""and justice is not made of such stuff."" "Judge Rittenband, in accepting the guilty plea, ordered Polanski to be examined by two psychiatrists." "Sentencing will come after that when the judge could declare the director a mentally disordered sex offender;" "that could result in commitment to a state mental hospital." "Other possible sentences include one year in county jail, up to 50 years in a state prison, deportation or probation." "We took our chances obviously here because we had no idea, no way of knowing, what the probation department would conclude." "Judge Rittenband appointed me to evaluate Mr Polanski for purposes of determining whether he was at that time a mentally disordered sex offender, which was a legal term having to do with an individual who, by reason of a mental disorder," "was predisposed to the commission of sexual offences that rendered him a danger to the health and safety of others." "He was a very congenial but somewhat reserved guy, who was very straightforward in the interview." "As experiences go, Roman Polanski has had more than what would impact on a dozen people, in terms of his life as a child, confusion, and ultimately he gets what he feels is a stable relationship and that's taken away from him at the snap of a finger." "He had difficulty in developing relationships with women after that," "I think he felt very, very hesitant, maybe out of fear." "My opinion paralleled the recommendation of the probation department," "I didn't talk about whether he should or should not go to jail," "I really focused solely on the psychiatric issues, and it was my opinion that Mr Polanski did not qualify as a mentally disordered sex offender, and should not be handled as such." "My feeling was the guy belonged in state prison." "Rittenband had asked me about that and I said," ""Judge, you're gonna give this guy probation"." "He said, "I want to send him to jail." I said, "You'll never do it," ""the first thing that's gonna happen when you sentence him, he's gonna appeal it."" ""I'm gonna give him a year in a county jail," - that would be the sentence he appealed immediately." ""I'm gonna give him weekends in the county jail" - immediate appeal." "No matter what the sentence was, if it included a day in jail," "Dalton, correctly so, would have appealed it." "Then it's gonna go all the way up to the State Supreme Court, he has the money, and he'll take it to the US Supreme Court, if he thinks he can." "He said, "Well, what am I gonna do?"" "The judge called me into chambers, he looked at me and said, "Dick, tell me," ""what the hell do I do with Polanski?"" "I went, "Whoa!" "Your Honour, that's your decision, that's not mine." ""I'm a reporter, I can't advise you on something like that."" "I hadn't been covering courts that long, but I knew a decision by a judge was supposed to be a decision by a judge, and was not to take in any advice from any other person, other than what was there in the law books," "what had been entered into evidence in the case." "He said, "Well, what am I gonna do?" "What should I do?"" "I said, "What you should do is send him up for a 90-day observation."" "A 1203.03 is a diagnostic study where a defendant in a felony case is sent to Chino for a 90-day observation." "It's like an in-depth probation report." "He said, "What will that do?" I said, "It's not a final sentence," ""he can't appeal it, he has to go"." "We were very pleased when we got the probation report." "It recommended that Polanski serve no time in custody, and receive a straight probationary sentence." "However, we received a call from Judge Rittenband asking us to come to chambers, that he wanted to discuss the matter with us." "The probation officer, Roger Gunson and I all went into his chambers for a meeting." "At that time the judge said he was not going to follow the recommendation of the probation department." "He had decided that as punishment for Polanski he was going to send him to the state prison at Chino for a diagnostic study." "Gunson and the probation officer both protested." "I told him that the law was that the diagnostic study was not to be used as punishment or as someone's sentence, the courts are not supposed to use that." "And his response was, "I don't want to send Mr Polanski to county jail" ""because I don't want to be responsible if he were to be injuredor killed."" "I said, "Judge, we had not expected this," ""Polanski's engaged right now in directing a large movie," ""it involves many people, millions of dollars," ""it's going to cause a tremendous hardship."" "And he suggested that I request a stay, a stay meaning to defer or put off this diagnostic study in order for Polanski to be able to complete his work on the film." "What he wanted to do was have us go out into open court and pretend as though" " I don't know if he used the word pretend - but not to divulge that we knew what was going to happen." "He said, "I want you to go out, Gunson," ""and you argue that Polanski should be placed in custody,"" ""and Dalton, you go out and you argue that he should be put on probation," ""then I will make my remarks and I will sentence him" ""to Chino for the diagnostic study," ""and the press need not know anything more about this." ""If you do not tell the press about this" ""and if Polanski receives a good report from the probation department," ""which we all are quite sure he will," ""that will conclude his punishment."" "I wasn't going to argue about it," "Polanski's fate hung in the balance;" "if I started protesting about the diagnostic study" "Rittenband could well have said, "Well, I'll just send him to prison." "How would you like that?"" "That was the...fabrication that he, scenario that he wanted to present, and he did present." "SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS" "'This thing had reached the point where it was becoming surreal.'" "Gunson and I walked into the courtroom which was packed with newsmen and spectators." "We took our places at the counsel table, sat down and waited for the entrance of Judge Rittenband." "I argued first, it was a very strange feeling to be arguing when I knew exactly what the result was going to be, it was like having a mock trial." "In law school we did this, we had staged trials and so forth, but even then we didn't know what the result was going to be." "But we dutifully went out, I argued for probation," "I tried to make it sound as authentic as I could." "Gunson got up and made his argument, and then Rittenband proceeded to give his closing remarks which had been obviously prepared in advance." "He argued much better than either one of us, and as I sat there and listened I thought," ""I think I see what's happening here." ""He knows that this is a probation case." ""The probation department has recommended probation," ""Chino will very likely recommend the same thing," ""and he wants to condition the press and the public" ""to the fact that when he puts Polanski on probation" ""that they see the basis that he used in arriving at that conclusion."" "NEWSREADER:" "After 20 minutes in court before Superior Judge Laurence Rittenband, film director Roman Polanski and his lawyer Douglas Dalton emerged from the courtroom amidst a crush of reporters and cameramen." "Dalton had asked the court to place Polanski on probation, arguing that though the crime of unlawful intercourse is a serious one, it is not a unique crime." "The prosecutor Deputy District Attorney Roger Gunson asked that Polanski be placed in custody, though it was noted that the 13-year-old girl in the case and her family had asked the court not to incarcerate the film director." "On the basis of two psychiatric evaluations the judge ruled that Polanski was not a mentally disordered sex offender, but he did order Polanski to undergo 90 days further psychiatric testing at Chino state prison, postponing a final sentence" "until the testing is completed." "Judge Rittenband granted Polanski a three-month stay to conclude his present work." "At the end of that time the film director will go to Chino state prison for 90 days diagnostic testing." "Robyn Groath, NBC News, Santa Monica." "Why are you leaving the country, sir?" "Sorry?" "Why are you leaving the country?" "Where?" "You're gonna leave the country on a businesstrip?" "Yes." "Can you tell us about the trip?" "I'm going to Paris." "Will you come back?"Will I come back"?" "!" "I certainly will." "What do you..." "Don't worry." "Dino just called up and said, "Wonderful news." "We got Roman."" "You know, Ro-man!" "It was a potboiler, girl divers getting caught in a giant clam, and all that stuff." "Roman had contempt for the script, not a picture that Roman would have done." "I presume, though I didn't discuss it, that no-one else would hire him at that time." "And Laurentiis, seeing a chance to get a great director, who otherwise he couldn't possible have approached for this project, stepped in immediately." "It was a coup, a triumph, you know, taking advantage of this guy's troubles, to some extent." "Better luck for Roman would have been not to be allowed to go to Europe." "Roman called me and said," ""I'm here in Munich." "Can we meet?" I said, "Of course."" "We decided to go in the evening to see the Oktoberfest." "Roman didn't want to go, but we said, "You have to go because this is unbelievable." ""You have never seen 10,000 people in a tent," ""drunken" " I mean, you must see that."" "He said, "OK, I will go with you."" "So finally we went to a special box." "I was with my girlfriend and a few other girlfriends, you know." "HE MIMICS CAMERA" "Most unfortunately, he was photographed caught in pose, sitting in-between two girls." "It was quite innocent." "They say, "A photograph doesn't lie."" "Nothing lies MORE than a photograph." "Roman always did have bad luck." "This was the kind of thing that a cautious person would not have dreamed of doing." "They would have had themselves photographed in a cathedral or doing something like that!" "That one photograph changed everything." "I took it to Rittenband cos I figured it was something he ought to see." "What I told him was, "Judge, you've made so many mistakes,Ithink, in this case." ""He's giving you the finger." "Haven't you had enough of this?"" "He said, "What?" "What?" "He's not getting away with that!"" "The judge became furious when this appeared in the paper." "He was interviewed by a Hollywood gossip columnist, Marilyn Beck." "Rittenband told me he had been duped." "I really believe he HAD been duped." "In the interview, he said that very possibly he wanted Polanski back in the country, and Polanski could be on his way to prison now." "That photograph embarrassed the judge." "Mr Polanski is supposed to be very focused and intent when he's working and this photograph demonstrated, at that moment in time, he was not." "Why was he in Germany when he should have been working hard on a movie?" "Did you clear up that apparent misunderstanding?" "Why was he in Germany?" "The judge ordered Roman to come back to the States and he called Dino in to testify." "Dino explained, through me as the translator, that we were going on with the preparation of the production and that this was just part of the whole thing of making movies." "Could you explain to us why Mr Polanski's in Germany?" "'Roman was still working when he was in Munich because the distributor' convinced Roman to come back and spend a night or go out for a few drinks and, at the same time, talk about everything." "I have already explained." "'I don't think the judge knew that or understood that,' and, most of all, he didn't believe it." "Step aside." "Please let him through." "Dino De Laurentiis testified, Roman testified." "There was no evidence at all to the contrary." "I rested my case and the ruling had to be that he was there on business purposes and that was the finding of the judge." "I told him, you know," ""You just have to bear up and go through this," ""and remember at the conclusion of this, this case will be over," ""you'll have no further time in custody and it will all be behind you."" "Mr Dalton, has Mr Polanski talked to you about his reaction to this almost three-month period?" "Yes, he has." "Excuse me." "I have some business to conduct." "Has he indicated to you what it feels like?" "Mr Polanski, do you have any kind of statement at all?" "Mr Polanski, do you have any statement at all?" "Mr Polanski, do you have any statement at all regarding the 90-day psychiatric stint?" "No.No statement whatsoever?" "What are your thoughts right now?" "Any thoughts that you have at all?" "Will he be given any special consideration here?" "Er, nothing other than anybody else that would come in." "When we talk about special housing and special consideration, we screen everybody who comes in for possible protective custody housing, but we're concerned for his safety." "There were sketches, there were locations." "People had been up to Chino and talked to Roman." "I mean, he was prepping the movie from Chino." "Dino and I went to visit Roman." "Dino, of course, was concerned as to what was going to happen with his film." "I was kind of shocked when we saw Roman sitting outside at a table, outside of the prison." "He was nervous, always looking over his shoulder to see who was back of him." "He said that he was concerned about what the other prisoners would do to him if they could get near him, because he was accused of being a child molester." "It was very grim, and it was a very frightening place, you know, this is a hard-core... you know, murderers... and Roman was not safe there." "People get killed there." "Polanski, of course, was delighted." "He felt, as properly he should, that he had lived up to his obligations in the case." "He admitted his guilt, he served the sentence that had been imposed, and now it was over, he could go on with his life." "I was quite surprised." "Everyone in the criminal justice system is aware that 90-day diagnostic studies take less than 90 days." "There are not very many people, I would guess, who've had the experience of it only being 42." "That's not a punishment." "A punishment..." "You know, he was charged with very serious crimes." "You're talking about crimes that would incur state prison time, maybe 10, 15, 20 years in state prison." "13-year-old girl, where he had sexual intercourse with her, sodomised her, gave her drugs, gave her alcohol." "He got off with nothing." "Mr Gunson, it's the practice of the district attorney's office to prosecute the defendant to the fullest degree." "You deviated on this case." "Why?" "Why did you agree to copping out on the plea if we should have had a full trial with charges?" "What do you mean, "copping out"?" "'Between the time that the judgeagreed 'that the 90-day diagnostic study be his sentence...' there had been lots of news media reports very critical of the judge and now that it appears that Mr Polanski will be walking away from a rape" "after just serving 42 days is going to be embarrassing to the judge and he needs to overcome him." "My father was at Hillcrest Country Club, washing his hands in the locker room, and standing next to him was Judge Rittenband and one of the gentlemen at Hillcrest came up to the Rittenband and said, "Are you really gonna let that little Polish blah-blah-blah off?"" "And Rittenband said, "Well, he thinks so, but no way." ""We're gonna put that little blank-blank away for the rest of his life."" "When we met in his chambers, at this time Judge Rittenband said that wasn't going to honour the promise that he had made about releasing Polanski upon completion of the diagnostic study." "He gave as his reason that he was getting too much criticism." "The judge says that 42 days is not enough time in custody, that he expected him to be in there 90 days and so somehow he has to make up these 48 days of the intended sentence of 90." "Gunson, at this point, said, "If it's 48 more days you want," ""why don't you just give him 48 days in the county jail," ""and you will have accomplished him serving the full 90 days in jail?"" "And Rittenband said no, he was not willing to do that, because the perception of a prison sentence must be maintained for the press." "He told me that if I would come back to court after the press was gone and the public was gone that he would then recall Polanski and he would be released from prison." "It became obvious to me that he wanted him deported because he did not want him around here embarrassing the judge any more than he already had." "HE BANGS A DRUM" "He wanted Roman to agree that he would voluntarily waive any rights he may have regarding deportation but Rittenband had no jurisdiction over such matters, and it is illegal to impose an illegal condition on somebody serving time in custody," "and so we now were in the category of actual illegal conduct." "This was getting rather contentious as you might understand." "I said, "If we're going to do that, Judge, I want to have a hearing" ""regarding the sentencing as we're entitled to do and I want to have witnesses here" ""and I want to have a hearing." He said," ""Well, I'm going sentence him anyway and if you still insist on having your hearing," ""then I may withdraw the sentence that I told you I would do if you went along with this" ""thing that I'm going to do tomorrow."" "The processing was concluded by Judge Rittenband." "As he had done before he directed me to argue for probation." "He wanted Gunson to again argue for time in custody, and then he would impose the sentence that he had discussed with us." "I certainly was not arguing for State Prison in chambers, nor did I intend to argue that he should send him to State Prison, to participate in this sham that the judge was involved in." "We got up, we walked out of the room." "I..." "I remember saying immediately to Gunson," ""I'm not going to do this again." ""No matter what he does, I'm not going to participate in this thing."" "And Gunson said, "I'm not going to do it either."" "As we walked down the aisle past the chairs of an empty courthouse room at that time," "Doug Dalton turned to me and said," ""Do you think that I can trust the judge?"" "And..." "I said something that I wish I hadn't said and maybe it did or didn't make a difference, but I shouldn't have said it, and what I said to him was," ""I don't know why not." "You trusted him once."" "I didn't know what I was going to do the following day." "I did know that I was no longer going to participate in a proceeding that was being designed solely to advance the purposes of Judge Rittenband." "I told Mr Dalton that I would be available to... ..disclose this information to anyone in any place at any time." "I contacted Roman and I said for them to come to my office." "We discussed what was going to happen the following morning." "I told him that it was my opinion that the sentence would be illegal." "That we could probably obtain relief on appeal, but that would involve a long procedure and Polanski would be incarcerated during that period of time." "I said that the judge had said that if Roman agreed to waive any deportation hearing, and be deported, that he would then be released, if he also had by then served 48 days." "Roman said to me, "Can we trust him?"" "And I said, "No, we can't trust him." "We have no idea what he may do." ""We've all agreed that he can no longer be trusted" ""and what he represents to us is worthless."" "With that Roman got up, looked at me, and I believe he said, "I'll see you guys later."" "And he left the room." "There were two or three other people there, and I gave Roman and envelope which I thought was script notes or something else." "The general feeling I had is, "Why is everybody so nervous?"" "There was an electricity in the air." "(IN FRENCH)" "CROWD CHATTERS" "Does it have to do with what was my conversation with Mr Polanski?" "My conversation with him is protected by the attorney-client privileges." "I can't divulge to you the substance or the content of my conversation with him." "Only to say what I said in court." "That he did call me this morning at my home, and he told me he would not be here." "I asked him to call me again, because I wanted to discuss this with him further, and attempt to persuade him to return." "He said he would call me again." "The court asked you whether you thought you might be able to talk him into coming back." "What did you reply?" "I said I thought I had a reasonable chance of being successful." "How will you try to do it?" "What...?" "Can you tell us what makes you think he's out of the country?" "No, I can't tell you that." "That's my belief." "What happens if he does not come back, Mr Dalton?" "Then the court goes ahead...?" "I'm not going to speculate..." "Roman Polanski is in seclusion - friends say inside this building in downtown Paris." "He skipped the country early yesterday only hours before he was to be sentenced for illegally having sex with..." "He'd given her champagne and..." "He told a friend here his refrigerator is full, and he does not intend to leave..." "Many feel the aura of tragedy and sensationalism that surrounds Polanski obscures his brilliance as a director... ..Roman Polanski case, said today he intended to send Polanski back... ..District Attorney's office has begun proceedings to force Polanski back to the US." "However authorities are not optimistic about succeeding..." "I'm advised that the treaty with France might not allow for his return to this country to be sentenced on this charge." "Why is that?" "As far as I can tell, the treaty only specifies number one rape, and as you know, Mr Polanski was not convicted of rape, but unlawful sexual intercourse and that's a different crime to rape." "Secondly, the treaty specifies that it's discretionary on the part of France to return French citizens." "They have an option - they can or they can't, depending on how they feel about a particular case, or possibly person." "Whether the DA succeeds in extraditing Polanski or not," "Judge Rittenband plans to impose Polanski's sentence on February 14th, with or without the film-maker's presence." "..of course would depend upon whether or not there would be a deportation, or if not deported involuntarily, he would agree with the Director of Immigration to consent in writing to leaving the country, in which case any balance off his stay in State Prison" "would be cut short, but it was to be no less than the full period of 90 days." "The judge held a press conference." "Shockwaves went though the judicial community." "A judge holding a press conference regarding a pending case - totally unheard of." "He said that he intended to sentence Polanski in absentia, so I prepared a challenge for cause to disqualify a judge." "If you do this, you're required to prove that there are actual prejudice, you know, existing by the judge, and you can't have a fair trial or a fair hearing before him." "I showed the declaration to Roger Gunson." "He read it very carefully." "He agreed, "That's true." "That's what happened." ""I will back you up if that need be."" "The judge was furious." "He knew the statements in the declaration were all true." "He knew that I knew it, he knew that Gunson knew it, and he knew that Larrie Silver knew parts of it, and so there was nothing he could do but step aside." "He was through and he knew it." "I was young, but the way I felt was, the judge was enjoying the publicity, and he didn't care about what happened to me or Polanski." "He was orchestrating some little show that I didn't want to be in." "I clearly hold no brief for Mr Polanski and obviously what he did to Samantha my client was wrong, outrageous, but nevertheless he was supposed to be treated fairly in court and clearly was not." "I'm not surprised that he left under those circumstances." "Really?" "Yeah." "Jesus, wow." "I think it was a wonderful idea to do this..." "HE LAUGHS" "..to do this interview over this lunch, but the lunch is getting into a dinner!" "In case if you have in mind finishing this interview," "I wanted to ask you whether you intend to end on this note or do you think there's something more to my life than my relations with young women?" "And the Oscar... ..goes to Roman Polanski..." "CHEERING AND APPLAUSE" "..for The Pianist." "The Academy congratulates Roman Polanski and accepts this award on his behalf." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd"