Maybe, Polanski
RMJon23
Rose: You were in Rome when the Manson murder took place?
Polanski: No, I was in London actually.
Rose: You talked about this before, and I don't want to go into at
length, But--
Polanski: I would be very grateful.
Rose: Because of how painful it is?
Polanski: It's something that's in the past, and I don't think of it
anymore that much.
Rose: Have you talked to your children about it?
Polanksi: No, no. Of course not. What's the point?
Rose: Here is one point: a man had the most awful tragedy in his life,
when his wife and unborn child were brutally murdered. And you
survive, and over the next four or five years come to grips with what
happened. Then you make what many consider to be an American classic,
Chinatown. And you think about your life and about what we talked
about earlier, your mother, the Holocaust, Poland. Then this. And yet
your survive and keep your sanity.
Polanksi: Maybe.
-p.185, _Roman Polanksi: Interviews_
BS
And then you slip half a Quaalude in a 13-year old's drink and rape
her. And somehow your "sanity" is intact.
RMJon23
Nicholson's pool. Curious: I found this in a Feb, 1969 interview for
the magazine Positif (Manson and his Creepy-Crawlies butchered
Polanksi's wife and friends on Aug 9 of that year):
Q: In France there is a debate raging about films that don't use
screenplays and that have amateurish acting. Amongst young filmmakers
you seen to be making personal but nonetheless very professional
films.
Polanski: The others are all amateurs. It's the same with writers.
Someone may not be able to write a sentence, yet his work can still be
interesting. If a young girl of thirteen describes her adventures
with a dirty old man, it's interesting, even if her storytelling style
is poor. But cinema isn't like a naive picture or a primitive drawing
which is always emotionally touching, no matter what. When amateurish,
cinema is often very pretentious, and even young filmmakers who have
the necessary technique to make decent films feel that merely telling
a story isn't enough. They want to impress us by filling their films
with improbable effects to make them seem as different as possible
from everything else. They cut the film up, they shake the camera
about and they manipulate the sound. But for what purpose? Everyone
knows things like this are possible with film. But being simple - now
there's a talent. The simpler you are, the more complex you become -
not superficially but in a deep way.
-found on p.44, _Roman Polanski: Interviews_
For anyone of y'all innarested in the background of the Polanski rape
case, I thought this documentary was really good:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1157705/