Michael Linder

Hollywood’s fave fugitive child molester wants sex charges dropped, gets a biopic

Update: February 1, 2009 A three-judge panel in the 2nd California District Court of Appeals has rejected an attempt by lawyers for Polanski to have all 600 judges in the L.A. County Superior Court disqualified from hearing the director’s dismissal request. The Los Angeles court continues to insist that Polanski must return to Los Angeles where he faces likely arrest before his motion to toss out child-sex charges can be heard.

The movie claims to be a full-fledged biography of the Oscar-winning director written by its star and director Damian Chapa. Remember him from “Blood In, Blood Out?” No?

His flacks say Chapa’s film “covers everything from a turbulent childhood in war-torn Poland, the murder of wife Sharon Tate by the infamous Charles Manson cult and the infamous notorious rape case that lead to Polanski’s exile.” Yup, a double dose of infamy along with a line long associated with cinematic stinkers: “This is a film Hollywood does not want you to see.”

It’ll be tough for Chapa to top “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” the solidly-researched 2008 documentary by Marina Zenovich (out on DVD this month) that has sparked current efforts to throw out Polanski’s charges.

Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse in the champagne, Quaalude and hot tub seduction of 13-year-old aspiring model Samantha Geimer at Jack Nicholson’s house in 1977. Now 45, Geimar is as fervent a Polanski supporter as she was at the time of the incident and says so in Zenovich’s movie which is packed with behind-the-scenes revelations and insight into the events that led to Polanski’s arrest, flight and exile.

Was Polanski the victim of trial-by-media misconduct by Judge Laurence Rittenband who presided over the case? Zenovich portrays the judge, who died in 1994, as a champagne-swilling publicity hound who’d never refuse an interview, ordered a bailiff to keep a scrapbook of his press clippings, tossed scoops to a gossip columnist and scripted lines of courtroom dialogue for prosecution and defense attorneys.

Psychologists who examined Polanski advised probation, though the PR-sensitive Rittenband is said to have feared a hostile reaction in the press should he concur with that sentencing recommendation. The day before announcing Polanski’s fate, Rittenband allegedly boasted to Hillcrest Country Club buddies that he planned to imprison the director for life.

Polanski twisted the plot and fled to extradition-proof France. He has just begun work on a film adaption of Robert Harris’ novel “The Ghost” starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan to be filmed in Berlin.

Chances of dismissal are slim says retired deputy D.A. David Wells who appeared in Zenovich’s film, a bad decision he now says. “[Polanski] has no standing. He’s not here. He’s a fugitive,” Wells recently told the Los Angeles Times.

Still, California’s Appellate Court is weighing claims by Polanski’s attorneys that L.A. County Superior Court is hopelessly biased and should not be allowed to handle their client’s dismissal motion. They point to the L.A. court’s recent ruling Polanski must return to Los Angeles where he’d face certain arrest in order to be granted his day in court.

This may be the last, best hope for 75 year-old Polanski to clear his record and ultimately be free to return to the United States though Polanski says he has “no plans ever to return,” and that his motivation is to ensure legal “misconduct” does not go unpunished.

We wonder if Jessica’s Law could play in all this. The voter initiative is vague when it comes to old child molestation cases. Might Polanski be required to register like any garden variety pedophile, prohibited from straying too close to schools and kid hangouts, beaming his GPS coordinates to a satellite from an ankle bracelet?

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