Throw the book at him

I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid on Roman Polanski, and neither, thankfully, is Bill Wyman in Salon:

Espinoza was stating the obvious: Fugitives don't get to dictate the terms of their case. Polanski, who had pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl, was welcome to return to America, surrender, and then petition the court as he wished. Indeed, the judge even gave Polanski more than he deserved, saying that he might actually have a case. "There was substantial, it seems to me, misconduct during the pendency of this case," he said, according to the Los Angeles Times. "Other than that, he just needs to submit to the jurisdiction of the court."

Polanski deserves to have any potential legal folderol investigated, of course. But the fact that Espinoza had to state the obvious is testimony to the ways in which the documentary, and much of the media coverage the director has received in recent months, are bizarrely skewed. The film, which has inexplicably gotten all sorts of praise, whitewashes what Polanski did in blatant and subtle fashion -- and recent coverage of the case, in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and elsewhere, has in turn accepted the film's contentions at face value.

Dude drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl and then ran. He should do the time. Period. The doc makes a number of excellent points about the prosecution's misconduct and the girl's prior sexual experiences with adults, but that still doesn't change the fact that he doped her up, got her naked, took pictures, fucked her in the ass, and then turned around and said, "Europe! How I miss you!"

Great artists are frequently far from saintlike, but there's a line and Polanski crossed it, and he has to face the consequences. Espinoza is doing the right thing mostly by pointing out the obvious: dropping the charges against Polanski would set an extraordinarily dangerous legal precedent.

I think Polanski is also highly overpraised as a filmmaker, but that, admittedly, is neither here nor there; his personal history is far more compelling to me than his films, most of which have put me to sleep. His body of work is easy enough to admire, but outside of Chinatown and Macbeth I start nodding off fast.