Grove’s Goldmine – “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired”

Roman Polanski Photo Credit: Bill Bridges / Globe Photos, Inc. HBO Documentary Films

With Oscar winning director Roman Polanski now in a Swiss jail fighting extradition to the U.S. involving charges that sent him fleeing to France some 30 years ago to avoid being imprisoned by a publicity seeking Los Angeles judge, there’s new interest in writer-director Marina Zenovich’s critically acclaimed 2008 documentary "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired”.

Here’s a look back at Martin Grove’s column about the film with Marina Zenovich from June 2008.

The miscarriage of justice that sent Roman Polanski fleeing to France some 30 years ago to avoid being imprisoned by a publicity seeking L.A. judge is the focus of Marina Zenovich’s Oscar-worthy documentary “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired”.

Happily, “Polanski”, premiering on HBO June 9 (2008) at 9:00 p.m., received the necessary advance theatrical showings in New York and L.A. to qualify for best documentary feature Oscar consideration. Academy members should make a point of seeing it now or when it opens theatrically July 11 via THINKFilm. It’s a movie that will leave them talking for hours about the disgraceful way in which the late Judge Laurence J. Rittenband sought to advance his own judicial career by plotting a headline making surprise prison sentence for Polanski that was opposed at the time by both the DA’s office and the attorney representing the underage girl with whom Polanski had admittedly had sex.

One of the film’s strengths is that Zenovich doesn’t approach the controversial subject of Polanski’s 1977 trial with an axe to grind. Presenting, as she does, archival footage along with interviews she conducted for the movie she leaves moviegoers to draw their own conclusions. I have a feeling they’re not going to be viewing Rittenband as a hero of American justice.

After an early look at “Polanski” which left me enthusiastic about its Oscar prospects, I was happy to have an opportunity to talk to Zenovich about how and why she made the movie. Written by Zenovich, Joe Bini and P.G. Morgan, “Polanski” was produced by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, Lila Yacoub and Zenovich and executive produced by Steven Soderbergh and Randy Wooten.

“I was having a very hard time finding my next project after I made a film about my obsession with another Frenchman (the former politician and convicted criminal turned actor) Bernard Tapie that took me about four years to do,” she told me. “I never thought I’d find anything that meant as much to me. It was February of 2003 and I happened to be in Los Angeles. There was (a newspaper) article that talked about if Polanski was (Oscar) nominated for ‘The Pianist’ would he be able to come back. And I just thought, ‘Oh, that sounds really interesting.’ I’m a cinephile and a huge Polanski fan. I called (producer) Thom Mount, who had been quoted in the article and met with him. He knew my work, which shocked me. I thought about maybe trying to get to Roman and being with him while he found out he was nominated.

“That never panned out. I still was interested and then he ended up being nominated. Then a friend called me to say that the girl from the case (Samantha Geimer) and her lawyer were going on the Larry King show. So I turned it on and I was furiously taking notes watching it and at the end of the show her lawyer said, ‘The day Roman Polanski fled was a sad day for the American judicial system.’ I just thought, ‘Wait. That doesn’t make sense.’ I wanted to try to figure out what he meant. I came back to L.A. wanting to meet the girl’s lawyer, Polanski’s lawyer and the DA in the case.”

Zenovich called a friend, she explained, “who asked me what I was doing and I said I was kind of sniffing around and wanted to look into this Polanski story and that I’d come to town to meet the three lawyers. He said, ‘Well, that’s funny because the DA in the case is the bishop at my church.’ It was just one of those lightning moments where (you think), ‘This is too good’ because I didn’t even know how I was going to get to the guy or if he was going to talk to me. And then it turned out that the same friend introduced me to a documentary filmmaker who was the godson of Roman Polanski, but I didn’t know it. So in this one phone call I got an entree into the two worlds and that’s when I just decided I’m going to try to make this happen.”

“Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired” — released July 11 via THINKFilm.

Through her friend, Zenovich said, she met Roger Gunson, the assistant DA who handled the Polanski case in 1977, “who had retired. It wasn’t like he was that eager to talk to me, but he met with me because of our mutual friend. We met several times at a sushi restaurant in Santa Monica where we would just talk. He would try to explain to me what happened and I was seriously taking notes and trying to understand everything.

“So it was a real kind of discovery trying to figure out what exactly happened and who to talk to. I cold-called the girl’s lawyer (Lawrence Silver), who I met at the food court at the Beverly Center, and he said, ’Well, you’re going to have to write the girl a letter.’ And so I wrote her a letter and she finally got on board. Polanski’s attorney (Douglas Dalton) was the most difficult to get. I think I worked for two and a half or three years before I got him to talk.”

How did she manage to do that? “Initially, he wouldn’t call me back,” she replied. “Then he finally called me. Then I kept trying to talk him into it. After I’d been editing the movie for a while without his interview there was an article in the New York Times about the film and I think once he read that he thought he had to talk. He called me and basically said, ‘Three people know the story and one of them (Rittenband) is dead.’ I didn’t know what a hot button topic this was, but people are fascinated by Roman Polanski. They think they know the story and they feel very strongly about how well they know the story. It’s been interesting for me breaking it all down and trying to tell another side of the story that people don’t really know.”

In telling that story Zenovich went out of her way not to stack the deck in Polanski’s favor: “I tried very hard to not be easy on him because clearly he’s the one who put himself in the situation. But if you focus on what happened after the crime when he ends up fleeing the country, you can’t help but feel sympathetic. That’s what makes it interesting because he starts out as the one who commits the crime and then he ends up being the victim.”

Her portrayal of the unethical Judge Rittenband doesn’t say much for our judicial system at the time. “Unfortunately, not,” Zenovich agreed. “When I was interviewing a lot of people about the judges from the ’70s I have to say (I learned) there were a lot of characters. It was a very different time. These were characters and Rittenband was one of them. He had a lot of power, but he was very bright and a good jurist. I interviewed a lot of people to try to get the full story on him. He had a career other than the Polanski case, but it was really this that was the most interesting to me. I found out that he was a lifelong bachelor. He just basically went to the courthouse and (then to lunch at) the Hillcrest Country Club and that was his life.”

Asked about the film’s unusual release pattern, Zenovich explained, “There is going to be a theatrical release after it’s on HBO. This is not how it’s normally done. THINKFilm is releasing it July 11. The Oscar rules change a lot. I am actually very lucky because (previously) for a documentary you had to open in several cities, which makes no sense because most documentary filmmakers don’t have a lot of money and to open in a lot of cities is very difficult. This year the rule was that you had to open for a week in Los Angeles and New York, but you had to open 60 days prior to your air date. So HBO put the film in a theater in Pasadena and one in Morningside Heights in New York (and) that qualifies us. They wanted to qualify it because they feel there’s so much interest in the film and the interest has been positive.

“It’s a bit complicated and, hopefully, it will all work out, but I’m happy because I never ever thought the film would be so well received. It was a very, very difficult ambitious film to make where one of my characters is dead. I attempted to get an interview from Polanski when I was finishing the film. He said no, that he thought it would look like self-promotion. I had met Steven Soderbergh on my first documentary and he’s helped me when I’ve needed development money and he told me it would be a huge mistake if I put Polanski in the movie. I so wanted to interview Polanski, but Steven was right. We didn’t need him. So just between having the dead judge, no Polanski, a story that’s 30 years old told by two lawyers (and) a lot of archives, it was quite an undertaking."

“Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired” — released July 11 via THINKFilm.

Has Polanski seen the film, himself? “He saw it this weekend,” Zenovich told me when we spoke May 28. “We didn’t know if he was going to come to Cannes to see it. He ended up not, but he came to Cannes to give an award and I was still there so he saw the film (in Paris on DVD) before he came. We had lunch there and he told me that he thought it was a very good film and asked me the question, ‘What’s next?’ It’s a question you always get after slaving away for so many years and you don’t want to think about it, but you really have to.”

Before focusing on her next project, I asked why Polanski hasn’t returned to the U.S. to resolve the sentencing issue now that Rittenband’s dead and doesn’t pose a threat to him. “In 1997 he and Roger Gunson went to meet with the presiding judge and he told them that he wanted the proceedings to be televised (and) Polanski declined,” she explained. “Everyone keeps asking me will this film help him in any way? It wasn’t my intention. I really wanted to get a story out that somehow seemed to get lost in the salaciousness of the crime and the fact that he fled. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

As for her next project, Zenovich said, “The only person that I keep coming back to that I’m interested in is (French president Nicolas) Sarkozy because he’s just fascinating to me. I was interested in him before he got married recently and that to me kind of made me lose interest a little bit, but while I was in Cannes I was interviewing people (and) asking them what they thought. There’s something there that’s really interesting. Is he the man to change France? I’m very much a Francophile and am just fascinated by (him) trying to change a country that is so steeped in its own lovely traditions and trying to make it more American.”