Tarantino Defending Polanski (Howard Stern)

I would go you one further. I think it being too talky and too slow are its strengths.



I like it a lot too. But not near my top like you.

I guess it isn't fair to Polanski to not consider this to also be a thread about all his great films (and sometimes not so great films).


Yes, he's definitely a bad guy, but you can't deny the power of something like Rosemary's Baby. He clearly had the goods.

I see where Tarantino is coming from here...American and European standards are different. I don't feel like you can be more angry than the victim....





She's forgiven him, and looking at what Polanski has been through in his life being a Holocaust survivor and having his family murdered by a death cult (that might have been CIA related). It's time to move on.

If that photo is supposed to be of him and his victim, it’s incorrect. That is his wife. As far as I am aware, she (the victim) has never forgiven him.
Also, whatever tragedy that had befallen him previously doesn’t wash away his sins, nor excuse them.

Agreed, that scene does go a tad too long, but it the film overall is better then say….Hateful Eight and Django Unchained.
Kill Bill (both) is pretty great as well.

The "victim" wants to move on it's the fandom that doesn't seem to want to. And I have a problem with this because we single out a case from 50 years ago yet systemic abuse from the Catholic Church has gone unpunished. The guy that ran for President and won had 30 accusers which nobody seems to care about. And the US "rape" laws vary based on gender, age, and wealth. You can be guilty of statory rape of a 20 year old but you can also marry a 12 in the US.

Inconsistences in law and the fact other people commit crimes do not mitigate the seriousness of this particular crime.

The victim can just as well beg for it. But no responsible person would have sex with an impressionable 13 yo girl who cannot in their right mind make informed decisions about sex. 13 yo is still primary school here. It's a freaking child.

But... the victim in this case didn't even beg for it. She was intoxicated and drugged and then raped. I mean, if she was willing why would Polanski use a roofie? Besides a 13 yo can't be willing because they can't properly weigh the consequences of their actions.

The victim may want to move on. She might forgive him. Does that erase his crime?

And about standards... 12 yo is the age of consent in the Philippines. Does that make it OK to have sex with a 12 yo?

__________________
Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

The crime in 1977 didn't even meet the standards of a prison sentence. It was selective enforcement political theater from 60 years ago...or in other words selective outrage. My understanding was that the mother was there at the time...no charges were brought about on her.


You have plenty of other rapists to obsess over leave the poor girl and the old man alone.

For the record, Polanski is unquestionably a creep and a bad guy and a rapist. Like Minio already stated even if she was 'ready to party' it's completely irrelevant. He's still all three of those things, and by many many accounts, she was definitely not looking for what happened to have happened to her.


Can I watch his movies apart from this fact. Yes. Can I consider his worth as a person without including it? No.


As for the legal matters, there is always a bunch of technical legalistic bullshit that can absolve someone by law. But that is also pretty irrelevant when the instance being debated here, and its overtly grotesque nature, is basically as clear cut reprehensible as it gets. Yes, some arguments can be made why, in regards to a court of law, why maybe the case has to be left in the past. But that, first of all, is debatable, and second of all, even if we think its a legal dead end now after so many years, it doesn't change a ****ing thing regarding what happened. He raped a minor and he basically got away with it.


Polanski is a rapist. Defending or minimizing what he did in any way is gross. And at least I'm sure even Corax and I will agree pretty steadfastly on this point.

Just remembered the trailer for The Tenant.



At 0:45 the narrator says "No one does it to you like Roman Polanski".

This is so darkly hilarious given this thread.

As is usually the case, the pro-Polanski arguments are 95% non-sequiturs or whataboutism. None of the following are valid arguments:

1) She's not mad at him.
2) Other people have done it.
3) It was a long time ago.

There are no argumentative calories in any of these. Victims don't determine if something is a crime for like a dozen reasons, most of which are obvious with a moment's thought. Other people doing it just means they should be punished, too. There is absolutely zero mutually exclusivity between the ideas that Polanski was targeted and the idea that what he did was wrong: they can both be true. This, too, is obvious with a moment's thought. And the passage of time does not in any way change the moral calculus of the act at the time.

These are all obviously bad arguments that don't withstand even a light sprinkling of scrutiny. So when people employ them, they're telling me they either don't understand how to argue, or are just kind of responding with reflexive talking points. Or both.

Well why don't all of you pat youselfs on the back for being against rape,


I don't care about a fifty year old case that didn't even have a complaining victim. This country has no issue with systemic race so I don't really care about it. He was exiled and he's going to die so big whoop.



Rpy Moore ran for Senate and did the same thing. A government was running a pedophile honey trap on Epstein Island. And Bill Cosby raped dozens of women and did a year in jail for it.

I could not bring myself to watch anything with Bill Cosby in it.



BTW this is a useless thread, it's a bait trap designed to get all of us MoFos to argue with each other so someone can be entertained. It's not a good trend for MoFo.

We should all take a break with a viewing of Leonard Part Six!

What amazes me the most in these threads is effort to which posters do split hairs and deflect and equivocate about what is manifestly a crime that any one of us muggles would rightly be condemned for committing.

What is messed up in this case isn't Polanski sodomy raped a 13-year-old. I mean, he did, but that's not the point.

What's messed up in this case is not that U.S. law in some states is bonkers.

What's messed up in this case is not the desperate whataboutisms of Church and the executive branch getting away with it.

What's messed up in this case is that a 40-year-old Tarantino thought it was OK to Polanski to Sodomize a 13-year-old. He was so confident in this opinion that he shared with millions of people in a live broadcast. What's messed up is that his justification included ideas like, "She wanted to have it" and that she was just one of those "13-year-old party girls" (what parties are you going to Quentin?).

That is, this is just one of those little moments that suggests a privileged microcosm getting away with it. It is prophetic of the #metoo movement which Hollywood pretended to be surprised about.

I think it's amazing how we're supposed to listen and believe women unless they tell you to move on, In which case suddenly it becomes a case of I don't care what this woman wants I need to be entertained by this forty year old crime.


This case is just the same old virtue signalling bs that amounts to conversation nowadays.

If you think this is just about patting ourselves on the back, then you truly don’t have a firm finger on the pulse of the matter.

I promised myself I wouldn't do this but I guess I will pat myself on the back for being against rape after all. I didn't know it was such a high bar to clear for some people, but suddenly I feel pretty good about myself. Like a star athelete. Like the king of the world!


And I guess I should thank all of the moral degenerates in the audience for this honor....(waits for applause to die down)....without you I am nothing.


God bless america and God bless awards ceremonies!! Thank you!

Guys, let's chill OK? Nothing can be settled here...and nothing new can be said that hasn't already been said before...Best if this thread went away.


*this post is not a reply to any one person. It's a reply to the overall idea of this thread and to the disruption it's causing.

I dunno why you think it's worthwhile to just repeat the arguments that multiple people have dismantled already. That's not how arguments work.

If you want to continue to argue, it's incumbent on you to respond to the responses. Just above there are simple, direct arguments that explain why those things don't hold up. They do that with simple (and obvious) examples that invalidate the premise, and by pointing out false dichotomies.