Is Polanski a paedophile?
I don’t think so. I looked up the definition: pre-pubescent. That’s children. That’s sick. Like, five year olds, eight year old, ten year old, 12 years old. Children who are children. That is a really serious messed up thing. If somebody’s doing that they’re sick. Maybe somebody’s creepy and they go after teenage girls, and it’s shitty and it’s wrong, but it’s not paedophilia. Don’t throw in 17-year-olds, and me. I don’t think we should throw people in there for the sensation of saying that word. It takes away from the actual crime. There’s child traffickers out there. Let’s not pretend that we’re hunting down paedophiles by calling Roman Polanski one. Let’s hunt down paedophiles.
For people who don’t know the background, the judge initially put Polanski behind bars to have him assessed for ‘psychosis’. A deal was then struck, but the judge reneged on it and started talking about locking him up and throwing away the key?
He admitted what he’d done, he’d said he was sorry – maybe you can give him probation or counselling? We were all scared. We were all victim of this judge behaving bizarrely. So, he (Polanski) went home to France, which I would’ve done too under the circumstances. Nobody knew what the judge was going to do. What if he sentenced Roman to 50 years and he died the next day? I was glad he (Polanski) left. I was relieved he left the country.
Have you ever watched his films?
(Laughs) Don’t laugh at me. The Fearless Vampire Killers was my favourite movie as a young person. I have it. I saw it on TV as a child. If I had known that that was him when I met him, I would’ve been like, ‘That’s the best movie I ever saw. It’s scary, yet it’s funny. It’s brilliant’. But I didn’t realise that until years later and then it was like, ‘Oh my God! I can’t believe I didn’t know that was him and Sharon Tate, and I’d never put it together’. I like The Ninth Gate. I know people don’t like that. I didn’t like Chinatown. I didn’t like Rosemary’s Baby. I didn’t like Tess. His movies are sad and dark
Quentin Tarantino, who is making a movie about the Manson murders, landed in hot water when stuff he said about Polanski on the Howard Stern Show 15 years ago, resurfaced. “It was statutory rape… he had sex with a minor. That’s not rape,” he said. He has since apologised?
He called and then wrote an apology, which was nice. He was just trying to be controversial on the Howard Stern Show. I asked about the new movie and he said it was not like it sounds, so I was relieved. And we both enjoyed Roman’s The Fearless Vampire Killers when we were young. We had a good chat. No hard feelings from me. I have listened to all kinds of terrible and untrue things about my mother and I, since I was 13, so I have a pretty thick skin and a good sense of humour.
