French Twist

Why don't we have criminal charges with names like this here in the states?

"Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was charged in France on Monday with 'aggravated pimping' for his alleged participation in a prostitution ring, prosecutors said."

Sacrebleu! Bernard-Henri Lévy pens another impassioned defense of DSK -- because, as one of the Most Interesting Men in the World, he's immune to the moral and legal constraints imposed by lesser people -- in 3... 2... 1...

Assistant Quote of the Day

"Levy and Stein find themselves offering up the same response -- two of the World's Most Interesting Men, defending another Interesting Man, on the grounds that the privilege all enjoy makes the crime inconceivable on its face. Ahh, the vita is always dolce when you are an Interesting Man. And rape? This is not a crime that Interesting Men dismiss out of hand, necessarily. But it's a tawdry and declasse sort of thing that happens to downmarket people. It's not supposed to rile up the lives of the world's elite. Game recognizes game, after all. And shame? That's for lesser people. And so while it can be acknowledged that the possibility exists that DSK is the perpetrator of a crime (Levy: 'I do not know what actually happened.' Stein: '...it's possible indeed, maybe even likely, that he is guilty as the prosecutors charge.'), the important thing to do right now is remind the world that in this life, Interesting Men are never supposed to experience shame, let alone experience it publicly. Isn't that the greater indignity?"

-- Jason Linkins, on the sudden unimaginable alliance between Bernard Henri-Levy and Ben Stein (or as I like to call it, BHL-BS) in the defense of fellow Interesting Man Dominique Strauss Kahn

I still refer to Linkins as my BFF for ripping me a new one back when he was with Wonkette, but he's a damn entertaining and insightful writer -- as this piece proves.

DXM History Repeats: Roman Polanski

Given that Bernard-Henri Lévy has once again glided down from his tower atop Mount Olympus to grace us mere mortals with his enlightened view that European men are entitled to do whatever the hell they want, I figured I'd take the opportunity to bring back a popular series from the archives. In September of '09, I devoted quite a bit of copy to the arrest of Roman Polanski in Switzerland and the consequent losing-of-its-collective-shit by a certain percentage of the liberal artist intelligentsia, including Lévy. For the record, Lévy's record of not simply rushing to the defense of rapists and accused rapists but of blaming the accuser in pretty much each and every case should preclude anyone from ever taking his ridiculously pious proclamations seriously. Ever.

"The Fall of Roman" (Originally Published, 9.29.09)

I'll try to make this quick.

Roman Polanski needs to come back to the United States and face his conviction for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977. Period.

Why? Because he intentionally ran out on the justice system in the country where he committed his crime and has never been held accountable for what he did by standards that weren't his own. Simple as that.

Now, does he deserve prison time? Does he deserve mercy? These are questions for others to debate so I'm not going to bother getting into them, but one byproduct of the admittedly surprising arrest of Polanski in Switzerland really is worth exploring, because it's something that should leave a bad taste in the mouth of just about everyone, yet strangely doesn't. I'm talking about the idea that Roman Polanski should somehow be considered above the law because he's a talented artist.

It took all of a few hours after Polanski's arrest in Zurich for the notoriously pompous European artist community to rush to his defense, claiming outrage and indignation at the notion that Polanski could be impolitely busted while visiting Switzerland to receive (gasp!) a lifetime achievement award for his filmography. They're calling it a "provocation." The implication is crystal clear: There is often an unnavigable gulf between the artist and his work and, dammit, that's okay; you can honor the man's abilities without letting your paean be tarnished by any of the nastier realities of who he is or what he's done. If this kind of nonsense sounds familiar, it's because we all just lived through weeks of it when Michael Jackson died. Although it's never wise to willfully trample on someone's grave, you can't simply pay tribute to an artist's talents without recognizing that there's a very real person who may be guilty of very real crimes at the center of your love-fest.

And yet Europe's artistic community -- specifically French, Swiss and Polish filmmakers and cultural trendsetters -- seem to truly believe that Roman Polanski's abilities should amount to a Get Out of Jail Free card. That it's okay if the stereotypically tortured artist broke a few eggs along the way as long as the omelet came out looking like The Pianist. That in the end, the greater good was served by having Polanski free to make movies.

Just some of the reaction to the arrest: "(Polanski was) thrown to the lions," says says French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand, melodramatically. "In the same way that there is a generous America that we like, there is also a scary America that has just shown its face."

"(He has) atoned for the sins of his young years. He has paid for it by not being able to enter the U.S. and in his professional life he has paid for it by not being able to make films in Hollywood," says Jacek Bromski, head of the Polish Filmmakers Association.

You're kidding, right? Roman Polanski has paid for raping a kid by not being able to live in Hollywood and being forced to make his movies -- and his vast fortunes -- in France? A comment like that is just shocking in its detachment from the reality you and I call home.

It's true we let talented people -- from musicians, to actors, to athletes -- get away with quite a bit more than the Average Joe in our society. As Chris Rock famously said, if OJ Simpson had been simply "Orenthal the Bus Driving Murderer," he would've been in jail twelve years ago. But there's a difference between admitting that we can occasionally be starstruck blind and literally making excuses for someone's criminal behavior because they happen to entertain us with their music, movies, etc. Once again, I'm not arguing whether or not Roman Polanski belongs in prison; I'm saying that he shouldn't be able to avoid prison just because he's Roman Polanski.

We can let our entertainers get away with being assholes -- but not rapists. In a case like this, you can't separate Polanski the man from Polanski the artist. And it's reprehensible to even try.

"The Fall of Roman: I Rest My Case" (Originally Published, 1.29.09)

The piece I wrote just a few hours ago on the arrest and potential extradition of Roman Polanski is now up at the Huffington Post. As is common, posted at the bottom of it are several links to related stories, one of which is a public appeal from French writer and philosopher (the latter being an amusing redundancy) Bernard-Henri Lévy.

Titled "Artist Rally Behind Roman Polanski," the open petition is so far signed by over a dozen mostly European actors, filmmakers, authors and designers.

I think it's important that I reprint Lévy's demand (because that's really what it is) in its entirety so that you can appreciate how thoroughly full of crap the whole endeavor is.

"My journal, 'La Règle du jeu,' is working in support of Roman Polanski and mobilizing writers and artists through the following petition:

'Apprehended like a common terrorist Saturday evening, September 26, as he came to receive a prize for his entire body of work, Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison.

He risks extradition to the United States for an episode that happened years ago and whose principal plaintiff repeatedly and emphatically declares she has put it behind her and abandoned any wish for legal proceedings.

Seventy-six years old, a survivor of Nazism and of Stalinist persecutions in Poland, Roman Polanski risks spending the rest of his life in jail for deeds which would be beyond the statute-of-limitations in Europe.

We ask the Swiss courts to free him immediately and not to turn this ingenious filmmaker into a martyr of a politico-legal imbroglio that is unworthy of two democracies like Switzerland and the United States. Good sense, as well as honor, require it.

Bernard-Henri Lévy, Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera, Pascal Bruckner, Neil Jordan, Isabelle Adjani, Arielle Dombasle, Isabelle Huppert, William Shawcross, Yamina Benguigui, Mike Nichols, Danièle Thompson, Diane von Furstenberg, Claude Lanzmann, Paul Auster'"

Where to begin.

First, the gargantuan arrogance on display in this thing -- Lévy's piously condescending tone -- is staggering even for a self-described French philosopher. The idea that he sees himself, his fellow artists and the region of the world in which they all live as somehow more socially and culturally advanced than the rest of us is obvious. He doesn't care that a girl was raped. He doesn't care that the act was committed in the United States. He cavalierly offers as a defense the notion that in Europe, where the civilized people are, the statute of limitations would've run out on this silly little offense years ago.

Except that there's no statute of limitations at play here because Polanski's not facing charges. He was convicted. He fled. He's still wanted because he copped to the crime three decades ago but never faced sentencing.

I'd really like not to draw a distinction between Europe -- particularly the easily assailable French -- and the United States in this matter, because the reality is that it should come down to only one thing: right and wrong. Where someone happens to live or what his or her cultural mindset might be should have no bearing on it whatsoever. That said, there's simply no way to ignore the likely predisposition of a French philosopher and artist to unleash some particularly virulent strain of moral relativism in a case like this -- to utilize his superior intellect to hem and haw over what exactly constituted a pursuable offense and whether Polanski had contributed enough to society through his films to bring his Karmic tab even.

Once again, I don't care if the man lived inside a human skin suit made to look like Orson Welles and was the one who, in reality, directed Citizen Kane. I don't care if Polanski's entire career since 1977 could in fact be directly attributed to his desire to atone for having raped a 13 year old girl. He never took responsibility for what he did on terms that weren't completely his own, and he has to now. Period.

Wrong is wrong.

I don't care how brilliant the man is. He's not above the law.

And defending him simply because he's an artist isn't just sickening -- it's sociopathic.

"The Fall of Roman: Art Attack" (Originally Published, 9.30.09)

Someone mentioned this yesterday afternoon, but I was so busy ridiculing Bernard-Henri Lévy and Europe's Olympic Intelligentsia Team that I didn't feel like diluting the pool with anyone else.

As it turns out, though, there is actually a larger petition circulating in support of Roman Polanski -- and almost unbelievably, it's even more arrogant in its tone that Lévy's.

It reads as follows:

"We have learned the astonishing news of Roman Polanski's arrest by the Swiss police on September 26th, upon arrival in Zurich (Switzerland) while on his way to a film festival where he was due to receive an award for his career in filmmaking.

His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978 against the filmmaker, in a case of morals.

Filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision. It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him.

By their extraterritorial nature, film festivals the world over have always permitted works to be shown and for filmmakers to present them freely and safely, even when certain States opposed this.

The arrest of Roman Polanski in a neutral country, where he assumed he could travel without hindrance, undermines this tradition: it opens the way for actions of which no-one can know the effects.

Roman Polanski is a French citizen, a renown and international artist now facing extradition. This extradition, if it takes place, will be heavy in consequences and will take away his freedom.

Filmmakers, actors, producers and technicians - everyone involved in international filmmaking - want him to know that he has their support and friendship.

On September 16th, 2009, Mr. Charles Rivkin, the US Ambassador to France, received French artists and intellectuals at the embassy. He presented to them the new Minister Counselor for Public Affairs at the embassy, Ms Judith Baroody. In perfect French she lauded the Franco-American friendship and recommended the development of cultural relations between our two countries.

If only in the name of this friendship between our two countries, we demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski."

My favorite line: "A case of morals."

Because drugging and sodomizing a 13-year-old girl amounts to a trifling little disagreement over one person or country's morality versus another's.

Oh, and of course the final threatening coup de grace: "We demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski."

I love that. Yes, otherwise we'll immediately impose sanctions and cut off the United States' supply of critically acclaimed films that twelve people outside of the film festival circuit actually see. Do what we say or we will bring East Village coffee house conversation to its knees!

Look, I realize I'm being harsh here, but the truth is that I'm a huge movie geek -- appreciating everything from the tiniest independent film to the biggest-budget blockbuster. This is probably why it disappoints me in ways I could never properly put into words that so many of my favorite filmmakers have jumped on board and signed this laughable petition.

A partial list:

"Woody Allen, Darren Aronofsky, Sam Mendes, Alfonso Cuaron, Terry Gilliam, Jonathan Demme, Wong Kar Wai, David Lynch, Tom Tykwer, Martin Scorsese, Alexander Payne, Michael Mann, Julian Schnabel, John Landis, Wim Wenders"

Now I get that some of these were givens: Woody Allen has no choice but to forgive sex with a little girl, Julian Schnabel is clinically insane, and John Landis is thinking, "Polanski's an amateur -- at least the kid survived her encounter with him."

Also on the list, inexplicably, is Buck Henry.

That bears repeating because it's so damn weird: Buck Henry.

The bottom line here -- the only possible rationale I can come up with as to why a large group of otherwise lucid human beings with working hearts and brains are on board with this travesty -- would seem to be best related by way of a little story: Back in 1999, you might remember, Shakespeare In Love beat Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. To this day, this is a decision that makes zero sense and it actually has gone on to become one of the most controversial (and regrettable) choices the academy's ever made. After the Oscar was announced, I remember a few academy members and various Hollywood heavies speaking out about the decision, saying with a completely straight face that they got behind Shakespeare because they saw it as a love letter to actors. (Those were William H. Macy's words exactly, in fact.)

So if you follow that logic, it goes something like this: Honoring actors is a more noble and important statement to make than honoring the guys who helped save the world.

I realize that I'm simplifying things quite a bit, but the point I'm trying to make is that the arguments so many level at the artistic elite -- that they live in a fantasy universe revolving solely around them, that they've been told "yes" for so long that they believe the rules no longer apply to them -- these have a certain amount of validity. Is there a better explanation as to why so many intelligent people would come together with one voice and proclaim loudly that one of their own is above the law?

I really hope that's it, because if not I'm going to have no choice but to assume that the people behind my favorite movies are all crazy, despicable fucking monsters.

Quote of the Day

"What I know is that nothing, no suspicion whatever (for let’s remind ourselves that, as I write these lines, we are dealing only with suspicions!), permits the entire world to revel in the spectacle, this morning, of this handcuffed figure, his features blurred by 30 hours of detention and questioning, but still proud... And what I know even more is that the Strauss-Kahn I know, who has been my friend for 20 years and who will remain my friend, bears no resemblance to this monster, this caveman, this insatiable and malevolent beast now being described nearly everywhere. Charming, seductive, yes, certainly; a friend to women and, first of all, to his own woman, naturally, but this brutal and violent individual, this wild animal, this primate, obviously no, it’s absurd... I am troubled by a system of justice modestly termed 'accusatory,' meaning that anyone can come along and accuse another fellow of any crime."

-- Bernard-Henri Lévy

I went looking for it, and lo and behold there it was like a gift from the Google gods.

You could've counted the seconds between the arrest of IMF Chief Dominique Strauss Kahn on rape charges and the inevitable outraged defense of him penned by impossibly pompous turd Bernard-Henri Lévy.

I can seriously imagine Lévy stalking around his palatial Parisian home -- his white dress shirt unbuttoned down to his cock, a stern look on his face, his hands alternating between flailing wildly and running through his fashionably unkempt mane -- ranting to no one, "Sacre bleu! Zees ees an injustees!"

If you haven't just eaten lunch, go ahead and take a look at this thing. It's classic Lévy in that it reads like a primer on how to be a French cliché -- all self-satisfied faux-intellectualism, cultural condescension and macho Eurotrash bravado.

Quote of the Day

"For his current exhibition is an exhibition of still lifes. It is an ensemble -- drawings, photos, but especially sculptures -- of gigantic squashes, of moulded bronze colocynths that one would describe as drawn from the 'antivegital vegetation' (in other words, reinvented, revived, produced and, in short, thought of vegetation) that Malraux depicts in his description of Picasso's atelier... And if there is a conviction that has never left him, in the thirty years that I have observed and commented on his work, it is that art exists, not to repeat the world, but to recreate it--the soul of the gods, decidedly, inhabits, not the plants, but the artist."

-- Bernard-Henri Lévy, taking the cliché of the pretentious French pseudo-intellectual to heretofore unreached heights in the Huffington Post

Really, just for a laugh, I dare you to read this thing and not imagine that it's a Monty Python gag.

Pompous little twat.

Tuesday Is Recycling Day

Anyone who's read this site long enough knows that there are scant few occasions when I think that any argument I make is bulletproof. In fact, over the years, I've revised, adjusted, refined, downright changed -- whatever you want to call it -- my views on quite of the few of the subjects I've written about in the past.

Not so with the case of Roman Polanski.

The reason, of course, is that the question of whether Polanski should return to the United States to face his 1977 conviction for unlawful sex with a minor has always been a matter of black and white -- one of the few you're likely to come across these days. Despite the entreaties of those who would bring all kinds of unnecessary points and arguments into the picture, it always comes down to this -- always: No matter what you think of the state of California's 30-year-old case against Roman Polanski, whether it was righteous or ridiculous, Polanski ran from an outcome he didn't like simply because he had the resources to and felt he was entitled to. He never faced the same justice that you, me, anybody else would almost certainly have to face.

I bring this up because now that the Swiss government has decided that it's not going to cooperate with the justice system of the United States and will not be extraditing Polanski -- a move, by the way, which violates that country's extradition policy, since it dictates that the details of a case aren't to be taken into account, only the fact that a wanted man is a wanted man -- I've gotten a couple of e-mails wondering if I'm going to have something to say about it. The truth is, no -- I have nothing new to say about it. I have nothing to say that hasn't already been said here and at the Huffington Post -- because the facts in this case haven't changed one bit. Repeating myself in a new piece would be completely redundant -- and any new arguments I might bring up would be what so many others' are in in this absurd saga: thoroughly irrelevant.

"The Fall of Roman" (Originally Published, 9.29.09)

I'll try to make this quick.

Roman Polanski needs to come back to the United States and face his conviction for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977. Period.

Why? Because he intentionally ran out on the justice system in the country where he committed his crime and has never been held accountable for what he did by standards that weren't his own. Simple as that.

Now, does he deserve prison time? Does he deserve mercy? These are questions for others to debate so I'm not going to bother getting into them, but one byproduct of the admittedly surprising arrest of Polanski in Switzerland really is worth exploring, because it's something that should leave a bad taste in the mouth of just about everyone, yet strangely doesn't. I'm talking about the idea that Roman Polanski should somehow be considered above the law because he's a talented artist.

It took all of a few hours after Polanski's arrest in Zurich for the notoriously pompous European artist community to rush to his defense, claiming outrage and indignation at the notion that Polanski could be (mon dieu!) so impolitely busted while visiting Switzerland to receive a lifetime achievement award for his filmography. They're calling it a "provocation." The implication is crystal clear: There is often an unnavigable gulf between the artist and his work and, dammit, that's okay; you can honor the man's abilities without letting your paean be tarnished by any of the nastier realities of who he is or what he's done. If this kind of nonsense sounds familiar, it's because we all just lived through weeks of it when Michael Jackson died. Although it's never wise to willfully trample on someone's grave, you can't simply pay tribute to an artist's talents without recognizing that there's a very real person who may be guilty of very real crimes at the center of your love-fest.

And yet Europe's artistic community -- specifically French, Swiss and Polish filmmakers and cultural trendsetters -- seem to truly believe that Roman Polanski's abilities should amount to a Get Out of Jail Free card. That it's okay if the stereotypically tortured artist broke a few eggs along the way as long as the omelet came out looking like The Pianist. That in the end, the greater good was served by having Polanski free to make movies.

Just some of the reaction to the arrest: "(Polanski was) thrown to the lions," says says French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand, melodramatically. "In the same way that there is a generous America that we like, there is also a scary America that has just shown its face."

"(He has) atoned for the sins of his young years. He has paid for it by not being able to enter the U.S. and in his professional life he has paid for it by not being able to make films in Hollywood," says Jacek Bromski, head of the Polish Filmmakers Association.

You're kidding, right? Roman Polanski has paid for raping a kid by not being able to live in Hollywood and being forced to make his movies -- and his vast fortunes -- in France? A comment like that is just shocking in its detachment from the reality you and I call home.

It's true we let talented people -- from musicians, to actors, to athletes -- get away with quite a bit more than the Average Joe in our society. As Chris Rock famously said, if OJ Simpson had been simply "Orenthal the Bus Driving Murderer," he would've been in jail twelve years ago. But there's a difference between admitting that we can occasionally be starstruck blind and literally making excuses for someone's criminal behavior because they happen to entertain us with their music, movies, etc. Once again, I'm not arguing whether or not Roman Polanski belongs in prison; I'm saying that he shouldn't be able to avoid prison just because he's Roman Polanski.

We can let our entertainers get away with being assholes -- but not rapists. In a case like this, you can't separate Polanski the man from Polanski the artist. And it's reprehensible to even try.

"The Fall of Roman: I Rest My Case" (Originally Published, 9.29.09)

The piece I wrote just a few hours ago on the arrest and potential extradition of Roman Polanski is now up at the Huffington Post. As is common, posted at the bottom of it are several links to related stories, one of which is a public appeal from French writer and philosopher (the latter being an amusing redundancy) Bernard-Henri Lévy.

Titled "Artist Rally Behind Roman Polanski," the open petition is so far signed by over a dozen mostly European actors, filmmakers, authors and designers.

I think it's important that I reprint Lévy's demand (because that's really what it is) in its entirety so that you can appreciate how thoroughly full of crap the whole endeavor is.

"My journal, 'La Règle du jeu,' is working in support of Roman Polanski and mobilizing writers and artists through the following petition:

'Apprehended like a common terrorist Saturday evening, September 26, as he came to receive a prize for his entire body of work, Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison.

He risks extradition to the United States for an episode that happened years ago and whose principal plaintiff repeatedly and emphatically declares she has put it behind her and abandoned any wish for legal proceedings.

Seventy-six years old, a survivor of Nazism and of Stalinist persecutions in Poland, Roman Polanski risks spending the rest of his life in jail for deeds which would be beyond the statute-of-limitations in Europe.

We ask the Swiss courts to free him immediately and not to turn this ingenious filmmaker into a martyr of a politico-legal imbroglio that is unworthy of two democracies like Switzerland and the United States. Good sense, as well as honor, require it.

Bernard-Henri Lévy, Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera, Pascal Bruckner, Neil Jordan, Isabelle Adjani, Arielle Dombasle, Isabelle Huppert, William Shawcross, Yamina Benguigui, Mike Nichols, Danièle Thompson, Diane von Furstenberg, Claude Lanzmann, Paul Auster'"

Where to begin.

First, the gargantuan arrogance on display in this thing -- Lévy's piously condescending tone -- is staggering even for a self-described French philosopher. The idea that he sees himself, his fellow artists and the region of the world in which they all live as somehow more socially and culturally advanced than the rest of us is obvious. He doesn't care that a girl was raped. He doesn't care that the act was committed in the United States. He cavalierly offers as a defense the notion that in Europe, where the civilized people are, the statute of limitations would've run out on this silly little offense years ago.

Except that there's no statute of limitations at play here because Polanski's not facing charges. He was convicted. He fled. He's still wanted because he copped to the crime three decades ago but never faced sentencing.

I'd really like not to draw a distinction between Europe -- particularly the easily assailable French -- and the United States in this matter, because the reality is that it should come down to only one thing: right and wrong. Where someone happens to live or what his or her cultural mindset might be should have no bearing on it whatsoever. That said, there's simply no way to ignore the likely predisposition of a French philosopher and artist to unleash some particularly virulent strain of moral relativism in a case like this -- to utilize his superior intellect to hem and haw over what exactly constituted a pursuable offense and whether Polanski had contributed enough to society through his films to bring his Karmic tab even.

Once again, I don't care if the man lived inside a human skin suit made to look like Orson Welles and was the one who, in reality, directed Citizen Kane. I don't care if Polanski's entire career since 1977 could in fact be directly attributed to his desire to atone for having raped a 13 year old girl. He never took responsibility for what he did on terms that weren't completely his own, and he has to now. Period.

Wrong is wrong.

I don't care how brilliant the man is. He's not above the law.

And defending him simply because he's an artist isn't just sickening -- it's sociopathic.

The Fall of Roman: Art Attack (Originally Published, 9.30.09)

Someone mentioned this yesterday afternoon, but I was so busy ridiculing Bernard-Henri Lévy and Europe's Olympic Intelligentsia Team that I didn't feel like diluting the pool with anyone else.

As it turns out, though, there is actually a larger petition circulating in support of Roman Polanski -- and almost unbelievably, it's even more arrogant in its tone that Lévy's.

It reads as follows:

"We have learned the astonishing news of Roman Polanski's arrest by the Swiss police on September 26th, upon arrival in Zurich (Switzerland) while on his way to a film festival where he was due to receive an award for his career in filmmaking.

His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978 against the filmmaker, in a case of morals.

Filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision. It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him.

By their extraterritorial nature, film festivals the world over have always permitted works to be shown and for filmmakers to present them freely and safely, even when certain States opposed this.

The arrest of Roman Polanski in a neutral country, where he assumed he could travel without hindrance, undermines this tradition: it opens the way for actions of which no-one can know the effects.

Roman Polanski is a French citizen, a renown and international artist now facing extradition. This extradition, if it takes place, will be heavy in consequences and will take away his freedom.

Filmmakers, actors, producers and technicians - everyone involved in international filmmaking - want him to know that he has their support and friendship.

On September 16th, 2009, Mr. Charles Rivkin, the US Ambassador to France, received French artists and intellectuals at the embassy. He presented to them the new Minister Counselor for Public Affairs at the embassy, Ms Judith Baroody. In perfect French she lauded the Franco-American friendship and recommended the development of cultural relations between our two countries.

If only in the name of this friendship between our two countries, we demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski."

My favorite line: "A case of morals."

Because drugging and sodomizing a 13-year-old girl amounts to a trifling little disagreement over one person or country's morality versus another's.

Oh, and of course the final threatening coup de grace: "We demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski."

I love that. Yes, otherwise we'll immediately impose sanctions and cut off the United States' supply of critically acclaimed films that twelve people outside of the film festival circuit actually see. Do what we say or we will bring East Village coffee house conversation to its knees!

Look, I realize I'm being harsh here, but the truth is that I'm a huge movie geek -- appreciating everything from the tiniest independent film to the biggest-budget blockbuster. This is probably why it disappoints me in ways I could never properly put into words that so many of my favorite filmmakers have jumped on board and signed this laughable petition.

A partial list:

"Woody Allen, Darren Aronofsky, Sam Mendes, Alfonso Cuaron, Terry Gilliam, Jonathan Demme, Wong Kar Wai, David Lynch, Tom Tykwer, Martin Scorsese, Alexander Payne, Michael Mann, Julian Schnabel, John Landis, Wim Wenders"

Now I get that some of these were givens: Woody Allen has no choice but to forgive sex with a little girl, Julian Schnabel is clinically insane, and John Landis is thinking, "Polanski's an amateur -- at least the kid survived her encounter with him."

Also on the list, inexplicably, is Buck Henry.

That bears repeating because it's so damn weird: Buck Henry.

The bottom line here -- the only possible rationale I can come up with as to why a large group of otherwise lucid human beings with working hearts and brains are on board with this travesty -- would seem to be best related by way of a little story: Back in 1999, you might remember, Shakespeare In Love beat Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. To this day, this is a decision that makes zero sense and it actually has gone on to become one of the most controversial (and regrettable) choices the academy's ever made. After the Oscar was announced, I remember a few academy members and various Hollywood heavies speaking out about the decision, saying with a completely straight face that they got behind Shakespeare because they saw it as a love letter to actors. (Those were William H. Macy's words exactly, in fact.)

So if you follow that logic, it goes something like this: Honoring actors is a more noble and important statement to make than honoring the guys who helped save the world.

I realize that I'm simplifying things quite a bit, but the point I'm trying to make is that the arguments so many level at the artistic elite -- that they live in a fantasy universe revolving solely around them, that they've been told "yes" for so long that they believe the rules no longer apply to them -- these have a certain amount of validity. Is there a better explanation as to why so many intelligent people would come together with one voice and proclaim loudly that one of their own is above the law?

I really hope that's it, because if not I'm going to have no choice but to assume that the people behind my favorite movies are all crazy, despicable fucking monsters.

And the Moral Relativism of the Story Is...

A slightly edited version of the Polanski piece from last night has been on the front page -- as well as the main entertainment page -- of the Huffington Post all day.

Feel free to peruse the comment section and marvel at some of the faux-intellectual self-satisfaction that's pretty much the hallmark of a good portion of the HuffPo peanut gallery.

I'd repost some of the more entertaining contributions here, but I'm just way too fucking tired. Suffice it to say, while a lot of conservatives these days wear their willful ignorance proudly on their sleeves, the same number of liberals just can't help reveling in the ability to over-think even the most unambiguous subject -- especially if they've recently watched an indie documentary on it.

On the plus side, it's fun knowing that there's an unrelated piece by Bernard-Henri Lévy also up at HuffPo right now.

Case Closed

Stop me if you've heard this one before: Roman Polanski is accused of molesting a young girl.

Anyone who's watched or read the news for longer than a few minutes this weekend probably knows that 42-year-old Charlotte Lewis -- who was once 16-year-old Charlotte Lewis, drop-dead-gorgeous star of Polanski's unmemorable 1986 film Pirates and who later became the only thing worth looking at in The Golden Child -- is now coming forward to claim that Polanski essentially raped her during an early audition for his movie. Why she waited 26 years to speak up about an incident that she says she'll "never forgive Polanski" for is one of those things I'm not going to dare get into. Whether you're willing to believe her story now, after all this time, kind of cuts to the core of childhood sex abuse claims made by adults or accusations of rape made long after the fact; it likely reveals just which side of the fence you generally come down on in cases like this.

I can appreciate Lewis's assertion that she simply got tired of watching Hollywood and the European intelligentsia shamelessly rally around and cover for a guy as rotten as Polanski, just because they happen to consider him one of their own. But that still doesn't explain why she didn't crack last year, when the entertainment world's heaviest hitters unforgivably began adding their names to a petition in support of Polanski, and pompous assholes like Bernard-Henri Lévy were penning impassioned diatribes from on high that both sung the praises of the director and decried the supposedly puritanical forces aligning against him from the ignorant unwashed across the pond. Once again, though, who's to say how any specific person should or will react to a traumatic experience in his or her own life? It's up to you to decide if you're willing to take someone like Charlotte Lewis at her word and not immediately try to sniff out some sinister ulterior motive on her part.

Personally, I don't think it's much of a stretch to imagine Polanski plying a hot 16-year-old with champagne and then screwing her -- the same way I don't think it takes a huge leap of logic to assume that the same 16-year-old aspiring actress would use her beauty and sexuality -- or at the very least allow it to be used -- to get her a part she desperately wanted. That Polanski happens to have a proven track record of pulling grotesque shit like this only goes to further remove any benefit of the doubt somebody might be inclined to give him; that Lewis had her coming out party during a press conference called by none other than her new counsel, diabolically opportunistic puppet-master Gloria Allred -- a woman who never met a camera she didn't like or couldn't damage irreparably with her steely Medusan gaze -- suddenly makes her intentions seem more than a little suspect.

The bottom line, though, is that Lewis's claim -- true or false -- changes nothing. Not a damn thing. Anyone with an even perfunctory sense of right and wrong already knew that Roman Polanski was a despicable little toad who gets off on preying on young girls and gives himself a pass for it because he's an artist; one more accusation thrown into the mix isn't going to alter that perception, possibly not even in court. As hopelessly cliché as this may sound, it'll eventually come down to her word against his, and in the end he'll win. No, what matters is that no one needs to accuse Polanski of anything at this point. That's because he's already been convicted. From the very beginning of the "debate" over whether or not Roman Polanski should be forced to return to the United States to face justice for the rape of a young girl -- that would be the 13-year-old he was proven to have molested -- the whole thing has been bogged down by misguided apologists for Polanski who've tried to take your, my and everyone else's eye off the ball. They've done it by muddying up the otherwise crystalline waters with irrelevant points and extraneous arguments; they've done it by making the legacy of the State of California v. Roman Polanski about the supposed vagaries inherent in rape cases -- instead of about the simple, irrefutable fact that faced with an outcome he didn't like, Polanski ran. He chose to become a fugitive. He was convicted in the court of the state and country where he committed his crime -- yet he never accepted a sentence other than one he decided for himself, that he felt he deserved. That's not the way it works. He's not above the law.

If Roman Polanski really did force himself on a young Charlotte Lewis, then that's sickening and obviously a very serious tragedy for her personally -- one she's had to come to terms with throughout her life. But make no mistake: The people of the state of California don't need the testimony of Lewis to make a case against Polanski. They already did, 33-years ago -- and they won.

The rest, Polanski did all by himself.

Here now is the original piece I wrote for this site and the Huffington Post in response to the arrest of Roman Polanski back in September of last year.

"The Fall of Roman" (Originally Published, 9.29.09)

I'll try to make this quick.

Roman Polanski needs to come back to the United States and face his conviction for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977. Period.

Why? Because he intentionally ran out on the justice system in the country where he committed his crime and has never been held accountable for what he did by standards that weren't his own. Simple as that.

Now, does he deserve prison time? Does he deserve mercy? These are questions for others to debate so I'm not going to bother getting into them, but one byproduct of the admittedly surprising arrest of Polanski in Switzerland really is worth exploring, because it's something that should leave a bad taste in the mouth of just about everyone, yet strangely doesn't. I'm talking about the idea that Roman Polanski should somehow be considered above the law because he's a talented artist.

It took all of a few hours after Polanski's arrest in Zurich for the notoriously pompous European artist community to rush to his defense, claiming outrage and indignation at the notion that Polanski could be impolitely busted while visiting Switzerland to receive a lifetime achievement award for his filmography. They're calling it a "provocation." The implication is crystal clear: There is often an unnavigable gulf between the artist and his work and, dammit, that's okay; you can honor the man's abilities without letting your paean be tarnished by any of the nastier realities of who he is or what he's done. If this kind of nonsense sounds familiar, it's because we all just lived through weeks of it when Michael Jackson died. Although it's never wise to willfully trample on someone's grave, you can't simply pay tribute to an artist's talents without recognizing that there's a very real person who may be guilty of very real crimes at the center of your love-fest.

And yet Europe's artistic community -- specifically French, Swiss and Polish filmmakers and cultural trendsetters -- seem to truly believe that Roman Polanski's abilities should amount to a Get Out of Jail Free card. That it's okay if the stereotypically tortured artist broke a few eggs along the way as long as the omelet came out looking like The Pianist. That in the end, the greater good was served by having Polanski free to make movies.

Just some of the reaction to the arrest: "(Polanski was) thrown to the lions," says says French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand, melodramatically. "In the same way that there is a generous America that we like, there is also a scary America that has just shown its face."

"(He has) atoned for the sins of his young years. He has paid for it by not being able to enter the U.S. and in his professional life he has paid for it by not being able to make films in Hollywood," says Jacek Bromski, head of the Polish Filmmakers Association.

You're kidding, right? Roman Polanski has paid for raping a kid by not being able to live in Hollywood and being forced to make his movies -- and his vast fortunes -- in France? A comment like that is just shocking in its detachment from the reality you and I call home.

It's true we let talented people -- from musicians, to actors, to athletes -- get away with quite a bit more than the Average Joe in our society. As Chris Rock famously said, if OJ Simpson had been simply "Orenthal the Bus Driving Murderer," he would've been in jail twelve years ago. But there's a difference between admitting that we can occasionally be starstruck blind and literally making excuses for someone's criminal behavior because they happen to entertain us with their music, movies, etc. Once again, I'm not arguing whether or not Roman Polanski belongs in prison; I'm saying that he shouldn't be able to avoid prison just because he's Roman Polanski.

We can let our entertainers get away with being assholes -- but not rapists. In a case like this, you can't separate Polanski the man from Polanski the artist. And it's reprehensible to even try.

The Frog Prince

Here it is, your moment of meta: A pompous, long-winded defense of Bernard-Henri Lévy, who himself has done nothing but pen pompous, long-winded defenses of Roman Polanski lately.

The Huffington Post: Reflections on Bernard-Henri Lévy/2.28.10

What the hell is it with French pseudo-intellectuals and their pious indignation in the face of perceived victimization?

(By the way, I'm not suggesting you actually read the piece linked to above -- not unless you need something to help you sleep. It's just entertaining knowing that it exists.)

Quelle Douche

Is there a French word that's the equivalent of Schadenfreude?

Guardian UK: Bernard-Henri Lévi Duped, Bases Arguments on Fake Philosopher/2.9.10

Makes sense given that Lévi is himself a fake philosopher.

Related:

DXM: The Fall of Roman/9.29.09

DXM: French Twit/10.6.09

DXM: Freedom Fries/11.30.09

Freedom Fries

I love the holiday season: the chill in the air, the smiles on the faces of the people you meet on the street, the joyous sights and sounds of Christmas everywhere you turn, and of course, that special little thrill -- the one that comes with knowing that you may get exactly what you want under the tree this year.

Especially if what you want is to see a convicted child rapist and international fugitive out of jail and back home in his palatial Alpine chalet and to hear the indignant applause of bombastically pompous Frenchmen.

Yes, folks, lock up your daughters: Roman Polanski is a free man for the time being. And cover your ears to keep your brains from staging a revolt and trying to escape your head any way they can: Bernard-Henri Lévy, everyone's favorite self-proclaimed philosopher, intellectual-at-large and all around elitist prick, is breathing a sigh of relief.

I keep wondering how this man can be any more of a piously condescending European cliché, and yet he continues to step up his game, consistently knocking it out of the park again and again. He's the A-Rod of A-holes.

His take on the release of Polanski from a Swiss prison:


"The decision to free Roman Polanski is a wise decision. It honors the people who took it. It shows that the arguments developed by the movie director's partisans -- including those published on the French review's website of 'La Règle du Jeu' -- have finally been fruitful... At this very moment, I am thinking about Emmanuelle, his wife. I am thinking about his two kids who saw their dad's name ignominiously dragged through the mud. I am mostly thinking about him: Roman Polanski, who I don't know, but whose fate has moved me so much. Nothing will repair the days he has spent in prison. Nothing will erase the immense, unbelievable injustice he has been subjected to. Nothing will take away the hysteria of those ones who have never stopped pouring contempt upon him, hounding him through hatred and asking for his punishment as if we were living the darkest and most ferocious hours of the McCarthy era all over again. At least the nightmare is about to end. At least the end of the hell is looming. And this, for the time being, is what does matter."

Feel free to take a minute if you feel like you need to.

I'm not even going to bother refuting or assailing any of the unmitigated crap Lévy is once again melodramatically spewing; it just isn't worth it. I actually sort of feel like thanking him for turning out the most sociopathic screed that I've seen from anyone not Glenn Beck in at least a couple of months.

At this point, I'll only say this: Doesn't the CIA have special ops teams trained to silently go into hostile countries, black bag fugitive criminals and, I don't know, render them to places where the justice system actually works and being the guy who directed Rosemary's Baby doesn't buy you a Get Out of Jail Free card for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl? And now that I think about it, isn't there occasionally, you know, "acceptable collateral damage" on missions like these?

Be a real shame to find out Roman Polanski was suddenly missing and that Bernard-Henri Lévy had been mysteriously run over by a truck.

Related:

DXM: The Fall of Roman/9.29.09

DXM: The Fall of Roman: I Rest My Case/9.29.09

DXM: The Fall of Roman: Art Attack/9.30.09

DXM: A Petition To the State of California in Support of Roger Avary/9.30.09

Raining Frogs

So this is how it's gonna be, huh?

Fine, come and get me, Frenchie!

NBC 2: Tropical Storm "Henri" Forms in Atlantic/10.6.09

French Twit

Apparently, Bernard-Henry Lévy -- everyone's favorite French philosopher, intellectual, self-proclaimed provocateur folk hero, and defender of upper-crust artistic geniuses everywhere -- got tired of being misunderstood (read: raked over the coals) and has penned a new, more detailed plea on behalf of Roman Polanski.

This one's aimed at the judges in the case and not only seeks to, ahem, "clarify" his previous position by asserting that he does in fact understand the extreme nature of the crime Polanski committed; it also lays out point-by-point why none of that crap matters and Polanski should still be left alone.

My favorite ferociously melodramatic quote:

"This lynching is a disturbance of the public order more serious than Roman Polanski remaining free. This tenacity on the part of the gossips, and this desire to see the head of an artist on a pike, are the very essence of immorality."

Really? That's the essence of immorality?

Dear God, are this man's priorities screwed up.

The Huffington Post: On the Polanski Affair/10.6.09

(How much do you love that picture, by the way? Doesn't that really say it all? For the record, and I've mentioned this a couple of times, I'm actually one of those people who believes that the French have good reason to revel in their culture; it's wondrous in so many ways. But sorry, a bad cliché is a bad cliché -- and "BHL" is the worst kind of French stereotype.)

The Fall of Roman: I Rest My Case

The piece I wrote just a few hours ago on the arrest and potential extradition of Roman Polanski is now up at the Huffington Post. As is common, posted at the bottom of it are several links to related stories, one of which is a public appeal from French writer and philosopher (the latter being an amusing redundancy) Bernard-Henri Lévy.

Titled "Artist Rally Behind Roman Polanski," the open petition is so far signed by over a dozen mostly European actors, filmmakers, authors and designers.

I think it's important that I reprint Lévy's demand (because that's really what it is) in its entirety so that you can appreciate how thoroughly full of crap the whole endeavor is.

"My journal, 'La Règle du jeu,' is working in support of Roman Polanski and mobilizing writers and artists through the following petition:

'Apprehended like a common terrorist Saturday evening, September 26, as he came to receive a prize for his entire body of work, Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison.

He risks extradition to the United States for an episode that happened years ago and whose principal plaintiff repeatedly and emphatically declares she has put it behind her and abandoned any wish for legal proceedings.

Seventy-six years old, a survivor of Nazism and of Stalinist persecutions in Poland, Roman Polanski risks spending the rest of his life in jail for deeds which would be beyond the statute-of-limitations in Europe.

We ask the Swiss courts to free him immediately and not to turn this ingenious filmmaker into a martyr of a politico-legal imbroglio that is unworthy of two democracies like Switzerland and the United States. Good sense, as well as honor, require it.

Bernard-Henri Lévy, Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera, Pascal Bruckner, Neil Jordan, Isabelle Adjani, Arielle Dombasle, Isabelle Huppert, William Shawcross, Yamina Benguigui, Mike Nichols, Danièle Thompson, Diane von Furstenberg, Claude Lanzmann, Paul Auster'"

Where to begin.

First, the gargantuan arrogance on display in this thing -- Lévy's piously condescending tone -- is staggering even for a self-described French philosopher. The idea that he sees himself, his fellow artists and the region of the world in which they all live as somehow more socially and culturally advanced than the rest of us is obvious. He doesn't care that a girl was raped. He doesn't care that the act was committed in the United States. He cavalierly offers as a defense the notion that in Europe, where the civilized people are, the statute of limitations would've run out on this silly little offense years ago.

Except that there's no statute of limitations at play here because Polanski's not facing charges. He was convicted. He fled. He's still wanted because he copped to the crime three decades ago but never faced sentencing.

I'd really like not to draw a distinction between Europe -- particularly the easily assailable French -- and the United States in this matter, because the reality is that it should come down to only one thing: right and wrong. Where someone happens to live or what his or her cultural mindset might be should have no bearing on it whatsoever. That said, there's simply no way to ignore the likely predisposition of a French philosopher and artist to unleash some particularly virulent strain of moral relativism in a case like this -- to utilize his superior intellect to hem and haw over what exactly constituted a pursuable offense and whether Polanski had contributed enough to society through his films to bring his Karmic tab even.

Once again, I don't care if the man lived inside a human skin suit made to look like Orson Welles and was the one who, in reality, directed Citizen Kane. I don't care if Polanski's entire career since 1977 could in fact be directly attributed to his desire to atone for having raped a 13 year old girl. He never took responsibility for what he did on terms that weren't completely his own, and he has to now. Period.

Wrong is wrong.

I don't care how brilliant the man is. He's not above the law.

And defending him simply because he's an artist isn't just sickening -- it's sociopathic.