Roman Polanski "big-time movie director" is Being Held in Switzerland

Roman Polanski "big-time movie director"

Roman Polanski should not get special treatment because he is a "big-time movie director", California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has said.
The French-Polish director is being held in Switzerland on a US arrest warrant over his 1977 conviction for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl.
Asked if he would pardon 76-year-old Polanski, Mr Schwarzenegger told CNN he would treat the case like any other.
Film-makers and French officials have spoken out against his arrest.
Mr Schwarzenegger said: "It doesn't matter if you are a big-time movie actor or a big-time movie director or producer."I think that he is a very respected person and I am a big admirer of his work.
It was barely a blip at the box office, with only about $59,000 in ticket sales last year, and not the biggest event when it was broadcast on HBO. But Marina Zenovich’s documentary “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired” has turned into a rare blockbuster in at least one forum — the courtroom — and emerged as a lens through which the Polanski case has come to be viewed.
Any woman who has to report a rape fears that she won’t be believed — with good reason. Conviction rates are low, and many cases don’t even get to court. Now, in a twist that even the most imaginative novelist would have been pushed to devise, the arrest of the film director Roman Polanski has prompted a fierce debate about what constitutes rape. Polanski fled to Europe to avoid jail more than three decades ago, and his celebrity supporters are jostling for a place on the airwaves to explain that what he did wasn’t “really” rape.
Foremost among them is the actor Whoopi Goldberg, who has introduced a whole new concept — “rape-rape” — into the debate: “I know it wasn’t rape-rape. It was something else, but I don’t believe it was rape-rape.” It would be nice to think that she is alone in making this ludicrous distinction, but she isn’t. Others might not put it so crudely, but plenty of people are willing to excuse a sex attacker because what he did wasn’t “really” rape.
Having set off a legal fight over accusations of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct in the handling of Mr. Polanski’s conviction on a sex charge involving a 13-year-old girl three decades ago, the 2008 documentary re-emerged on Wednesday when one of its subjects, the retired prosecutor David Wells, suddenly said he had fabricated his detailed on-camera account of coaching a judge in the original case.
Ms. Zenovich said on Thursday that she was stunned by Mr. Wells’s attempt to recant statements he made during an hourlong taped session at the Malibu courthouse more than four years ago. Ms. Zenovich was in Zurich, where she was working on a new film about Mr. Polanski, 76, who was arrested last week for possible extradition to the United States.