Michael Wolff, best known as the author of “The Man Who Owns the News,” theorizes that the reason the L.A. district attorneys are going after Roman Polanski —suddenly after 31 years of freedom, especially in a country like Switzerland that Polanski visits often and even owns a home there — is because they wanted revenge for receiving a “black eye” in the Marina Zenovich-directed “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.”
As smart as Wolff is, the theory feels off and perhaps he hasn’t paid attention to the entire story. The likely reason, or at least what feels obvious as to why L.A. prosecutors are suddenly after Polanski is not necessarily the damaging doc — Wolff calls the original case, “terrible….in which the prosecutor’s office and the sitting judge, in the interest of getting publicity for themselves, had conducted themselves in all variety of dubious ways” — but the fact that the district attorneys did offer Polanski a laurel of peace, or at least a: “surrender yourself and we’ll talk,” proposition earlier this year which did indicate that they were willing to review and then resolve the matter.
Polanski’s public refusal to submit to their terms, not to mention calling the L.A. courts prejudiced against him, and essentially fighting the district attorneys every step of the way and dragging out a possible resolution could not have helped and probably proved quite insulting on top of a documentary that showed their office in a poor light.
Meanwhile, Zenovich, who realizes her original documentary has helped create a story that has now gained fevered international attention began quietly shooting more footage in L.A. earlier this year. Certainly she will have a pretty juicy or at least excellent denouement and postscript once all is said and done.
BTW, this Vulture update on the case — nothing breaking or huge enough for us to write another piece, but still excellent with lots of interesting side bits of information — is awesome and envy-inducing. Well done.