Regards, Ivan
Posted on 03/15/2003 3:56:50 PM PST by MadIvan
Samantha Geimer tells Margarette Driscoll she has tried to forget the director assaulting her as a child, and Hollywood should too
As the limos glide up Hollywood Boulevard next Sunday night Samantha Geimer will be kicking off her shoes, ready to curl up in front of the television, as usual. But this year’s ceremony is of more than usual resonance.
Nominated for seven Oscars, including best picture, is The Pianist, directed by Roman Polanksi, who sexually assaulted Geimer when she was 13 years old.
The ensuing scandal almost finished Polanski’s career. The film, based on the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew who survived the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, has already won two Baftas in London for best picture and best director and also won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
In normal circumstances such laurels would make it a dead cert for an Oscar. But some believe that Polanski’s history will count against him. Last week, with deadly timing, the entire transcript of Geimer’s evidence to a grand jury soon after the event was posted on an American website, casting a further shadow over The Pianist, which many believe to be Polanski’s finest work.
But to the director’s rescue has come a most unusual champion: the victim herself. Geimer, now 39, says Polanski has already paid a heavy price and it is time the incident was forgotten. “A lot of people worked on that movie and if it is as good as everyone says it is I would hate to think they lost out because of what happened to me,” she says.
Today, Geimer lives in Hawaii, five minutes from the beach on the tiny island of Kauai. She and her husband Dave work for an estate management company and have three sons, Jesse, 20, Alex 14, and Matthew, 10.
All of her sons know what happened. “It wasn’t something I really wanted to tell them, but sooner or later I knew it would be public and the phone would start ringing, so I had to,” she says.
“The oldest one is just beginning to understand what a big deal it all was,” she says, “but the others aren’t really interested. I don’t make a big deal of it, so they don’t either.”
Her generosity towards Polanksi has surprised many, not least, the director himself, who, in a rare reference to Geimer said it was “very nice of her”. But Geimer says she is indifferent towards him. “I have no hard feelings towards him,” she says, “but no sympathy either. I just decided early on: you don’t have to be a victim all your life. I always knew it was in my best interests to put this behind me and get over it.”
In 1977 Geimer was an aspiring actress. It was her mother who first met Polanski, whose films, Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby, were widely admired.
His troubled private life made him an object of fascination. As a child he was left to fend for himself in the Krakow ghetto when both his parents were arrested. His mother, who was four months’ pregnant, died in Auschwitz. In 1969 his wife, Sharon Tate, who was also pregnant, was murdered by Charles Manson and his gang of fanatics at the couple’s Hollywood home.
After her death Polanski had a number of affairs, most notably with the actress Nastassjia Kinski, who was then 15. When he met Geimer he had just photographed Kinski for French Vogue.
Geimer’s mother saw an opportunity and persuaded Polanski to photograph Samantha. Geimer was dazzled: “I was excited about having my picture in a magazine but I think it meant more to the adults. My mother was really flattered by his attention, but I was not so aware of who he was.”
There was no sign of a sexual undercurrent when Polanski took the first set of photographs. After a shoot on a nearby hillside, he delivered her home unharmed. Next time he drove Geimer to Jacqueline Bisset’s house and took a few shots, then drove on to Jack Nicholson’s house. On the way, he asked Geimer if she has ever had sex. She had, once: with a 16-year-old boyfriend, though she told Polanski it was twice in case he thought her unsophisticated.
Polanski opened a bottle of champagne and started shooting pictures of her drinking, by Nicholson’s pool. After four or five glasses Geimer was naked in the Jacuzzi. Polanski produced a Quaalude, one of the era’s most popular drugs, known to reduce inhibition. He gave her a piece of the “lude” then joined her in the tub.
Geimer, realising the atmosphere was changing, retired to a nearby bedroom to dress. Polanski followed her: she was in her underwear and a towel. She says she kept telling him she wanted to go home but he persisted in having sex with her. On the way home he told her “this is our secret”.
But her mother found out and, two days later, every paper’s top story was Polanski’s arrest for the rape. “Not counting OJ, it was the biggest court case in Hollywood in human history,” says Lawrence Silver, Geimer’s lawyer. Polanski was charged with six counts of assault but having served 43 days in jail agreed to plead guilty to the least serious charge — statutory rape — in exchange for his freedom.
At the last minute the judge, Laurence J Rittenband, changed his mind and demanded Polanski stand trial. Faced with up to 50 years in jail, he fled to Paris and has been unable to return to the US since for fear of being arrested.
Geimer thinks this is wrong. “We should have been able to settle all this in court 25 years ago,” she says. “Even at the time I felt the damage to Polanski’s career and all the publicity would be enough to deter him from doing anything like that again.
“I didn’t want a trial. I was tired of having to talk about it and relive it. I wasn’t gung-ho to have him put away. It was a rape, yes, that’s the truth, but I have always been uncomfortable with that word. I don’t want to overdramatise it. To me, rape implies a violence and nastiness that didn’t happen here.
“He made me have sex with him and I was not a willing partner but it was all a long time ago. Polanski should be able to get on with his life now. It may sound generous but to me it isn’t: it’s just fair.”
Now, having said her piece on the Oscars and suffered the embarrassment of her explicit evidence to the grand jury being made public (“Nice guys who do that internet stuff, huh?”) she is hoping to retreat back into the anonymity of Hawaii, 2,500 miles from Hollywood.
She hasn’t seen The Pianist, she says, “but lots of people have told me how good it is. Maybe I’ll catch it when it comes out on DVD”.
Regards, Ivan
I guess she just wants to forget it but that kind of conduct would have gotten a person life in prison not too many years ago, and rightly so.
I always suspected Polanski was a creep but now see that he is a truly evil one.
But there's really nothing stopping him from doing so. His victim has withdrawn her complaint and, without that, it's kind of hard to prosecute. I think the main reason he hasn't come back is because of all the bad feeling there is against him. He would be spending a fortune on bodyguards. Besides, he's been wined and dined and honored and employed in Europe for many years. They actually like pedophiles who forcibly rape and sodomize protesting 13-year-olds. But then, so do all those low-lifes in Hollywood. But be a really tough choice for Liebling, I mean Polanski.
What I find especially odd is that his victim, who was seriously traumatized by the attack, is now perfectly willing to let this animal roam free, doing the same to other children. Was Geimer bribed, threatened or both? Or does she just not care. Surely, she's not dumb enough to believe she was his first victim. Or his last.
Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of using potty language in the office. And she'll never forgive him of that.
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