For Thursday, December 23, 2010: Another mention of Sharon as Marilyn, Sharon and Paul Bern and Roman Wins Award

Another mention of Sharon as Marilyn.  This digital photo really seems to be making the rounds these days:

http://paraphernaliainyourcloset.blogspot.com/2010/12/sharon-tate.html

More about the Jean Harlow-Paul Bern-Sharon Tate connection here, although many of you have probably already heard this story:

http://www.suite101.com/content/sharon-tate-encounters-harlow-house-ghost-paul-bern-a323940

And sorry if this is old news to you but I found this on Roman from December 4:

Roman Polanski wins best European picture award

(AP) – Dec 4, 2010

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer," a story of a journalist hired to write the memoirs of a British prime minister, has won the prize for best film at the European Film Awards.

Polanski, who was awarded the Silver Bear for best director at the Berlin Film Festival, also took five other key prizes at the ceremony held in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, late Saturday.

Nominated in seven categories, the movie won the best director prize, best actor for Ewan McGregor, and best screenwriter went jointly to Robert Harris and Polanski.

"You have awarded a truly European venture. This is too much ... thank you very much," Polanski said in an acceptance speech through a Skype connection from an unknown location. "I wish to thank — before anything — this wonderful crew I had, a truly European crew."

It was not the first time that the Polish-born director has received recognition from the European Film Academy.

The 77-year-old Oscar winning director of movies like "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown" was honored with a lifetime achievement award in 2006 in Warsaw, Poland.

In Tallinn, French composer Alexandre Desplat was awarded for best composer while his compatriot film editor Herve de Luze won the production designer prize for Polanski's movie, which was mainly shot in Germany.

"The Ghost Writer," about the memoirs of a politician, played by Pierce Brosnan, is loosely based on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Its production was a tangled tale for Polanski.

As he was finishing the movie in September 2009 Polanski was taken into custody at Zurich airport by Swiss police at the request of U.S. authorities to face prosecution in a 1977 child sex case. He had to finish editing the film while in Swiss prison before being released on house arrest.

In July, Polanski was freed after the Swiss government declined to deport him to the United States. But he still faces an Interpol warrant in 188 countries. Most European nations, including Estonia, have an extradition treaty with the United States.

McGregor, who played the ghostwriter, said he had a "fantastic time" while making the film.

"More than any other part I've played I feel like the director Roman Polanski had his hands really on my performance and is as worthy of this award as I am," McGregor told the audience through a video message from Thailand, where he is currently shooting a film.

Among other prizes at the academy's 23rd annual awards ceremony, Swiss actor Bruno Ganz was honored with a lifetime achievement prize handed out by German director Wim Wenders.

Ganz, 69, with a screen career that spans five decades with memorable performances in Wenders' "Wings of Desire" and "The American Friend," in which he costarred with Dennis Hopper. He is also remembered from his acclaimed performance as Adolf Hitler in the 2004 German drama "Downfall" that portrays the last days of the Third Reich.

French actress Juliette Binoche presented the European achievement in world cinema award to Lebanese composer and musician Gabriel Yared, who has written scores for "The English Patient" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley."

The prizes — the European equivalent of the U.S. Academy Awards — have been presented since 1988 by the European academy to celebrate the continent's film industry as a European counterweight to the Oscars.

The Meaning of a Name: Doris Tate and Ewan McGregor Compares Polanski to His Mother

I haven't done this in awhile and thought it would be interesting to put in Sharon's mother's name and see what it says:

You entered: Doris Gwendolyn Willet Tate

There are 24 letters in your name.

Those 24 letters total to 113


There are 8 vowels and 16 consonants in your name.

What your first name means:  Greek Female Gift. In Greek mythology, the daughter of Oceanus and mother of the sea-nymph Nereids; also the name of a district of Greece. Famous bearer: American actress Doris Day.

Your number is: 5

The characteristics of #5 are: Expansiveness, visionary, adventure, the constructive use of freedom.

The expression or destiny for #5:

The number 5 Expression endows with the wonderful characteristic of multi-talents and versatility. You can do so many things well. The tone of the number 5 is constructive freedom, and in your drive to attain this freedom, you will likely be the master of adaptability and change. You are good at presenting ideas and knowing how to approach people to get what you want. Naturally, this gives you an edge in any sort of selling game and spells easy success when it comes to working with people in most jobs. Your popularity may lead you toward some form of entertainment or amusement. Whatever you do, you are clever, analytical, and a very quick thinker.

If there is too much of the 5 energy in your makeup, you may express some the negative attitudes of the number. Your restless and impatient attitude may keep you from staying with any project for too long. Sometimes you can be rather erratic and scatter yourself and your energies. You have a hard time keeping regular office hours and maintaining any sort of a routine. You tend to react strongly if you sense that your freedom of speech or action is being impaired or restricted in any way. As clever as you are, you may have a tendency to make the same mistakes over and over again because much of your response is glib reaction rather that thoughtful application. You are in a continuous state of flux brought by constantly changing interests.

Your Soul Urge number is: 1

A Soul Urge number of 1 means:

Your Soul Urge is the number 1. With a Soul Urge number of 1, you want to lead and direct, to work independent of supervision, by yourself or with subordinates. You take pride in your abilities and want to be recognized for them. You may seek opportunities to display your strength and usefulness, wanting to create and originate. In your desire to manage the big picture and the main issues, you may often leave the details to others.

The positive 1 Soul Urge is Ambitious and determined, a leader seeking opportunities. There is a great deal of honesty and loyalty in this character. If you possess positive 1 Soul Urge qualities, you are very attainment oriented and driven to success. You are a loyal friend and strictly fair in your business dealings.

The negative side of the 1 Soul Urge must be avoided. A negative 1 is apt to dominate situations and people; the home, the spouse, the family and the business. Emotions aren't strong in this nature. If you possess an excess of 1 energy, you may, at times, be boastful and egotistic. You must avoid being too critical and impatient of trifles. The great need of the 1 Soul Urge is the development of friendliness, and a sincere interest in people.

Your Inner Dream number is: 4

An Inner Dream number of 4 means:

You dream of being a very solid citizen that people can depend upon. You strive for organization and predictable order. You want to be recognized as a person with a plan and the discipline to make that plan work like clockwork.

--From this site: http://www.paulsadowski.com/Numbers.asp

Here's an interesting small article I found today:

Ewan McGregor has compared Roman Polanski to his mother, because they are both “annoying”, and “usually right”.

The 38-year-old Scottish actor worked with the legendary film director on new thriller The Ghost Writer. McGregor plays an author who discovers a deadly secret when he is commissioned to write the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister. He found the role extremely challenging because he was constantly being criticised by Polanski.

“Roman doesn’t sugar-coat his notes to anyone – he tells it as he sees it,” McGregor told Total Film magazine. “We were doing one scene and Roman wanted a pillar moved two inches to the right, so there was a props guy with a drill trying to unscrew this pillar.

“I was running the lines and Roman just grabbed my script and said, ‘No! Why would you f**king play it like this? You would play it like this…’ Then he walked away and grabbed the drill out of the props guy’s hands and said, ‘Why are you doing it like this? You f**king drill it like that!’

“Once you learn not to take it personally, it’s fantastic and he’s like your mother – annoyingly, usually right.”

The Ghost Writer will be released worldwide on April 16.
 
--From this site: http://www.musicrooms.net/showbiz/4616-Ewan-McGregor-Has-Compared-Roman-Polanski-His-Mother.html

Photo Comparison of the Week, ICON Showing, Jay Sebring's old friend is still cutting hair, Sharon is the Best, and Brosnan appreciates work with Polanski

Here is our photo comparison of the week:

Someone mentioned that this photo of model Sophie Dahl looks a bit like Sharon:

I didn't realize the ICON Show was still going on?  But here is a woman who said she viewed it during Oscar week:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/flavia-colgan/icon-the-life-and-love-of_b_497675.html

One of Jay Sebring's old friends is still cutting hair:

http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_14665834

Vote for Sharon as one of the best here:

http://bestuff.com/stuff/sharon-tate

Brosnan appreciates work with Polanski:

http://www.buffalonews.com/2010/03/13/986434/brosnan-appreciates-work-with.html

What’s it mean that an Irishman and a Scotsman— yourself and Ewan McGregor — are in a movie that does such a job on an English prime minister?

Oh, that’s the Polanski sense of humor, an Irishman playing the ex-prime minister. That didn’t get beyond me. But I’m not sure why he wanted me, and I didn’t ask. I thought, let sleeping dogs lie. Let’s just have fun. Let’s just play. He likes actors from the British Isles.

Roman with friend Catherine Deneuve.

What made working with Polanski better, or different, than with other directors?

Well, for one thing we shot my last scene in the movie first. We rehearsed in Roman’s trailer and he said, “OK, let’s shoot.” And we did anything but shoot. He fussed with the props, he fussed with the computers, he fussed with the guns, he fussed with my security men and then, right before lunch, he said, “OK, Pierce, after lunch, 27 lens . . .” and that’s a big lens, right in your face. And then we shot the scene.

And why did you want to work with him?

The man comes out of such a turbulent past and such a history of cinema and tragedy. I’d never met him, but the day I went to have lunch with him in Paris, I already knew him — what he sounded like, what he looked like, his life. It was a great invitation, a wonderful time, a magnificent director. He’s a unique character and wonderful filmmaker, and this character that I play was a great way to step out and play a political thriller.

More on the Warren Beatty Biography and Articles with interviews from the stars of "The Ghost Writer", Ewan McGregor and Kim Cattrall

I looked a little into the Beatty biography on the net ( since I'm still sick and can't really go out and look at a copy ) and one reviewer says that in the book Beatty almost lived at Cielo (?) :

The infamous 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate (wife of Roman Polanski) and others by the Charles Manson gang hit close to home for Warren Beatty. He had been approached to take over the lease from Polanski but decided against moving into the house. Had he not declined Warren Beatty might have been one of those murdered that tragic night.

So now not only Leslie Caron says she almost took residence at the place, but Beatty did also?  I hope this is not the start of one of those "I coulda been there that night" senarios. 


For the rest of the review go here: 

http://actorbiographies.suite101.com/article.cfm/star-by-peter-biskind--book-review

Don't know how Beatty feels about this book but it doesn't appear to put him in the most positive light.


Here is an interview with the writer Peter Biskind:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/14/entertainment/la-et-bigpicture14-2010jan14

Two stars from "The Ghost Writer" talk about Polanski and more:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/2877246/Ewan-McGregor-on-Roman-Polanski-sex-charges.html

http://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/Shes-sexy-Samantha--and-so-much-more-86275907.html

More of Sharon's character from "Eye of the Devil", Polanski's Macbeth and his new film's stars talk about the director

Here's more from the novel version of "Eye of the Devil" by Philip Loraine:

....they heard the unmistakable roar of the Mercedes.

Francoise turned her head sharply.  "She's stopping."

They both looked up at the road which at this point followed the curve of the lake, divided from it by only a narrow field.  The white car was driving slowly round the bend, and the face of the girl at the wheel was turned towards them, very dark glasses masking her eyes; the brilliant hair shone in the sunlight.

"She is stopping."

Lindsay was shocked to recognize fear in her voice; he turned to look at her; she was staring up at the car, biting her lip.

"Steady on," he said.  "She's not really a witch, you know."

"I don't like her."

"Evidently."

But the white car was slowing down; it bumped on to the grass verge and came to a standstill.  The girl got out, waved to them, and began to climb the fence into the field.

"Now, why," said Francoise.  "Why?"  She looked reflectively at her children, who were sailing the grounded punt across oceans of the imagination; then she looked at Lindsay.

"You," she said.  "Yes, it must be something to do with you."

"Does it have to be something to do with something?  I mean, people do talk to people without motives."

Francoise gave him one of her unfathomable looks, when the light, the life, in her eyes seemed to have withdrawn into a deep dark cave.  She said nothing, but turned and watched the girl coming towards them.

To Lindsay she looked almost exactly like any one of the rather untidy maidens who slop around St. Tropez all summer.  She wore the same trousers that he had seen before and a shirt hanging outside of them; her feet were bare; she was very brown; whatever else she might be was obscured by the dark glasses.

Francoise said, "Odile!  I haven't seen you for ages.  This is James Lindsay.  Mademoiselle de Caray."

The girl smiled at Lindsay and sat down in one movement like a cat; the fact that she settled a little away from them--that is to say, a little farther from them than was quite natural--and then in a tuft of long grass, increased her likeness to that animal.

She said, "It's so hot; it makes me lazy."

Lindsay felt (quite wrongly as it happened), that he was beginning to get the measure of the people who frequented Bellac; in any case she had tickled his sense of humour so that he could not help laughing.  The dark glasses were levelled at him.  "You find this funny: that the heat makes me lazy."

"No," he said.  "It's nice of you, mademoiselle; you are so like a cat."

She smiled.  "How nice of you, monsieur; my mother says that I am like a ferret.  Now, I ask you, is that a nice thing to call your daughter?"

"Horrible."

She shrugged; clearly what her mother thought was of no interest to her.

The children had now rejoined them--Tante Estelle was not the only person at Bellac unable to resist strangers--and stood looking at Mademoiselle de Caray.

Gilles said, "Show us a trick, Odile."

"It's too hot."

From the sudden stillness of Francoise beside him, Lindsay gathered that this was the first time she had heard of  "tricks"; a moment later she verified his suspicion by saying, "But how interesting! What trick did Odile show you, darling?"

The small boy rubbed one leg against the back of the other.  "Oh, just tricks.  You know."

Odile, sucking a piece of grass, said, "I turned a frog into a goldfish, didn't I, Gilles?"

Antoinette, jumping up and down, shouted, "You didn't, you didn't; the goldfish was there all the time under the water-lily."

"No, truly," said Gilles, "truly Maman, she did turn the frog into a fish.  I saw."

Antoinette chanted, "Silly, silly, silly."

Francoise, pulling her son towards her and hitching up his trousers which seemed to be in danger of falling off, said, "You've got too much imagination, that's your trouble."

"No one," the girl replied, "can have too much imagination." 

"Wait until you have children."

"Children! Me!" She really was genuinely surprised--almost, Lindsay could have sworn, affronted.  "Francoise, what do you take me for?"

Something in all of this had made Francoise angry; she said, "I take you for a child yourself--sometimes a rather naughty one."

Odile lay down with her cheek against the grass.  Reflectively she said, "Yes.  I dare say you're right there.  But, Holy Face, what would life be like with no imagination."  She rolled over and took off the dark glasses.  "Don't you think so, Monsieur Lindsay?"

This was the first time that Lindsay had seen her eyes and they took him by surprise, for they were amber, two gleaming discs of tawny amber; and "discs" was the right word, for the pupils were very little darker than the iris; there was absolutely no denying that the effect was rather uncanny.  He could well understand that the local peasants might call her a witch.

"Imagination," he said.  "I'm the wrong person to ask; I never quite know where imagination begins and reality ends."

At this the girl sat up and looked at him; focused all her rather remarkable personality on him; the amber eyes widened.  "Ah," she said, "but this is the point: how intelligent of you!  There is no such thing as either reality or imagination; they are the same thing.  Gilles saw me turn the frog into a goldfish; Antoinette knew that the goldfish was underneath the water-lily all the time; as it happens neither of them are right, but where is the reality and where the imagined thing?  Which is which?"

"This," Lindsay said, "makes scientists the stupidest people in the world." He was absolutely fascinated by her eyes.

The girl spread her hands.  "Who denies that they are?  Give a scientist enough time and he would arrive at what he would call the truth, which is that I had caught the goldfish, before the children appeared; then I saw the frog, and I thought, 'Here's a chance for some magic.'  What's childhood without a little magic?  And so I did my 'trick.'  But the reality was not the dry truth, it was what the children saw--and what they saw, they saw with their imaginations."

Lindsay could see, in his mind, the little cold body of the goldfish secreted in her brown hand; each golden scale was clear to him, and the magical sheen of the belly, as if it had been painted with a rainbow.  And the wonderful golden eye, ringed with a circle of black.  And in the golden eye of the golden fish cold be seen reflected the Chateau of Bellac and the lake and the round, surprised faces of the children--children watching a miracle in the golden eye of a goldfish...

Suddenly he felt violently sick; it began with a nausea, and suddenly gripped his stomach so that he had to fight in order not to vomit; he heard himself let out a groan.  The sea of quivering gold--it was like looking out to sea directly into the eye of the sunset--receded; lapped away into illimitable distance.

Francoise said, "James, are you all right?"

He opened and shut his eyes once or twice. "Yes.  Yes, perfectly."

He looked up.  Odile de Caray was plaiting three pieces of grass, very intent on what she was doing.

"I..." He shook his head again.  "I felt a bit sleepy, that's all."

The girl smiled.  "Ah," she said, "so I am not the only one the heat affects in that way.  Well--I'd better be going."

She stood up, again in one sinuous movement, and put on her dark glasses.  "Nice to see you again, Francoise--and you, monsieur."

She waved to the children, who had returned to the punt, and walked slowly away from them across the field.

Francoise said, "James, what on earth...?  I thought you were going to faint."

Lindsay, frowning at the slim retreating back, said, "What a little bitch!  She hypnotised me--just like that."

Francoise let out a gasp.

"Just like that," he said.  "I fell for it completely."

"Hypnotised you!"

"There's nothing extraordinary about it.  Masses of people can do it.  But not as quickly as that, not as effortlessly."

"But why?  Why did she?"

"I may be wrong, but I think it's a warning."  He told her then about the book of fairy tales that had taken the place of the Montfaucon history while he slept.

"Oh, no," she said.  "Oh, I don't like that at all, James."

"I do.  I like it very well."

"But I feel... It was my idea that you should come here; I feel responsible for you."

He ignored this.  Eyes narrowed against the glare, he watched the girl get into her glamorous car.

"I like it," he said, "because it proves that we're on the right track.  I must get back to my history, Francoise."

And that ends that chapter. 

Here is an interesting blog about why Roman chose to make "Macbeth" after Sharon's death:

http://mrconversesenglish3201blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/macbeth-filmmakers-wife-murdered-by.html

I have found an array of many interviews with the stars of "The Ghost Writer," Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor.  They discuss what it was like working with Polanski.  They are all quite interesting...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/18/earlyshow/leisure/boxoffice/main6219911.shtml

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/ewan-mcgregor-praises-ghost-writer-director-roman-polanski/story?id=9873344

http://insidemovies.moviefone.com/2010/02/18/pierce-brosnan-interview-the-ghost-writer/

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Interview-Ewan-McGregor-17134.html

http://wonderwall.msn.com/movies/polanski-picked-on-mcgregors-accent-1538837.story

http://home.nzcity.co.nz/news/article.aspx?id=111147&fm=newsmain,nrhl

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/the-moviegoer-talking-with-ewan-mcgregor/

http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1632272/story.jhtml

http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1632272/story.jhtml

http://www.insidebayarea.com/entertainment/ci_14450918

http://www.ocregister.com/entertainment/-235931--.html

http://www.austin360.com/movies/mcgregor-sees-parallels-in-polanskis-life-and-his-285371.html

Photo of the Week, The Last Part of the Translated Article: Sharon Tate wanted to eventually have a baby girl, and More on Polanski

Photo of the Week:

Sharon looking as beautiful as ever.

Here is the last part of the Translated Article:
L'Europeo August 21, 1969
My meeting with Sharon Tate
by Adriano Botta

(Warning: take some of this part with a large grain of salt...)

Photos from the actual magazine I got this article from.

Sharon Tate caught her breath, as the "bunnies" continued to deploy rose petals that they knew had hashish and brought a giant wedding cake on which was written: 'Enough with stripping, Elda!' There was a laugh by contortions. Roman Polanski stopped drinking whiskey and promoted an investigation. He learned as he copied the voice of Groucho Marx that the pastry chef had mistaken the cake by sending it to them.  Instead it was intended for a stripper at the Playboy Club that was retiring. "I have only now begun to perform in stripping," said Sharon, making a joke of it. "That will become increasingly good at becoming essential in my eroticism. Could I really become the Marilyn Monroe of the seventies?  Not in the Martin Ransohoff way. I want to be a type of Monroe who, with her eroticism set the world on fire without burning it.Yes, I will continue to undress. In a I could be undressed forever. If only to die soon in a satanic way*. I adore the way of working and living that has Roman's genius written all over it. There is an absolutely horrible sense of hypocrisy in the world. I am shocked.  Too bad for them. I and Roman have been a pair for about three years and we did not get married and it did not bother me at all. Marriage is a bourgeois convention. How important is marriage? If two people love each other and do get along well together why should they have to marry to make everyone else happy? For three years I've been with Roman and Hollywood is shocked? To bad for them.  They don't understand.  I stay away from Hollywood as best I can.  I've had it with the whole of Hollywood and its false puritanism. It is no longer the Mecca of cinema but more of a graveyard of the past studio system. I prefer London and Rome to Hollywood. "

"Why did you get married then?" someone asked. Sharon replied, "We said why not have a wedding?  The idea of it was fun. And the wedding reception at the Playboy Club was well worth the effort of a formal ceremony like marriage but it does not change anything. We are like a middle class couple, we strive to make sacrifices for each other and to encourage each other. There is no duty or restriction imposed on each other. And we often forget even to be married. I want to have children, yes. I'd like a girl. And I wish that she inherits my looks."

 
Sharon Tate is dead in Hollywood, in the cemetery of the old studio heads from which she was intended to flee. And she died like in a film by Roman Polanski, hanging from a cord of nylon, the beautiful body pierced by daggers.  And she died with four others, one of whom was also her ex-lover, the hairdresser of the stars, Jay Sebring.  He was stabbed and his head wrapped in a black hood. A morbid aggression, a crime that is crazy and repeated two days later, a few miles away, in another villa, two Italian spouses killed with the same ferocity and the same technique, with the same left written on the walls, 'pigs.' Two crimes like the demonic films inspired by the fantasy reminiscent of Polanski.  The face of America now bitter and dark. Sharon Tate was twenty six years old. She was to give birth to a baby in four weeks. Even Polanski has fallen to such a degree of shame with his cruel curse of literature.

*This sentence makes no sense with the rest of what Sharon is talking about.  And why would anyone say that anyway?  The only thing I can think of is that the reporter heard about the rumors of a possible santanic murder and added that comment to go along with it. I think a lot of reporters added this kind of thing for sensationalism. 
 
And it sounds like the reporter also went along with the Polanski makes macabre films so it imitates his life.  Like it is his fault for making movies like "Rosemary's Baby" that is the reason why he deserves this suffering in real life. 
 
Like I said, this kind of thing must be taken with a large grain of salt.
 
On a better note, here is a person who is trying to watch 1001 Greatest Movies of all time and reviews Polanski's "Chinatown." :
 
http://1001plus.blogspot.com/2010/02/separating-man-from-his-art.html
 

More on working with Polanski by The Ghost Writers stars Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor:
 
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/18/earlyshow/leisure/boxoffice/main6219911.shtml
 
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/ewan-mcgregor-praises-ghost-writer-director-roman-polanski/story?id=9873344
 
http://insidemovies.moviefone.com/2010/02/18/pierce-brosnan-interview-the-ghost-writer/
 
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Interview-Ewan-McGregor-17134.html

http://wonderwall.msn.com/movies/polanski-picked-on-mcgregors-accent-1538837.story

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

More of the Translated Article: Sharon Talks About Polanski, Roman's New Film is a Critical Hit and what Ewan McGregor says about working on the film.

L'Europeo August 21, 1969



My meeting with Sharon Tate


by Adriano Botta


Continued from yesterday...
 

Sharon colorized art from Deviant Art.

"The critics (for Eye of the Devil), however, admited that my beauty was charged with sexuality.  This at once made me shudder and at the same time excited," says Sharon Tate at the banquet after her marriage. Roman Polanski nodded in a small, dark corner with the pictures of the faces of Mickey Mouse behind him.



She gradually made two other films, The Valley of the Dolls and Don't Make Waves with Tony Curtis and Claudia Cardinale. Then she began echoing her meeting with Polanski for The Fearless Vampire Killers. "It was an encounter that changed everything in my life. I had never before known such a man. I am terribly in love with him. He has taught me many things. Not only to remain naked with joy and ease, but also to live life with more intensity-- I--who am so lazy that I could sleep at night and day.


"It is not true that we take a lot of drugs. To me, Roman is a drug. Next to him I feel drugged. I do not take drugs from his orders.  Instead we go roaring around in a red Ferrari that runs with of the wind. I was ordered not to smoke anymore, because the tobacco, would ruin my teeth. He ordered me not to wear underwear because it leaves marks on the skin. And without the constraints of bourgeois body, it is much more beautiful and natural. In The Fearless Vampire Killers we have made our first film together. I play a bewitching part, or rather, I portray a vampire. At first I am not a vampire though, no, I'm a country girl kidnapped by vampires. Roman, who besides directing the film has a part in it.  He falls in love with me and saves me before all the blood was sucked out of me by the vampires. But she does not get a transfusion. The blood and rigor in the films of Roman. So much so that she leaves the country with this tremendous experience a new taste. The taste of blood. She becomes a vampire and changes him into one too. The finish is spectacular. I grow teeth like Dracula. I must confess: I like the macabre Roman does.  It is exciting to me.  He is a macabre genius."

Tomorrow more of this new translated article.

Polanski is getting some great reviews for "The Ghost Writer:"

http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/movie_reviews/b167807_review_ghost_writer_clever_thriller.html

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2010-02-19-ghostwriter19_ST_N.htm

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/2008-12-6-motion-captured/posts/the-ghost-writer-is-a-sleek-and-satisfying-thriller-for-grown-ups

This one is by famous critic Kenneth Turan of 'The Los Angeles Times' :

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-ghostwriter19-2010feb19,0,5640884.story

This critic is already talking about Oscars for next year for Polanski's film:

http://www.seattlepi.com/movies/415582_film32307228.html

Ewan McGregor on Polanski:

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/02/18/the-ghost-writer-star-ewan-mcgregor-on-his-upcoming-projects/

Sorry mainstream media. Ewan McGregor, star of the Roman Polanski thriller “The Ghost Writer,” knows that you want him to dish on the 76-year-old director, who’s currently under house arrest in Switzerland stemming from a 1977 sex-charge case. But he’s not biting. The actor, who plays an unnamed author hired to ghost-write a memoir for a disgraced ex-British prime minister, said he sympathizes with Polanski and feels bad for him, but that’s the furthest he’ll go.

“It’s very tricky because his whole situation is so complicated and nothing to do with me,” he said. “I worked intensely with him for four months and I felt badly for this children, whom I got to know during the shoot.”

McGregor talks more about working with Polanski in this article and it shows a clip from the film:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703444804575071470108130174.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_RIGHTTopCarousel

The Wall Street Journal: It's hard to talk about "The Ghost Writer" outside the context of Mr. Polanski's troubles. Is that fair to the film?

Mr. McGregor: I think the film is a much heavier political story than it is a commentary on Polanski's life. He really seems like a very self-assured person to me who doesn't need to make a comment on his life through his films...Polanski seems terribly private. He wasn't with us at the launch of the film [in Berlin] but quite probably, he wouldn't want be there anyway.

Mr. Polanski is notoriously direct with actors while on set. Did you find him as gruff as advertised?

He doesn't sugarcoat his notes. Most directors would tell you, "That was great, but let's try it like this." He'll just stop you mid-take and go "No no no—why are playing it like this?" and you'll just look back and be like, "I don't know, good question." We're sensitive souls, us actors, and after a while, it dents your ego, but once you realize he's like that with the set dresser and the prop man, and just about everyone, it was OK.

Morgane Polanski.  Makes you wonder what Sharon and Roman's own future daughter might have looked like?  I know their first child was a boy but I have always wondered if they had more...

Note on Polanski's "The Ghost Writer": it has 94 year old Eli Wallach who has remembered Sharon fondly when she was an extra on the film set from the movie, "Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man."  Also, Polanski's beautiful daughter Morgane playes in her dad's film.  She plays a hotel receptionist trapped in period costume.

Photo of the Week ,The Latest on Polanski and The Ghost Writer

From one of our contributors, Andrea, here is the photo of the week:

Thanks Andrea!  Great photo!

Roman Polanski News:

Polanski film debuts, Swiss vow no extradition yet

http://movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx?news=458291>1=28101
 
GENEVA (AP) -- Friday was a banner day for director Roman Polanski: His new film premiered in Berlin and Swiss authorities pledged not to extradite him to the U.S. as long as his appeal on a sex case was still being considered in Los Angeles.
 
Compared to the last four months being under arrest in Switzerland, it was a win-win.
 
Polanski could not walk the red carpet at the Berlin film festival Friday night for the debut of his movie "The Ghost Writer," starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan, because he is under house arrest. But he was still the star of the party, feted by the movie's actors, producer and screenplay writer.
 
And in a new twist to his long legal saga, the Swiss Justice Ministry declared it would make "no sense" to shift Polanski from house arrest at his Alpine chalet until U.S. courts ruled definitively that he must be sentenced in person to further jail time for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl.
 
"When the question is still open, why should he be extradited?" Rudolf Wyss, the ministry's deputy director, told The Associated Press. "As long as the question is still open, our decision depends on that."

"Even if we decide on extradition, he can still appeal. This would take many months," Wyss added.

Polanski's extradition is a complicated and diplomatically sensitive decision, as it deals with a three-decade-old case full of alleged wrongdoing by a Los Angeles judge, a confused sentencing procedure and the director's own flight from justice.

The official movie poster for the film.

There is also Polanski's status as a cultural icon in France and Poland, where he holds dual citizenship, and his history as a Holocaust survivor whose first wife was brutally murdered by crazed followers of cult leader Charles Manson in California.

Loyola University law Professor Laurie Levenson, who has followed the case closely, said the next move appears to be up to Polanski, who has the option to waive extradition.

"The Swiss authorities want to know what Polanski's sentence will be and the Los Angeles courts won't tell them until he comes back. It's a bit of a standoff."

She said that Polanski can keep fighting extradition, but will remain under house arrest indefinitely.

"Mr. Polanski may be able to sit in his Swiss chalet forever," she said. "But if he wants to get out he may have to come back and be sentenced by the California court even though he might get a sentence that would not have required him to come back in the first place. This is a chicken and egg problem."

Polanski's lawyers say the 76-year-old filmmaker served his full sentence in 1978 when he underwent a court-ordered diagnostic study at a California prison for 42 days. Los Angeles courts have disagreed and Polanski's lawyers have promised to appeal in their hopes to have him sentenced in absentia or have the case dropped.

Swiss legal experts said it looked increasingly possible that the Oscar-winning director of "Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown" and "The Pianist" could beat extradition.

"The chance has increased, especially as he's been here for such a long time," said Dieter Jann, a former Zurich prosecutor. "It's not even clear if the Americans want him anymore."

Wyss spoke to The AP hours before a press conference in Berlin to unveil Polanski's newest film based on a novel by Robert Harris, in which Brosnan stars as former British Prime Minister Adam Lang, a character likened to Tony Blair, and McGregor plays a reporter hired to help write his memoirs.

The movie, Polanski's first since "Oliver Twist" in 2005, was nearly finished when he was arrested Sept. 26 as he arrived in Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award from a film festival. The director kept working on the film during his two months in a Swiss jail and later under house arrest in his chalet in the luxury Swiss resort of Gstaad, after he posted $4.5 million bail in December and agreed to wear an electronic ankle monitor.

"It's a great pity he's not here to launch the film with us, because I feel like he's as responsible for my performance in this film as I am," McGregor said at the press conference in Berlin, where the cast largely steered clear of the director's legal issues.

"Roman continued to work on the film through courier packages that we sent to him in prison," producer Robert Benmussa said in Berlin. "Then, when he was in his chalet, he continued to work on the movie, putting the last touches."

"The Ghost Writer," based on the novel by Robert Harris, is one of 20 films competing for the Berlin festival's top Golden Bear honor, being awarded Feb. 20.

Harris, who wrote the screenplay along with Polanski, said director had been keen to shift gears and make a thriller. "The Ghost Writer" is the story of a former leader dogged by allegations that he allowed the illegal seizure of suspected terrorists.

"(Polanski wanted) to do another 'Chinatown'-like movie where the plot gradually unfolds, and I think that that above all was what drew him to it," Harris said. "He wanted to tell a story, and his greatest insult, I discovered, was 'an arthouse movie.'"

Polanski lost a bid last month to be sentenced in Los Angeles without returning when a judge ruled that he must be present in court if he wanted to resolve the case. Referring to Polanski as a fugitive from justice, Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza said he was acting to protect "the dignity of the court."

Polanski's attorneys have until late March to file an appeal. His lawyer in California, Chad Hummel, would not comment on the Swiss justice ministry's statement Friday.

Polanski can also avoid being returned to Los Angeles if a court there rules that he doesn't have to face further punishment, or if the amount of additional time he is sentenced to is less than six months.

Los Angeles prosecutors say Polanski is subject to a sentence of two years. His defense counters that the director has already served a sentence handed down by the original Los Angeles judge and spent over four months under arrest in Switzerland.

While the legal wrangling has been difficult to follow, the facts of the case are less contested.

Polanski was initially accused of raping the girl after plying her with champagne and a Quaalude pill during a 1977 modeling shoot. He was indicted on six felony counts, including rape by use of drugs, child molestation and sodomy, but he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful sexual intercourse.

In exchange, the judge agreed to drop the remaining charges and sent him to prison for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation. The evaluator released Polanski after 42 days, but the judge said he was going to send him back to serve out the remaining time.

Polanski then fled the U.S. on Feb. 1, 1978, the day he was to be formally sentenced. He has lived since in France, which does not extradite its citizens.

Will Polanski's Recent Publicity Overshadow his New Movie?

Found this on the web today:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2010-01-15-polanski15_ST_N.htm

Roman Polanski's detention shadows 'Ghost Writer'

By Anthony Breznican, USA TODAY



Roman Polanski's new film, The Ghost Writer, is a murder mystery set amid the clash of international politics and espionage, reminiscent of the best paranoid thrillers from 1970s Hollywood.

But it's a real incident from that era that casts a less flattering shadow on the film.

The Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby filmmaker was arrested in Switzerland in September for possible extradition to the United States, which he fled in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl.

Polanski is now under house arrest and fighting extradition. The Ghost Writer, however, will be released in the USA on Feb. 19.

It remains to be seen whether the scandal surrounding him will influence how his new work is received.

Rob Friedman, co-chairman and chief executive of Summit Entertainment, which is distributing the movie, says it won't.

"People have an infinite capacity to separate art from people's lives," Friedman says. "Moviegoers are going to the movies. They're not making a statement about whether a trial judge in Los Angeles acted properly or whether (Polanski) paid his price to society."

The movie stars Ewan McGregor as a writer assigned to polish the autobiography of a former British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan). McGregor is replacing a previous writer who drowned mysteriously, and when Brosnan comes under investigation as a war criminal, it becomes clear there is something in this politician's story that someone is willing to kill over.

"It's very Hitchcockian," says Alex Billington of FirstShowing.net, who was at a showing of the film Wednesday night in Los Angeles. "Polanski hasn't been making films for a few years, and I hadn't known what to expect. Going in, I was looking for a good drama, but it delivered something different from what I was expecting. It's a good thriller."

Billington notes, however, that the comments section on his website fills with vitriol when he writes about The Ghost Writer.

"I think it's going to hurt attendance," Billington says. "Some people look at it and say, 'I have a viewpoint against Roman Polanski, and no matter how good it looks, no matter who's in it, I can't support his film.' "

Polanski's life has been marked by tragedy. A childhood survivor of the Holocaust, he became one of Hollywood's most prominent directors but also lost his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, in the notorious 1969 Manson family slayings.

The September arrest provoked emotions over his actions that had been simmering for more than three decades.

Polanski, who won an Oscar for 2002's The Pianist, has long been damaged by his arrest and flight because it limited his access to bigger Hollywood budgets and restricted his ability to work in the USA, says Gregory Ellwood, editor in chief of HitFix.com, who also saw the film Wednesday.

"In an alternate universe where this hadn't happened, Roman Polanski would be like Martin Scorsese," he said.

Ellwood also noted that Polanski still managed to continue to make films during this period, and has always found top actors willing to work with him (among them Harrison Ford in his 1988 thriller Frantic, and Johnny Depp in 1999's The Ninth Gate.)

For many years, the 1977 rape case faded to the background and was not a major issue when one of his films would come out.

"There was some scuttlebutt when he was nominated for The Pianist, but it was not dominating that discussion," Ellwood says.

The arrest has reignited the controversy, stirring furious feelings on both sides. It might be less of an issue for The Ghost Writer if it were an art-house film with limited commercial appeal, but as an exciting and accessible thriller, it has mainstream potential.

"This was more than a pleasant surprise," he says. "I think it's one of his more entertaining films, if not one of his best films."

Sounds like this is going to be one of his best films.  I hope it does better than expected.

Jailed Polanski finishes film for Berlin Competition

Jailed Polanski finishes film for Berlin Competition

Gautuman Bhaskaran, Hindustan Times
 
January 2010
 
Roman Polanski, the Polish director, is no stranger to me. Certainly his work, no. My first brush with it was at one of the editions of the International Film Festival of India in Kolkata during the early 1990s. The film was Bitter Moon. Starring stars such as Hugh Grant, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emmanuelle Seigner and Peter Coyote, it was an extremely provocative work that had the classic Polanski’s psychological touch, thrilling to the core and disturbing to its depth. Set on the high seas, the movie traces the lives of two couples as they sail towards Istanbul on their way to India. Polanski explores bondage, sadomasochism and voyeurism to narrate the bitter story of death and destruction, passion and possessiveness.
 
I still remember that the film was introduced by the dashing Bengali actor, Victor Banerjee, whose parting line was, “Yes, there is a lot of masala in it”. But there has been even more masala in Polanski’s life, often tragic I would think.

Now under house arrest in Switzerland, waiting for his deportation to the USA, where he could be tried for having sex with a 13-year-old girl (who incidentally has long pardoned him), Polanski has completed his latest movie, The Ghost Writer. It will compete at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival to roll on February 11.

Based on the International Thriller Writers’ Award-winning novel, The Ghost by Robert Harris (who also penned the screenplay), Polanski’s movie was shot at Studio Babelsberg, outside Berlin, and was finished by him while he was in Swiss prison.

The film stars Ewan McGregor as a professional ghostwriter hired to pen the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister, essayed by Pierce Brosnan (the man we knew best as James Bond). The writer finds himself in political and sexual intrigues (without which, I guess, no Polanski work will be complete) that involve the ex-Prime Minister’s wife and his aide. It soon transpires that the Brosnan character has a terrible secret that may well upset international ties. Tony Blair is reportedly the inspiration for this character.

Often considered a master of crime and conspiracy, Polanski himself fell a victim to these when his beautiful, young and pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was savagely murdered by a cult in LA in 1969. A shattered Polanski, who was then in Britain, returned to Europe saying that there was nothing to hold him back in Hollywood. He later wrote in his autobiography that his “absence on the night of the murder is the greatest regret of my life…Sharon's death is the only watershed in my life that really matters… her murder changed my personality from a boundless, untroubled sea of expectations and optimism to one of ingrained pessimism ... eternal dissatisfaction with life".

And his work since then has reflected these.

He came out of his self-imposed seclusion in 1971 with The Tragedy of Macbeth. His later movies continued to have this tinge of the dark and the forbidding. Tess, Chinatown and Death and the Maiden, for example, have all had their share of the mysterious. Dedicating Tess (based on Thomas Hardy’s famed 1891 novel), to Sharon, Polanski said that his wife had given him a copy of the book on the last occasion he saw her alive. She had said that it would make a great film. It did.

Polanski continued to make movies such as The Pianist (2002, Palm d’Or for Best Picture at Cannes and Academy Award for Best Director) that in some ways were an echo of his own life. The Pianist is set during the dark days of World War II and was adapted from Jewish-Polish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman’s autobiography. Like Szpilman, Jewish Polanski escaped death in Nazi hands, while his mother was killed at Auschwitz. Polanski and his father survived German tyranny. The father lived through the horrors of a concentration camp, while Polanski escaped from the Krakow ghetto. He changed his name, behaved like a Catholic and saw the end of the war.

This was the fighter I met at Marrakech a couple of years ago, and his agility and verve amazed me. As the head of the jury at the film festival there, he was a 75-year-old bundle of unimaginable energy. In a way, he epitomises all that one sees in his cinema: sensitivity, intelligence and a lot more.

As he now bides his time incarcerated in a Swiss chalet, there is a wave of sympathy for him. Letters pleading for the dismissal of the American legal case against him have been coming in. Probably justice must prevail, but if his imprisonment, if that happens, can well be a sad loss for cinema. For at 77, Polanski may not have many more years of helming.

(Gautaman Bhaskaran has been writing on international cinema for over two decades, covering major film festivals at home and abroad, including Cannes, Venice and Berlin.)

A few more articles today on Polanski:

Swiss Preparing Decision on Polanski



Compiled by DAVE ITZKOFF-New York Times



Published: January 7, 2010



The justice ministry of Switzerland said Thursday that it may decide soon whether to grant a request by the United States to extradite Roman Polanski, Agence France-Presse reported. The ministry’s spokesman, Folco Galli, told Agence France-Presse: “We are preparing our decision. It could be January, it could also be in February. I am not going to be more precise.” Mr. Polanski, who fled the United States in 1978 after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl, was apprehended in Switzerland in September. He spent several months in a jail near Zurich before posting $4.5 million bail in December and is now under house arrest in his chalet in Gstaad. On Wednesday a written request from Mr. Polanski to be sentenced in absentia was presented to a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. The judge, Peter P. Espinoza, has scheduled a hearing on Jan. 22 to consider it.


And one more link of interest:

http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b160804_roman_polanski_seeks_long-distance.html