Part of the new evidence brought to light in Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired is the on camera admission by former prosecuting attorney David Wells that he'd spoken with Judge Rittenband ex parte about the case, advising him on sentencing strategy. Now it seems that Wells is backing down on that admission, admitting instead that he lied to filmmaker Marina Zenovich about the incident.
No. It never happened...I lied. I know I shouldn't have done it, but I did. The director of the documentary told me it would never air in the States. I thought it made a better story if I said I'd told the judge what to do," Wells told former LA DA Marcia Clark, who reports the conversation and gives her conclusions about it in her The Daily Beast column.
And so the Polanski plot sickens.
And, of course, whenever a 'witness' in a documentary film lies it call into question the veracity of all other 'witnesses.' That can sully the reputation and credibility of nonfiction filmmaking. But it should not! I'm trying to contact Marina Zenovich for a response. More to follow....
Comments
I wonder about the veracity of Wells’s retraction. Which of his stories is true? It seems more likely that what he said, in the documentary, is true. Why would anyone make that up? If he did, he’s got a serious imagination, and fantastical lying problem. If he didn’t, then might he be in a legal bind, interfering or acting incorrectly? With a felony trial?
Isn’t that what Wells meant, when he said he didn’t think it would play in the US? Shouldn’t he be in professional “hot water”?
Zenovich has issued a statement to the press. The NY Times has it here:
http://bit.ly/9JgWZ
Bret Ratner’s already planning a sequel to Wanted and Desired:
http://bit.ly/1cf0fj
I’m a little surprised when you say that one witness’s lies shouldn’t sully the credibility of a documentary. Documentarians aren’t journalists. Sometimes that’s a real strength, because of the access it allows them to have with their subjects. But sometimes it’s a real weakness, because it means they can go into a project with a specific agenda and not be obligated to challenge their own assumptions or look too hard for any evidence that might contradict the story they want to tell.
So when a documentarian doesn’t corroborate a witness’s story for his film (like a journalist would), he opens himself and his work up to loss of credibility.
It’s clear that from the beginning that Zenovich (and, I imagine, Ratner) had a specific agenda with “Wanted and Desired”. Plainly, she wanted to show that Polanski was a victim of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, so the charges of flight from justice against hime should be dropped. After all, the only reason Polanski participated in the documentary was to get his side of the story out, and possibly get a judge to reconsider his case.
According to LAWeekly.com, Zenovich had to revise the film’s ending to retract her earlier claim that, in 1998, another judge guaranteed Polanski immunity from jail upon his return to the U.S., provided he agree to his court proceedings being televised. That turned out not to be true. Now David Wells has completely undermined the premise of the entire documentary by saying that his statements aren’t true, either.
Zenovich wanted to help Polanski, that much is obvious. In her zeal, she brushed off the complaints some critics had about the way her documentary presented (and failed to present) information relevant to the case. It didn’t occur to Zenovich to verify things when Wells gave her a story that was exactly what she and Polanski wanted to hear.
Since Wells admitted to lying, someone I know is describing Zenovich as Polanski’s personal Leni Riefenstahl. Like Riefenstahl, Zenovich didn’t really examine what was being said in her documentary, because she was too interested in using it to help her idol. It’s all backfired, so her credibility and that of her film truly deserve to be sullied.
Maybe next time Zenovich will reconsider going into a project with an agenda, and be open to hearing testimony she might not want to hear.