To explain
her behavior, which the probation report describes as perfect willingness, with a total absence of forcing or coercing from the
part of the defendant – and to explain the behavior of her mother, that looks
exactly like what we deduced here (a premeditated setup, theory corroborated by the development of the events),
the three authors of the book have to undertake lots of clumsy manipulations.
We’ll presently see, again, a whole assortment of lies.
Mom
didn’t really have a long attention span when it came to men. She first married
a local boy at seventeen when she was
four months pregnant with my sister, Kim…
Barefaced lies. Anyone who can count can
easily calculate. During the GJ interrogation, Susan Gailey (mother) is asked
how old her elder daughter is, and she says 20. Susan was born in 1941.
Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to find the exact dates of birth of either
Susan or Kim (the elder daughter), but there’s no way she could be 17 when four
months into pregnancy. To be 20
in March ’77, Kim has to have been born either in 1957
(25% probability) or in 1956 (75%), when Susan was, depending on her birth month, either 15 or 14. If you
look at the calendar, you can see that there is probability that Susan got pregnant when she was 13. There
is no indication in the book that she got pregnant from her first sexual
experience, or that it was a result of rape.
Why these
lies, so easy to disprove? Of course, it’s all well calculated. The first line
in the quoted passage seems so honest, so frank, like the author is saying the Whole
Truth even at her own expense, - so personal and so straightforward! - that who on earth will count months and
years?
And it’s
not just an innocent lie. It’s the cornerstone of the precarious construction
that follows.
Geimer (it
feels like these pages were written by her rather than Newman or Silver) gives a description of what their
life in Hollywood was like, with mother three times divorced by the age of
thirty-two and now living with a boyfriend (Bob) working for Marijuana Weekly, with whom she was smoking
pot “every night in their room”:
…It
was like being on a permanent
pot-infused vacation.
…I
don’t think I can overstate the shift in
attitudes toward sex in the mid- to late 1970s versus ten or even five
years before. The Joy of Sex,
published in 1972, held a place of honor in my mother’s bedroom. (…)Young girls
are eroticized to some extent in every culture, and at this point in time in
our own culture that eroticization had become almost mainstream.
…The
bathrooms of junior high school were filled with cigarette smoke. When we
visited the homes of our friends, their
parents would offer us a beer. Cocaine
was just beginning to become popular, but really, that wasn’t yet the drug for
the kicked-back Los Angeles
vibe.
I can’t
help seeing Silver kicking in at this moment. Notice the (…) in the quote
above? The part I omitted is, “She never knew I read
it, but naturally I did, cover to cover.” It is crucial that we be
convinced: mother didn’t know. Mother had no idea of anything going on, even
though she herself was pregnant at… mmm… let it be… "seventeen" (not 14 or, God forbid, 13! No, no!!).
Why?
Because somehow we should be forced to close our eyes on what we’ve read in
this very book, or known from other documents, and swallow this:
The
story that would be repeated in the press for years was that my mother had, for
lack of a better term, pimped me out – that she had set me up with Roman as a
kind of bait, not only for my career but for hers.
In
fact, as improbable as it now sounds, it never, ever crossed her mind that he
would have sex with me. First, even though there were movies like Taxi Driver
and Manhattan,
which featured a twelve-year-old prostitute and a forty-year-old man’s
relationship with a high school student, no one talked about real-life child
sex abuse. (…) And however “adult” I may have acted… I looked like a child.
Then
there was Roman’s fame. It protected him, but not just in the way people would
assume. We wanted something from him – that would be people’s first thought. We
did want something from him, too. But the idea that my mother looked the other
way because of his fame – that’s what was false. See, because of his fame, she
never for a second thought she would have
to look the other way.
How much
she “looked like a child” we already know. This lie
alone relieves us of all responsibility to refute the others, because everything is built on it. But since
we’ve already started this quest, let’s proceed.
Definition: Contextual lie. One can state part of the truth out of context,
knowing that without complete information, it gives a false impression.
Likewise, one can actually state accurate facts, yet deceive with them.
Can you
find it in the quote above? Of course, it’s the first passage. Saying “the
story that would be repeated in the press for years” (which, by the way, is
itself an example of a big lie, since
the press repeats a totally different story) she somehow tries to make it sound
dubious by definition: because it is a “story”, because it is “repeated”, and
because she herself quotes it. This contextual
lie is meant to be propped by the above barefaced
lie, all to lead us to believe that mother could never ever have had such
an extravagant idea.
See now why
she lied about the age of her mother when pregnant? They want us to unsee the
picture formed by Samantha’s own words, by her maturity and experience, by the
fact that her grandmother got pregnant with Susan when she too was way below
the modern age of consent in the USA (she doesn’t say it, but plain
calculations show it clearly), and the context of the ‘70s Samantha describes
so vividly, mother’s three divorces and a Hollywood boyfriend, the
“pot-infused” lifestyle… And even this is not all yet.
Before
I ever became sexually active my mother had taken me aside and given me some
sort of spermicidal cream, which I used the one time I had sex with Steve in California.
It was when
Samantha was either twelve, or barely thirteen, because by March ’77 she had
already broken up with her first lover. So… mother had no idea her daughter
could have sex? Really? Oh, I forgot, “no one talked
about real-life child sex abuse”. Thus, having sex with someone next
door is ok, but having it with someone you “want
something from” – and eventually get a lot from, in terms of both
money and fame - is suddenly “abuse”? Excuse me, who abuses whom in this case? And, lo, forgot again: Polanski’s fame “protected”
him. The famous womanizer whose best known lover at that very time was 15
(according to other sources, 16, although for some reason Geimer once says “14”, apparently out of habit for
lying) and didn’t look a day older than Samantha – was “protected” by his fame
in the eyes of a Hollywood actress with such a past, an aspiring actress’s
mother? Tell it to the marines.
In
fact, as improbable as it now sounds, it never, ever crossed her mind that he
would have sex with me.
Recognize
the trick? “as improbable as it now sounds” means to make you feel ashamed for
ever thinking it “improbable”. Resist manipulations, guys. No use arguing “we
don’t really know what did or didn’t cross Susan Gailey’s mind”: it would have
been an open question only if Geimer
and her two co-workers didn’t need to prop it with lies. Since they do, the
whole picture they’re trying to paint is ruined.
But they
don’t stop there. They forget that le
meilleur est l’ennemi du bien, and, believing for some reason that everyone
is gullible to the point of idiocy, say this:
My
mother said [to the Grand Jury], “I thought he might want younger girls.”
Younger!
This moment showed how her mind was really working. Somehow she had gotten the
impression that he was photographing children. And she didn’t think for a
second that he was a pedophile. Apparently he had been dating Nastassja Kinski,
who was fifteen at the time, but my mother had no idea. His taste for young
girls, news to us, would soon be widely publicized. But Kinski, however young,
looked like a woman and I did not – and my mother simply did not put me into
that category of nubile beauty who would have caught his attention. So it was
the idea that I was too old for the shoot, not quite a child anymore, that was
worrying her. That Polanski had a sexual interest in her daughter never
occurred to her. Truthfully, until that night it had never occurred to me,
either.
Now please
remember the photos (and the verbal descriptions) and decide for yourself if a
mother (whose own sex life started at no later than 14 and who had given her daughter spermicidal cream months before), could really believe
that someone who intended to photograph children
would pick that ripe young woman.
So much is
inside that paragraph… Barefaced lie: “Kinski… looked
like a woman and I did not”. False pretence: “but
my mother had no idea” – living in Hollywood,
and her daughter Kim dating an acquaintance of Polanski’s. And don’t forget
they had seen the pictures he had taken of others, when he explained to them
what exactly he wanted.
 |
| Kinski |
…
there were these extraordinary images of an international
beauty…
…he
showed these photos of jaw-dropping beauties in Vogue – girls on beaches, in fields, dressed in backless evening
gowns…
So, mother
thought he intended to photograph children?
Definition: Economy with the truth is popularly used as a euphemism for
deceit, whether by volunteering false information (i.e., lying) or by
deliberately holding back relevant facts. More literally, it describes a
careful use of facts so as not to reveal too much information, as in
"speaking carefully".
The
relevant fact that is deliberately held back in the book is that the magazine
was Vogue
Hommes. You’ll see Vogue
mentioned a lot of times in the book, and not a single time will it be made
known to you that it was Vogue Hommes.
There are two main reasons to this: first, if it were mentioned, the mother’s
suggestion that she wanted her daughter to pose
as a “child” (she claims she was afraid Samantha looked too old, remember?)
for a men’s magazine would seem dubious to say the least. Next, it would
prevent her from further playing total innocence.
This play
is elaborate and extremely interesting to analyze. Too bad it doesn’t hold
water when confronted with elementary facts.
The Vogue lies will resurface, and be developed, in the
crucial moment: the ballet around the topless photos.
The Gaileys’
description of this episode abounds in dramatic details (more abundant and more
dramatic from year to year), whose main problem is that they can’t be glued
together.
So, after
the fatal encounter at Nicholson’s (we talked about it here, and will talk further,
with the help of the new material, in the next chapter) Polanski, blissfully
unaware that he’s just “raped a child”, brings Samantha home.
I
flew into the house and into my room, but not before my mother got a good look
at me. My eyes were glazed and the pupils huge; my hair was damp.
We’ll
presently see that there could be no glazed eyes or huge pupils, but for the
time being let’s accept this part. She runs into the house and only has time
to whisper to mother that she told “him” she had asthma. Let it be so, too.
Polanski
shows Susan, Kim and Bob the photos of the previous session, and, according to
the Gaileys, all hell breaks loose, ending with
My
mother felt the blood rising into her neck, choking her, her lips stretched
thin.
“Get
him out of here,” Mom rasped.
Polanski
himself didn’t notice anything of the kind, other than that the attitude “wasn’t
as friendly as it had been”: according to him, they liked the photos, and even
smoked a joint together before he left. I am inclined to believe him because,
unlike Samantha’s stories, all his accounts are always precise, consistent,
never contradicting any known facts or documents, and altogether plausible; but
even if we disregard my personal impression, the question arises: wouldn’t a man
who is suddenly thrown out have stopped to ask what happened? Let’s give Mom
the benefit of the doubt: maybe she “rasped” it inaudibly, like she does in the
big show she puts on for Zenovich in Odd
Man Out.
But the
question remains: what was the cause of everybody’s indignation? It is described
like a Greek tragedy, with everyone pulling their hair out and uttering
incoherent condemnations.
The reason
was one topless photo.
And before
everyone turns their indignation on
me, let me remind you that Mom Gailey had been informed of the Jacuzzi shots.
Now, how
does that fit together? She was called
from Nicholson’s residence, and Polanski told
her they were going to make shots in the Jacuzzi. She didn’t ask any questions
– just like previously she (presumably! It’s all according to their words only
– and we know by now what their words are worth) had never ever asked her
daughter about the character of the photos they had taken on the hill.
How are
Geimer/Newman/Silver going to find a way out of this predicament?
Easy.
They do not
mention that Polanski told Susan about Jacuzzi. They just don’t. Economy with
the truth, as you may have noticed - and at its worst.
He
gets on the phone with my mother and tells her we’re at Jack Nicholson’s house
up in Mulholland Canyon, not very far. It’s already dark,
but he’ll bring me home soon. Having reassured her, they hang up.
And this omission
alone could be enough for us to know that they
are lying, and that they know why
they have to lie.
But Silver
is a lawyer, right? He knows that withholding crucial information may be
frowned upon: Susan testified to the Grand Jury that Polanski had consulted her
about the Jacuzzi shots. Thus, much later, and very inconspicuously, the
authors do mention this, but in the context where all dramatic emphasis is
placed elsewhere and no connection can be made with the other drama piece.
Or so they
think. Because this book, with all its discrepancies and blatant lies is meant
to be read by fools – fools they take you
for.
And, having
omitted one crucial fact, they hurry to seal this by re-omitting another:
At
that point they knew nothing other than that he had taken topless pictures of
me – but that, in itself, was enough of a reason for a freak-out. It wasn’t
just the toplessness alone, though there was that. It was the deception. The
betrayal of trust. In their minds Vogue meant two things: fashion and clothes.
Lots and lots of clothes. The sheer badness of the photos made them realize
something was wrong.
Remember
that they had seen the pictures in Vogue
Hommes, had known that it was Vogue Hommes – not just Vogue as the authors are trying to make
us believe. And Susan had known that Samantha was posing naked in a bath – and
had had at least a couple of hours to think about it.
All the
while, and some time after this, Samantha is presumably alone in her room, with
the only interruption from her mother when she (presumably) came in to inquire
about the topless pictures.
Wait, what?
Your daughter calls you from someone’s home and you learn from the man she’s
with that she is going to pose naked in a bath. She comes back “eyes glazed,
pupils huge”, whispers something incoherent and runs in; then you see her
topless photos… and you sit around, talking about dogs (see Susan’s and Kim's
testimonies – Samantha herself is deplorably brief about this part in her book)
with the man she was with? Not in the least interested to find out whether anything happened? And you never ask her
about anything till her boyfriend comes and her sister (presumably) overhears
their conversation?
There’s no
way to fit all of it together: the Vogue, the Jacuzzi, the huge pupils, the
overreaction about the photos and the lack of interest towards the
“glazed-eyed” daughter. No way except one: it just didn’t happen the way they
are saying it did.
The only
plausible picture is – but of course my readers can build it themselves? All
the lies used by the authors have only one explanation: a wish to lie oneself out of
the accusation of setup.
This blog is dedicated to the greatest man of our time, Roman Polanski, outstanding film director and equally outstanding, though much slandered, person. The deeper I go into the details of his life and work, the more I admire him, and the stronger my determination to do all I can to clear his name, and help him get back the respect and honors he truly deserves. Luckily, all the necessary documents, transcripts and other proofs are readily available nowadays, as my readers will soon be able to see. Not all of the blog will be about the unfortunate 1977 case: this would be unfair. I will post news, thoughts, and my reviews of his films. 
