Zenovich Did It

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In a 9.28 piece called "Why Arrest Roman Polanski Now? Revenge," Newser's Michael Wolff says that last weekend's Zurich airport bust was "about the LA prosecutor's office's public relations." But it really happened, he feels, because the office felt goaded by Marina Zenovich's 2008 documentary about Polanski, called Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.

"Prosecutors ignored Polanski for 30 years because it was a terrible case 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," Wolff explains. "But then, last year, a documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, came out detailing all this dubiousness. So the first motivation for going after Polanski now, as it so often is with prosecutors, is revenge -- Polanski and this film makes the DA look bad.

"The second is that the documentary reminded everybody that the LA prosecutor must be turning a blind eye to Polanski, wandering freely in Europe -- hence the arrest now is the prosecutor covering his ass.

"The third is -- and it's curiously the success of the documentary that made the LA prosecutor's office realize the brand name significance of the case -- press. The headlines now sweeping the world are the prosecutor's ultimate benefit. Many careers are suddenly advanced.

"It could tell us quite a lot about the real motivations and real interest in Roman Polanski in the LA prosecutor's office, about the sudden enthusiasm for Polanski's capture and the convenient timing of it, if we just got the date and time -- Polanski's lawyers can certainly get this information through discovery requests -- when they began to Google him, and when they set up the first alert.

"Among all media whores, there is none so greedy and mendacious as a prosecutor."