Roman Polanski: “Jewish humor is the only thing that makes me laugh”

Roman Polanski: “Jewish humor is the only thing that makes me laugh”

At the age of 46, Roman Polanski sucks [illegible]. “For my amusement [illegible], but today all the pleasure is in this much more!”

That is why Polanski spent the last year and a half filming a romantic movie, “Tess of the d’Urbervilles,” based on the book by Thomas Hardy, a film being released on European screens these days.

And yet violence occupied him in many of his films and also always haunted him, like the murder of his wife Sharon Tate (to whose memory his new film is dedicated) by the Manson gang, as well as the case of having sex with a minor, for which he spent three months in prison and fled to France before he was convicted at his trial.

“I’m not ashamed that I feel attracted to young women,” Polanski says, “but if everyone who does that were tried, they would have to put a very large part of the American population on trial today.”

Polanski, who began his brilliant career in Poland and returned with it to France, told me when we met about the brief visit of the former [illegible]: “In Poland in the 1950s there was some belief in the future and in a better world. Today even that has disappeared. There are no more ideologies, only rebelliousness for the right to live somehow and demonstrate ceaselessly, and above all just my romanticism.”

Polanski was born in Paris to a Russian mother and a Jewish father, but his parents returned to Poland on the eve of the war. He survived the ghetto and has been struggling ever since not to return to it. He certainly tried to emphasize his Jewish origins. “I didn’t grow up within Jewish folklore,” he says, but admits: “Jewish humor is the only thing that makes me laugh.”

Hollywood, too, [illegible]. “I need a city with culture—not one where you drive in a car to buy chips. In New York there are sidewalks, but after a week of snow you start to feel depressed and oppressed by its violence.” He prefers Paris, but will return to America only to appear in court again and put an end once and for all to the case involving the minor. In the meantime, he changed the judge, and Polanski got off with a light sentence—apparently.

Petro-football

We are no prophets, [illegible] with the oil princes, but to get to know a football player you obviously need [illegible].

World-famous football players are playing today in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Abu Dhabi. The most famous among them is former Brazilian national-team star Rivelino—whose price, according to the rate card, is $100,000 per game. One day his leg was broken there, and he fled to his wife and children, but the oil princes did not want to give up the services of their golden ball. He was offered a contract [illegible]; a special jet was at his disposal at all times, and he flew “home.” His wife and children [illegible] with strangers only, also to the network [illegible] the Brazilian star to keep suffering—and earning.

The reader has surely never heard of the football team “Nadi al-Zain.” But it is the richest team in the world, because its players are billionaires. “Nadi” is the champion of Abu Dhabi in the Persian Gulf. Its players enjoy every possible refinement, except for the traditional communal shower in the locker rooms. Islam forbids public nudity.

The bill was paid

During a visit the company made to Paris last year, [illegible] the Batsheva company with the help of organizations that raised [illegible]. On their current tour in Paris, the company members met their former benefactor, Pinhas Pisal, one of the acquaintances of the France-Israel Cultural Foundation, established these days. Batsheva performed with great success in the Foundation’s hall at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. It won praise from the critics, as well as support from the Foundation—in money and in spirit.

The hotel bill was paid in cash.

Good to be alive

What is it about the French and the Russians that they should be without animosity!

According to a poll conducted by Paris Match, it emerged that 57 percent would choose life in the event of a foreign invasion of France, and 43 percent would be ready to sacrifice their lives.

The poll was conducted, of course, in peacetime.

Romanticism lost

Fill in Paris’s hole! That is the slogan of the residents of the Les Halles district, and it is hard not to admit that they are right. We once loved the picturesque old wholesale market, “Les Halles,” which was Paris’s belly. Today they have built a modern commercial center there, truly beautiful, with endless fragments—its architectural name—where [illegible] can gaze at many dazzling lights and colors.

But the history of Paris gave it dimensions even more interesting than those of the new building. After they turned the “belly” into a pit, it emerged that the area had served as a large cemetery from the 12th century until the French Revolution. Strange finds, and above all skulls, began to emerge from the depths. Before long, an authentic skull from the pit had become an essential souvenir in the salon of every important person in the city. At night, thieves descended into the pit in the darkness and then stole skulls, fetching up to 100 francs for a complete one. A genuine archaeological expedition also descended into the pit and brought up intriguing finds, including several statuettes.

In winter the pit filled with rainwater and with water from the nearby Seine. A well-known Parisian painter proposed turning the place into a magnificent inland harbor by connecting it to the Seine.

Those were beautiful days of romanticism, of belief in a more beautiful, more crazy future. Now they have filled in Paris’s hole for a few hundred boutiques for snobs and tourists.

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New hit: Disco-circus

His name is Fabrice Emaer, and he is both the king of Paris disco and perhaps soon of the whole world.

Emaer transformed the old Palace theater hall on rue de Montmartre into a one-of-a-kind disco palace in Europe, shortly before John Travolta’s “music fever” swept the screens. Until then, Emaer had run Le Pâti, the gay club that became a Paris hit. Fabrice himself is gay and contributed considerably to the clear takeover of Paris nightlife by “gay fashion.”

Since then, many of Paris’s old, classic dance clubs have surrendered to disco. But the Palace was and remains a theater where everything there is to show in disco is put on display, with the lower floor devoted to “roller disco”—that is, disco on skates.

Emaer says he tried to revive here the concept of the Roman “revel,” and for that, as is well known, you need both “the nobility” and “the people,” unlike the snobbish discotheques of New York, and as is also customary in Parisian snobbery.

A branch of the Palace will soon open in Hollywood too, and the most brilliant idea, from Fabrice, the god of disco, is a traveling disco-circus in a huge tent, where Emaer will demonstrate his prowess with lighting and laser tricks.

What joy for the elephants and monkeys...