There are a number of ideas in this world that never should be introduced to each other; "Christian" and "rock" are one example. "Movie" and "wholesome" are certainly another. And really, one thing we always have been able to count on is the boundless depravity of Hollywood. For this, I used to be grateful.
Obviously, those of us with even a tenuous grasp of decency or respect for the rule of law understand that filmmaker Roman Polanski -- who, need we be reminded, loaded up a 13-year-old with alcohol and quaaludes before raping her -- should find himself putrefying in prison. Even actors must believe this, right? No?
The subsequent skirmish over Polanski's arrest -- not exactly a momentous international incident -- isn't between right and left or blue state and red or secularist and social conservative. It's a gaggle of actors and directors against everyone with a moral IQ higher than Woody Allen's.
Harvey Weinstein, the noted co-executive producer of "Pulp Fiction," has been one of Polanski's staunchest defenders. He claimed that the Polish director already had served his time (directing movies in Europe) and that we should trust his take on the situation because "Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion."
Imagine, if you can, the impenetrability of this man's ironclad bubble. Weinstein's success is predicated on dispensing tales from the darkest, most twisted corners of the imagination. Don't get me wrong; for this, I am also grateful. Some of Weinstein's ethically magisterial works, for instance, have included "Things To Do in Denver When You're Dead" (tag line: "They can die quickly. They can die slowly. But they must die!") and "Death Proof" (plot: "Two separate sets of voluptuous women are stalked at different times by a scarred stuntman who uses his 'death proof' cars to execute his murderous plans"). Now, I ask you, if Weinstein possessed even a scintilla of decency, would he have subjected this nation to "The Nanny Diaries"?
When Weinstein circulated a pro-Polanski petition after the director was apprehended in Switzerland, Allen -- a man who, somewhat prophetically, carried on an affair with a teenager in his film "Manhattan," one of my all-time favorites -- immediately signed up. As did Martin Scorsese, a true giant of cinema, whose depiction of psychotics, mobsters, teenager prostitutes, drugs, mayhem and crass violence can only be called genius. But moral? Compassionate? Not exactly.
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