Watching Munich again the other night (don't worry, this is not another Spielberg post) I was reminded of something that occurred to me when I first saw it in the theatre. The French actor playing Louis (Mathieu Amalric) is a dead ringer for Roman Polanski! I remarked to myself that if someone were to ever make a film about the young director, he'd be the perfect actor to play him.
Naturally it would be absurd to make a film about someone's life just so that a particular actor could play the part (Beyond the Sea, anyone?), and in doing a little bit of research I discovered that Polanski has already been played by four different actors: Marek Probosz in 2004's TV movie Helter Skelter, Bruce McCarty in the 1995 TV movie Love and Betrayal: the Mia Farrow Story, Dane Cook(!) in the 2003 TV movie Windy City Heat and last, but certainly not least, by Polanski himself in 1994's Gross Fatigue.
Significant historical figures (Gandhi, Luther, Lincoln, etc) seem to be the more reliable subjects for a biopic and whenever one does happen to be made about somebody in the movie industry it's rarely a director. Still, the more I thought about it the more it seemed to me that a film about Roman Polanski could actually be very interesting. I have to be careful how I say this but (without intending any disrespect toward the terrible things that have been perpetrated to him, not to mention by him) I think his life story would be cinematic as hell! Between his surviving the Holocaust, the terrible murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate by the Manson gang and the huge scandal involving his statutory rape of the 13-year-old Samantha Geimer and his subsequent flight from the United States, I'd say there's enough drama in Polanski's life for three movies. A film about him would certainly not be a "pretty" one, but it could be a very powerful one. Maybe someone will take up that task at some point. Perhaps Polanski could even make it himself (though shooting on location in Los Angeles might prove difficult).
Either way, I know the perfect actor to use!
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