The Ghost Writer

Friday night. Watching Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer.  I didn't realize it was his movie, and then the music, the mood, it was all so Hitchcockian, so I looked it up.  In reality, this movie very much hearkens back to The Tenant, Polanski's 1976 classic, in which Polanski moves into the Paris flat of a woman who killed herself by jumping out the window and then thinks everybody's conspiring to turn him into her so he'll kill himself too.  "They'll never turn me into Simone Chueil!", she said. We'll see how this one turns out.

Sunday morning... Finished the movie.  It's as good a thriller as has been produced in some time, possibly since the Usual Suspects.  Went in directions other than expected.  Left me sitting on the couch thinking back, tallying up.

It is a shame Polanski's career got sidetracked by his pedophilia.  A great great director.  So many of the great ones in all domains get sidetracked by their dicks, as if they think the laws of nature don't apply to them.  Polanski, Woody Allen, Tiger Woods, Chaplin, Slick Willie, JFK, MLKJ, etc.

Don't be surprised if it happens to Michael Lewis.  That book he wrote on fatherhood was just dialled in from a lounge chair somewhere on St. Barts.  He has too great a range and facility of intellect and pen to acknowledge limits.