A town called sue (part 1)

How English courts intimidate the world

A few days ago, I sent out a Lowdown podcast discussion on David Hooper’s new book on legal intimidation in the London courts. I have campaigned against it throughout my career. In 2013 I wrote my own book on censorship which I wittily entitled (even if I do say so myself) You Can’t Read This Book I included a whole chapter on the menace the English law posed. I used every trick I knew to convince readers that it needed reform. I began by asking what I thought was a good question: How on earth could Roman Polanski sue for libel when he was on the run for sexually abusing a minor?

(There’s a lot of material here. I will run it in three parts for paid subscribers. Don’t panic! There’s a free trial. And subscribing costs a mere £1.15 a week)

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TOM CRUISE: You made me look stupid! I’m gonna sue you too!

STAN: Well fine! Go ahead and sue me!

TOM CRUISE: I will! I’ll sue you … in England!

SOUTH PARK, ‘TRAPPED IN THE CLOSET’ (2005)

The threat of sexual violence hangs over Chinatown, the last film Roman Polanski was to make in Hollywood. Jack Nicholson plays Jake Gittes, a private detective who thinks he has seen it all.

In the best noir tradition, a beautiful and mysterious woman comes to his office. Evelyn Mulwray says she wants to hire him to follow her husband, an official with the local water company. She suspects he is having an affair, and Gittes thinks he has a simple case.

He realises that he does not when the real Evelyn Mulwray appears and tells him that the first woman was an impostor engaged by her husband’s enemies – rich men, led by the monstrous Noah Cross, who are creating a desert in the mountain valleys east of LA by diverting the water supply. They intend to buy out the parched farmers cheaply, then turn on the sluices and enjoy possession of valuable real estate. They sent a fake Evelyn to the detective’s office because they need to find and silence Mulwray, who knows too much about their plot.

Greed is not the only sin on display. Noah Cross is Evelyn Mulwray’s father. She tells Gittes he raped her when she was fifteen, and left her pregnant. He now wants to find his daughter/granddaughter, and rape her too. In the dismal finale, despairing even by the standards of the post-Vietnam ‘new Hollywood’ of 1974, Gittes fails to expose the criminals or to save Evelyn’s daughter. Cross seizes the child with the assistance of police officers, who shoot Evelyn Mulwray dead, and tell the powerless Gittes to forget what he has seen. The film ends with a string of quotes that anticipate Polanski’s later career, and the careers of men richer and nastier than Polanski.

‘I don’t blame myself,’ Cross tells Gittes, as he admits to incest. ‘You see, Mr Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they’re capable of anything.’

Gittes plays with that thought. ‘He’s rich!’ he says, as he begins to make sense of the corruption he is witnessing. ‘Do you understand? He thinks he can get away with anything.’

Sex and money were pertinent themes in Polanski’s life. Dandyish and talented, he enjoyed the Swinging Sixties.