Down. Roman Polanski
Hollywood has been plunged into confusion with the arrest in Switzerland this
week of the film director Roman Polanski. After 30 years of evading
prosecuters, he’s finally going to face charges of unlawful sex with a minor
— something that, even as CW writes it, continues to look pretty
definitively not-great. The victim’s contemporaneous allegations included
Polanski giving her quaaludes, asking her if she was on the Pill, and then
having anal sex with her, after she’d repeatedly asked to go home. I mean,
it’s not exactly Arthur Miller going to prison for refusing to incriminate
colleagues during the McCarthy hearings. There’s very little glory in this
one. It’s hard to style your way out of getting a kid high, then screwing
her.
Bewilderingly, however, Polanski’s arrest seems to have driven half of
Hollywood insane. Hollywood is freaking out. Signatories on a “free
Polanski” petition include Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Pedro
Almodóvar, and Woody Allen. Anyone who, on spotting Allen’s name, rolled
their eyes and said, “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” is far too cynical for
their own good, and probably sitting on a bar stool beside CW next Friday.
The former Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein made it clear to Switzerland just
who they’re dealing with: “I’m not too shy to go and talk to Arnold
Schwarzenegger, and ask him to look at this,” Weinstein said — as if, in a
fundamental misjudgment between “real” and “not real”, he’d decided to get
the Terminator to smash the prison walls with his fists and carry Polanski
out.
This niggling sense of Hollywood’s real/not real confusion continued with
Whoopi Goldberg’s frankly amazing contribution: “I don’t believe it was
rape-rape.” Goldberg’s blithe certainty is explicable only if you conclude
that, since playing a psychic in Ghost, she harbours residual beliefs
that she has “the sight”, and knows the difference between “rape” and
“rape-rape” by instinct. CW has read the celebrity statements and can only
observe that what they seem to be saying is: “Something unpleasant
definitely happened, but I really like Chinatown, so, erm, free
Roman!” CW has never seen Chinatown — so just thinks Polanski
is a prison-dodging pervert who’s got it coming.
Down. A hen
Sad news from the world of poultry: in upstate New York a farmer found that
his hen had laid a giant 138g egg — and expired as a result. As if it’s a
subject that haunts us day and night, CW cannot help but think of the
unusefully large egg — like the nature of Michael Jackson’s proposed
50-night run at the O2 arena, followed by his sad demise, and draw its own
comparisons.
Up. Ohio state legisalture
It’s not often that the world gets to sigh: “Oh man, that’s one hell of an
entertainingly written piece of state legislation.” Yet this week, the
marvel of Twitter drew attention to the Ohio General Assembly’s “Resolution
16,” in which it formally ratified the 1965 single Hang On Sloopy
as the Official Rock Song of Ohio: “WHEREAS: adoption of this resolution
will not take too long, or cost the state anything, and if we just go ahead
and pass the darn thing, we can get on with more important stuff, and:
WHEREAS Sloopy lives in a very bad part of town and everybody, yeah, tries to
put my Sloopy down; and:
WHEREAS Sloopy I don’t care what your daddy do, because you know, Sloopy girl,
I’m in love with you.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that we, the members of this 116th General Assembly,
name Hang On Sloopy as the official rock song of Ohio.”
Up. Joe Calzaghe
The tabloids have been alight this week with rumours that there may be a Strictly
Come Dancing romance! Joe Calzaghe, who was apparently a boxer — CW is
still none-the-wiser as to his existence, even as it writes “apparently a
boxer” — has allegedly been spotted leaving the house of his smouldering
dance partner Kristina Rihanoff in the early hours of the morning. Wooooo!
CW has to say that, frankly, it wouldn’t blame them if they were
having a bit of fun. This year’s Strictly is so long (two hours
a week!) and so boring that, were CW a contestant, it would probably embark
on an affair with Len Goodman, Bruce Forsyth and the Dave Arch Orchestra,
just for something to do.
Up. The Spanish Prime Minister’s daughters
Here’s the story: until last week, no one had ever seen the teenage daughters
of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Prime Minister of Spain. Now, however,
pictures of them at a diplomatic event attended by Barack Obama are all over
the internet. Usually captioned with phrases such as: “OMG. They’re GOTHS.
Spanish GOTHS. LOL!”
Zapatero has claimed that his daughters’ previous anonymity was simply to
protect them from media intrusion. As a former teenage Goth itself, however,
CW knows the real reason: that “normal” cameras simply fail to function in
the presence of the truly dark, and that only the CIA would have cameras
powerful enough to capture the majesty of the genuinely gifted and doomed.
Down. Martine McCutcheon
McCutcheon — who will for a generation always be Tiffany from EastEnders
— has now turned her hand to novel writing. And, indeed, for anyone who has
read the first chapter of her debut The Mistress, the chances are she
will remain Tiffany from EastEnders, but with the caveat “who
inexplicably went mad that time and tried to write the world’s worst
bonk-buster”.
So far, CW’s favourite line is: “The man looked up at Mandy. His eyes were
beautiful, and despite being tired, they sizzled, full of knowledge, some
sadness but, most of all, kindess.”
Now CW has a very good imagination. So good, in fact, you probably can’t
imagine how good it is. But when it tries to think of a single human face
managing to do all this work, it has a momentary black-out, and then
envisions the eyes of Nookie Bear.
Down. Jordan
Sometimes facts emerge that need no further analysis or comment. Instance: it
was reported this week that, as her marriage to Peter Andre deteriorated,
Jordan, the troubled topless feminist icon, tried to save their love with a
song. Ringing Andre’s answering machine, she launched into Whitney Houston’s
I Will Always Love You. With all the high notes and everything. Yeah. Or, as
the headline put it: “Jordan sings ballad down phone to Andre two weeks
before divorce.” CW observes a cause and effect. It can say no more than
this.
Up. The Go-Betweens
Brilliant but nugatory Australian alt-rock heroes, the Go-Betweens, have had
what will be without doubt their best week. For after a public poll, a new
bridge in Brisbane has been named the Go-Betweens Bridge in their honour.
They deserve it — after all, the frontman Robert Forster spent ten years
trying to dye his hair the same silver colour as Blake Carrington’s in Dynasty,
and once described their music as: “Like fresh rainwater, running down
aluminium strips.” Mankind needs to reward that kind of endeavour.
But it does mean that the band’s contemporaries need to get a wriggle on,
getting landmarks named after them. CW now looks forward to the Echo &
The Bunnymen gyratory system, Aztec Camera flyover and Prefab Sprout one-way
pedestrian priority zone (Mon-Fri only).
Down. Mischa Barton
Barton — one of the troubled, saucer-eyed ingénues with rehab clinic on
speed-dial that Hollywood seems to specialise in — has had a bad week. To
wit: she turned up at the wrong premiere. She was suppose to be at Tosca
at the Met in New York but pitched up at Michael Moore’s Capitalism:
A Love Story, instead. Turning up at the wrong premiere is a “celebrity
only” mishap. It just doesn’t happen to normal people. You can file it next
to “having your lesbian dog stolen by a coyote”, “suffering from sex
addiction”, and “thinking this song is about you”.
Down. The X Factor
In an event so extraordinary that even the ITV1 press office couldn’t make it
up in a slack week, the film crew accompanying six female contestants on The
X Factor were held at the airport in Dubai on suspicion of being spies.
Yes.
Spies. First Burgess, then Maclean, and now The X Factor crew. The
hopefuls were in Dubai for the show’s “Boot Camp” section with Dannii
Minogue — a sentence that makes Celebrity Watch descend into a fitful
melancholy.
Had the Dubai authorities talked to the contestants themselves, they would
have realised their error much earlier as all the girls would have said was:
“This is my dream, I’m 110 per cent committed. I want to go all the way,
just give me one more chance, please, Simon, please,” over and over again,
weeping.
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