Mr. Polanski belongs to a long line of liars, adulterers, sadists and slaves, wife beaters, rapists, miscellaneous miscreants and even murderers who helped make Hollywood great. Charlie Chaplin liked young girls so much that three of his four wives were teenagers when they wed. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer may have had more stars than there are in heaven, as it proudly crowed, but in the 1930s it also had an opium den on the lot and Christmastime orgies. Walt Disney, as I said, played Hollywood host to Hitler’s favorite filmmaker. In 1952 Elia Kazan gave up old colleagues to the House Committee on Un-American Activities and then went off to direct a handful of movies about betrayal, including one about selling out your nearest and dearest: “On the Waterfront.” It’s a classic.
—NYTimes Dargis also uses the phrase “culture klatsch” in this article, which i thought was awesome.
