LOS ANGELES (AP) – A judge on Tuesday denied Roman Polanski’s request to restore his membership in the organization that bestows the Academy Awards two years after he was expelled from it for raping a minor.
The fugitive director filed an action in April 2019, asking the court to require the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to reinstate him as a member of law.
A year earlier, the academy had taken the infrequent resolution of expelling Polanski and Bill Cosby, months after finishing the job of disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein.
Polanski appealed and in January 2019 the academy downplayed his appeal.
FILE – In this May 2, 2018, file photo, director Roman Polanski appears at an international film festival, where he promoted his latest film, “Based on a True Story,” in Krakow, Poland. A judge on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2020, denied Polanski’s request to restore his membership into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization that bestows the Academy Awards two years after he was expelled from it for raping a minor. The fugitive film director sued in April 2019, asking the court to compel the organization to make him a member in good standing again. (AP Photo/File)
Los Angeles Superior Court judge Mary Strobel ruled Tuesday that the academy had the right to expel Polanski, gave him a fair hearing, and gave him sufficient knowledge of his expulsion. He followed an interim resolution he had issued on the previous Tuesday as his final order.
Harland Braun, Polanski’s lawyer, the 87-year-old director, had no purpose in Strobel’s attractive decision.
“Roman’s club at the academy is virtually negligible and we wouldn’t waste the legal prices of a purposeless appeal,” Braun said in an email to The Associated Press on Tuesday. “Roman is one of the greatest stewards in film history. His art will be long after the academy is a forgotten relic.”
An email seeking comments from academy officials was not answered without delay. In 2019, the academy said in a statement that “the procedures followed to expel Mr. Polanski were fair and reasonable.”
Polanski, who won the Oscar for Best Director for “The Pianist” in 2003, remains fugitive after pleading guilty to being illegal with a minor in 1977 and fleeing the United States the following year. Since then he has lived in Europe.
He had been a member of the academy for nearly 50 years at the time of his expulsion and his films had been nominated for 28 Academy Awards.
But for a long time he had been one of the top questionable members of the organization. At the 2003 ceremony, Polanski’s victory, the first, earned a standing ovation of status. He’s not there. He had already been nominated for writing his adaptation of “Rosemary’s Baby” and directing “Chinatown” and “Tess”.
Polanski’s ouster from the group means he can no longer vote for nominees and winners, but he and his films can still win Oscars.
After expelling Weinstein, the academy implemented revised standards of conduct for its over 8,400 members. The standards said the organization is no place for “people who abuse their status, power or influence in a manner that violates standards of decency.”
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