The curious path of the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired took another bizarre turn this week when HBO hosted an actual red-carpet "premiere" for the film in New York — the same city where it had attempted to secretly screen the doc for a week-long Oscar-qualifying run last month. Then, as Vulture noted today, things got even weirder when Polanski's 1977 statutory rape victim, the then-13 Samantha Geimer, showed up as one of the guests:

Geimer had flown in from Hawaii, "a beautiful spot where no one is aware or even cares"; she's now happily married with three children and working as a "personal assistant, accountant, and bookkeeper" for a real-estate developer. Both her husband and her mother, who had taken her to the party where the incident took place, had gotten gussied up with her for the premiere. ...

She approves of the movie — "I didn't think somebody could make it that interesting" — and hopes it will quell some of the curiosity about what happened that night. "I'm glad [director Marina Zenovich] put the truth of the way it happened out there, because I don't want to have to tell people," she says. "It's nice that she went ahead and did it, so people can know the truth and I can just go, 'It's a great movie!'"

Well, then, fantastic. We don't know how or even if ThinkFilm, the distributor who will (re?)release the film theatrically in July, plans to outdo Geimer's appearance later this summer, though a cleverly disguised Polanski himself — smuggled into the States via suitcase, natch — would be just the kind of coup to launch this film into the March of the Penguins-esque notoriety that would position everybody right where they want them come Oscar time. Or, considering how one popular Web site even has Geimer and Polanski listed as an item after all these years, just overturn the conviction and let felony bygones be bygones. Clearly it's time.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• The Surprise Guest at the Roman Polanski Documentary Premiere [Vulture]

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