Spike Lee and Katie Holmes join forces to get Roman Polanski some press

I guess you could say it's been a good week for Roman Polanski ... although, that would depend on what your definition of "good" is. I mean, his latest film, Oliver Twist, all but came and went without leaving as much as the slightest head imprint on the pillow of the larger culture. But, on the plus side, his name has been invoked over the course of two high-profile mini-controversies.

First, as we told you last night, someone in the Katie Holmes camp recently compared the starlet's pregnancy to the plot of Rosemary's Baby. Which makes perfect sense – because Tom Cruise is, of course, the devil, and he has plans – of course! – to wrench the baby from Katie's womb, whisk it off to the Celebrity Centre and offer it up as evidence of his commitment to Scientology (actually, that sounds more like the plot of Ghostbusters II, but whatever).

Now, Spike Lee is getting in on the act.


Yesterday we talked about his plans to make a documentary about race and politics in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; today, he talked to Reuters, and it seems he's substantially widened his frame of reference. First, he reiterated his belief that we shouldn't "put anything past the U.S. government when it comes to people of color ... there is too much history ... going back to when the U.S. army gave smallpox-infested blankets to Native Americans." So all things being equal, it's then apparently easy for anyone with a healthy sense of political skepticism to jump to the conclusion that New Orleans was flooded not by accident, but by conspiracy. And that's how Lee gets to a certain Polanski classic, about class, politics and, of course, water. "People could not believe, especially the residents of the Ninth Ward, that there wasn't hanky-panky in the flooding," Lee said. "And what I thought about automatically was Chinatown, the great film by Roman Polanski. The whole subplot of the whole thing is about water in Southern California and how it was not delivered to the people who needed it."

And there you have it – without lifting a finger, Roman Polanski manages to exponentially amp up his Google rating in a matter of hours. Why even bother making new films, if you can count on getting your name in the papers thanks to new tragedies that recall your old chestnuts?