Entertainment

HBO ALTERS POLANSKI ENDING

HBO yesterday decided it both wanted and desired a new ending for their documentary, “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” after learning from LA court officials that the last scene in the documentary was false.

The film – which details the horrors and highlights of the controversial director’s life including his imprisonment and subsequent flight to France to escape charges of engaging in sex with a 13-year-old girl – ends with the statement that an unnamed judge in LA Superior Court agreed 20 years later that the director-in-exile could return without being arrested, but only if the proceedings were televised.

According to an LA Superior Court statement, “No such condition was ever suggested or proposed . . . either in 1997 or at any other time.”

The network yesterday hastily re-edited the documentary to change the final screen.

An HBO spokeswoman said yesterday that the statement was based on conversations in the judge’s chambers. “The judge insisted that the hearing be held ‘in public, on the record and in open court.’ Given the possibility that it would [mean it could] be televised, Polanski declined.”