Jerzy Kosinski - Friendships

Friendships

Kosiński was friends with Roman Polanski, with whom he attended the National Film School in Łódź, and said he narrowly missed being at Polanski and Sharon Tate's house on the night Tate was murdered by Charles Manson's followers in 1969, due to lost luggage. His novel Blind Date discussed the Manson murders.

Kosiński was also friends with Wojciech Frykowski and Abigail Folger. He introduced the couple.

Kosiński wrote his novel Pin Ball (1982) for his friend George Harrison, having conceived of the idea for the book at least ten years before writing it.

In 1984, Polanski denied Kosinski's story in his autobiography. Journalist John Taylor of New York Magazine believes Polanski was mistaken. "Although it was a single sentence in a 461-page book, reviewers focused on it. But the accusation was untrue: Jerzy and Kiki had been invited to stay with Tate the night of the Manson murders, and they missed being killed as well only because they stopped in New York en route from Paris because their luggage had been misdirected." The reason why Taylor believes this, is that "a friend of Kosinski's wrote a letter to the Times, which was published in the Book Review, describing the detailed plans he and Jerzy had made to meet that weekend at Polanski's house on Cielo Drive. Few people saw the letter." The NYM article does not contain the name of this friend, nor the particular issue of the Book Review in which this letter is supposed to have been published, nor names of the 'few' who may have read the letter.