Midnight Express

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{{Infobox Film | name = Midnight Express | image = Midnight_express.jpg | caption = A film poster for Midnight Express. | director = Alan Parker | producer = Alan Marshall
David Puttnam | writer = Billy Hayes (book)
William Hoffer (book)
Oliver Stone | starring = Brad Davis
Randy Quaid
John Hurt
Irene Miracle | music = Giorgio Moroder | cinematography = Michael Seresin | editing = Gerry Hambling | distributor = Columbia Pictures | released = October 6, 1978 (USA) | runtime = 121 min. | language = English
Turkish | imdb_id = 0077928 | budget = $2,300,000 | preceded_by = | followed_by = }}

Midnight Express is a 1978 fictionalized biographical film, based on the story of Billy Hayes, a young American sent to a Turkish prison for trying to smuggle hashish out of Turkey to the US. It stars Brad Davis, Irene Miracle, Bo Hopkins, Paolo Bonacelli, Paul L. Smith, Randy Quaid, Norbert Weisser and John Hurt. The screenplay was adapted by Oliver Stone from the book by Billy Hayes and William Hoffer. Alan Parker directed and David Puttnam produced.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

1 Synopsis
2 Differences between the book and the film
- 2.1 Screenwriter's apology
3 Filming location
4 Awards
5 External links

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Synopsis

On October 6, 1970, after a stay in Istanbul, an American citizen, named Billy Hayes, is arrested by the wary Turkish police as he is about to leave the country by plane with his girlfriend, after being found with several packets of hashish, about two kilograms total, taped to his body. He's sentenced to an "exemplary" four years and two months imprisonment. In the remand centre, he meets and befriends other western prisoners and quickly prepares an escape plan, which fails. But in 1974, his sentence turns into a 30-year life term imposed by the Turkish High Court in Ankara. His stay becomes a living hell: terrifying and unbearable scenes of rape and physical and mental torture follow one another, where bribery, violence and insanity rule the prison. Monstrous wardens cruelly force the prisoners to undergo the worst brutalities. Some work for the prison administration as "informers". In a fit of madness, Billy Hayes kills one of the prison informants who has denounced his escape plan. In 1975, after being committed to the prison's insane asylum, Billy again tries to escape, this time by attempting to bribe the warden-in-chief. He ends up killing the warden, as the latter wanted to rape him, and Billy puts on an officer's uniform and manages his escape by walking out the front door.

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Differences between the book and the film

There are important differences between the cinematographic and the literary versions of Midnight Express. Major liberties were taken with the real events, which, while defensible from the point of view of dramatic cinema, have upset Turkish viewers. Here are some obvious liberties taken with regard to the book:

The hero's only fault in the movie is the occasional use of hashish. In the book, Hayes admits that he has been a frequent user of drugs and that his addiction became more severe during his imprisonment. He also admits that he illegally carried hashish through Europe on several occasions (Billy Hayes, Midnight-Express, Presse de la Cité, coll. Pocket, 1987, p. 11).

Another fiction is the scenes of rape. Billy Hayes never claimed to be raped by his Turkish warders or that he ever suffered any sexual violence. On the other hand, he had a consensual homosexual relationships with three western prisoners, which is not revealed in the movie.

In the movie Billy Hayes is in Turkey with his girlfriend, whereas he was alone in the original story. Nevertheless, in the movie, the love story is a main dramatic driving force.

In the movie insults are aimed at Turks as a people that do not occur in the book and which the screen writer Oliver Stone later apologized for. They reach a paroxysm when the Hayes character, learning of his life sentence, pronounces violent abuse on the country, profoundly shocking many Turks.

The endings of the cinematographic and literary versions of Midnight Express differ from one another. While in the narrative, the hero is moved to another prison from which he escaped by sea, in the movie this passage has been replaced by a violence scene in which he murders the warder in chief.

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Screenwriter's apology

When he visited Turkey in 2004, screenwriter Oliver Stone, who won an Academy Award for his adaptation, apologized to Turkey for the film. He admitted that he did not do any research about the so called "true story" of Billy Hayes before he wrote the script.

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Filming location

Although the film is set largely in Turkey, most of the location work was done in Malta, using local actors along with some Greeks and Armenians playing Turks.

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