Midnight Express

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The book is a much more accurate and much more compelling story of the arrest, imprisonment and escape of Billy Hayes in Turkey and imprisoned for smuggling than the 1978 movie. Of course the book is in Hayes' own words and not the twisted fantasies of overzealous filmmakers so that is definitely a big plus. During his first night in holding, Billy has his hair cut short and is put into a filthy cell by a trustee, Rifki, (Paolo Bonacelli) whom refuses to give him a blanket for warmth because he's not selling any at the time, then sneaks out of his tiny cell and takes a blanket in storage. He is later rousted out of his cell by the trustee and taken to a large guard named Hamidou (Paul L. Smith), the chief of guards, who takes him to another filthy room, the basement, trusses Billy's ankles in the air and hits the soles of his feet repeatedly with his club for stealing the blanket. Billy's feet swell immensely and he is left in horrific pain. At another courtroom hearing, a distraught Billy rails against the three judges, the prosecutor, his own lawyer, the Turkish legal system, and the nation of Turkey itself. Speaking through a translator, with a mixture of anger and pity in his voice, the chief judge tells Billy that his hands are tied by Ankara and has no choice but to give him a life sentence. Billy is given a minimum sentence of 30 years, with time already served, for smuggling of hashish. Billy Hayes, author of the autobiographical book “ Midnight Express,” on which the film directed by Alan Parker and written by Oliver Stone was based, disagreed with several of the assertions made in Stone’s new book, “Chasing the Light.”

Hayes goes into details over what happened when and after he was arrested for attempting to smuggle 2 kilos of hashish out of the country, the people he met and befriended (or antagonized in a couple of cases) in prison, the adjustments he made in adapting to prison life, the endless boredom of just having to wait, wait, wait and rot while the courts decided his fate, the devastation he experienced when his original 4 year sentence for possession is extended to 30 years. Unlike the movie,in which he condemned the whole nation as 'pigs' Hayes actually tells the judges that he forgives them. As the family sat down for dinner, Kate voiced her concerns. Kate knew that the Midnight Express would pass through Moingona station (near her house) and it would not stop there. She knew that it would cross the bridge over Honey Creek bridge. But was the bridge safe enough?The film was first released on VHS and Betamax by Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment in 1979. It made its DVD debut in 1998. A 30th Anniversary DVD of the film was released in 2008, and a Blu-ray was released in 2009. The movie differs from Hayes' account in his book. Among the differences is a scene in which Hayes kills the prison guard Hamid "the bear," the main antagonist of the story. In fact, the prison guard was killed in 1973 by a recently released prisoner, whose family Hamid insulted while beating the prisoner, years before Hayes' actual escape. The quote 'Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?', in the American comedy film Airplane! (1980), is a reference to Midnight Express. [35] By now, the story is well known. In 1970, Hayes was arrested for attempting to smuggle two kilos of hashish out of the Turkey. As a result, he was sentenced to four years imprisonment that later turned into a thirty year sentence due to the heated Turkish political climate. During his stay, he meets several inmates with whom he holds very close friendships, and their passages read like tender exchanges with people the reader can care for. Billy is introduced to Max (John Hurt), is a bespectacled, introverted, unkempt, 30-something junkie uninterested in small talk that injects himself with "gastro" a stomach medicine with codeine. Max has been in prison the longest for drug dealing (seven years and counting), while Erich has already served four years and Jimmy around three. Billy and Erich are conversing with him to get a lawyer and Max is in a haze telling Billy about the Turkish justice system and that all Turkish lawyers are crooked and that he just needs to escape the best way he knows how, catching the "Midnight Express", a train that doesn't stop at the prison. He refers to him a lawyer named Yesil that got off a Frenchman for smuggling 200 kilos.

Aunque ya sepas como termina la historia (lo cuenta la sinopsis), la pregunta del ¿cómo? se mantiene durante todo el libro.INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM HAYES/CODEL MURPHY / 030925Z MAY 74, U.S. State Department, Ankara, May 1974. But both the book and the movie were very damaging to U.S.-Turkish relations. Americans, as with most people, are only too willing to blame foreigners for their problems. The drug problem was already headline material at the time; President Nixon had declared “war” on the drug trade. I really shudder at those words now. In 2016, Parker returned to Malta as a special guest during the second edition of the Valletta Film Festival to attend a screening of the film on 4 June at Fort St Elmo, where many of the prison scenes were filmed. [6] See also [ edit ] Roger Ebert gave Midnight Express three stars out of four in a review that concluded, "The movie creates spellbinding terror, all right; my only objection is that it's so eager to have us sympathize with Billy Hayes." [13] Gene Siskel gave the film two and a half stars out of four and called it "a powerful film, but we leave the theater thinking it should have been more so. It was for that reason that I was persuaded to read the book, which is where I found the story I had been expecting to see on the screen." He also thought that Brad Davis "is simply not up to the lead role. He appears unsure of himself and, like the film itself, he overacts." [14] Arthur D. Murphy of Variety wrote, "Acceptance of the film depends a lot on forgetting several things," namely that Hayes was smuggling drugs. Nevertheless, he thought Davis gave "a strong performance" and that "Alan Parker's direction and other credits are also admirable, once you swallow the specious and hypocritical story." [15] Charles Champlin, of the Los Angeles Times, was positive, writing that the film "has a kind of wailing, arid authenticity and enormous power. It is strong and uncompromising stuff, made bearable by its artistry and the saving awareness that Hayes, at least, slipped free and lived to tell the tale." [16] Gary Arnold, of The Washington Post, described the film as "outrageously sensationalistic" and "loaded with show-stopping fabrications," and wrote of the protagonist that "there's never a compelling reason for sympathizing with the callow boy he appears to be from start to finish." [17] Allegations of Turkophobia [ edit ]

Susan's prison visit was spoofed in the 1996 film The Cable Guy, where Jim Carrey opens his shirt, presses his naked breast against the glass, and cries, 'Oh, Billy!'In desperation, Billy accompanies Jimmy and Max to try to escape through the catacombs below the prison. They give up after running into endless dead-ends. A particularly sycophantic prisoner named Rifki, who routinely acts as an informant in exchange for favors, tips off the guards about the escape attempt. Hamidou suspects Jimmy of being responsible for what happened during the first escape attempt. Jimmy is taken away again for punishment and is never seen from then on. Billy's imprisonment becomes harsh and brutal: terrifying scenes of physical and mental torture follow one another, and Billy has a breakdown. He brutally beats Rifki, killing him. He is sent to the prison's ward for the insane, where he wanders about in a daze among the other disturbed prisoners. Max is also sent there too. He is seen running from guards for an unknown infraction and is grabbed by Hamidou and thrown across the place and is severely injured. Expreso de medianoche es quizá una de las narraciones autobiográficas más crudas con las que me he topado. Un joven norteamericano detenido en una cárcel turca por tráfico de drogas. Sometido a la brutalizad de un contexto que le resulta ajeno y, en primera instancia, inverosímil. Billy Hayes. Στους τίτλους τέλους παρατήρησα ότι πρόκειται για την αληθινή ιστορία του Hayes και η ταινία βασίστηκε στο αυτοβιογραφικό βιβλίο του το οποίο για κάποιο λόγο δεν είχα διαβάσει μέχρι σήμερα 25 περίπου χρονιά αφού είδα την ταινία.

A made-for-television documentary about the film, I'm Healthy, I'm Alive, and I'm Free (alternative title: The Making of Midnight Express), was released on January 1, 1977. It is seven minutes long, and features commentary from the cast and crew on how they worked together during production, and the effort it took from beginning to completion. It also includes footage from the creation of the film, and Hayes's emotional first visit to the prison set. [7] Differences from the book [ edit ]Hayes has a great deal of time to ponder that irony, during an imprisonment that supplies the bulk of the movie. His years in prison are stunningly well seen by the film's director, Alan Parker -- whose last film was the engagingly odd " Bugsy Malone," in which a cast of children played gangsters. Parker found an old British fortress on Malta to use as his prison, and he populates it with a freemasonry of the world's criminals. There's Randy Quaid, as the totally strungout American; John Hurt, as the pensive British prisoner, absorbed in his drug habit; and Norbert Weisser, as the Swedish kid who becomes Hayes' lover in the year's strangest romantic scene. I have read it; it is not bad, but Billy Hayes admitted that the book was slightly exaggerated and dramatized. In the book he alleged that when he was first apprehended, he was beaten. He did not allege other beatings. When the movie was made, it included not only brutal treatment — there is a particularly savage scene in the movie when the young American bites the lip of a Turkish prison official who was abusing him. I don’t think any of those incidents ever occurred.