I’m officially labeled persona non grata. I was an escaped convict/drug smuggler who’d had an Interpol warrant issued by Turkey for his arrest, and now that I want to return to Turkey they don’t want me back. Our attempts to obtain a visa for me were repeatedly rejected. But “fuck their sons and daughters” is what the world has heard for the last 40 years since the film was released. Because the film was skewed so heavily against the Turks, I became a hated man in Turkey, mostly for the infamous courtroom speech where my character, being sentenced to life in prison, shouts Oliver Stone’s angry words, cursing out the nation of Turkey and vowing to “fuck all their sons and daughters.” What I actually said in the courtroom to the judge holding my life in his hands was that I couldn’t agree with them, all I could do was forgive them.
I wanted to return to set the record straight about the differences between my real story and the movie Midnight Express. We soon discovered that getting back into Turkey was going to be as hard as getting out.
It sounded bizarre enough for me, and I told her she could talk to anyone about anything and I didn’t want to see any footage until she was finished.
Knowing the enormous impact Midnight Express had on the culture, she suggested we make a doc about Billy Hayes returning to Turkey, using that vehicle to tell a larger story about the power of film and how Midnight Express adversely affected a country-Turkey-and its people. When Sally Sussman, (director/writer/producer), and her husband and old friend, Anthony Morina (producer), heard me mention how I’d always wanted to return to Istanbul, magical city of my youthful adventures and misadventures where I’d been sentenced to life in prison for smuggling hashish, it rang a bell in Sally’s storyteller mind. Our road extended over 10 years with curves and potholes, grief and joy. Documentaries are snarling little beasts of art, birthed in passionate fits and sustained by brass and vision as the years wear on and the filmmakers find themselves traveling a long, winding road.
0 kommentar(er)
