.\u00a0 <\/em>Sussman expands on this and creates a new documentary film that serves to set the record straight and mend the horrific Turkish image of mistreatment portrayed in Stone’s film.
\n<\/span><\/p>\nBut, as it turns out, Hayes was not the fair curly-haired innocent he claimed to be.\u00a0 According to his personal account in the theater, this was in fact his fourth drug smuggling attempt.\u00a0 Airport security procedures changed dramatically after Palestinian extremists blew up four hijacked airliners, and security officers started checking passengers for hidden explosives.<\/p>\n
And there was Hayes, standing in line, with four pounds of hashish taped to his body.\u00a0 He tried and convicted and sentenced to four years and three months in prison, but later his sentence was changed to life.<\/p>\n
At his conviction, he addressed the judge saying, \u201cAll I can do is forgive you,” but in the movie, he calls them “a nation of pigs” and says, “I fuck your sons and daughters.\u201d And not once in the movie was any good thing portrayed about any Turkish citizen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the reason why people hated Turkey after this,” Billy says.<\/p>\n
His dramatic escape was nothing like the movie.\u00a0 In fact, it was more daring, and required much more planning and physical strength.\u00a0 In prison, he spent his time doing yoga and was in top physical health. When the opportunity presented itself, he stole a row-boat from a fishing boat waiting out a storm and rowed twenty miles to freedom.<\/p>\n
The documentary film did set the record straight and exonerated the Turks treatment of him.\u00a0 It changed Billy Hayes from the most despised person in Turkey to one that was actually invited back as an honored guest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reviewed by Wayne Derossett.\u00a0 Viewed at the 2016 Santa Barbara Film Festival, Friday, Feb. 12 at 8:20 PM, in the Metro 2\u00a0 theater. In attendance at the theater during the screening of this film were Sally Sussman-Morina, the director of Midnight Return, and Billy Hayes, the original subject of both the book Midnight Express (Dutton, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81291,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,272],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-santa-barbara-film-festival-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/81291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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