‘Midnight Express’: the brutal “over-dramatised” movie that Oliver Stone truly regrets
Not only is Oliver Stone one of the most well-respected film directors in Hollywood history, having taken the reigns on projects such as Platoon, The Doors, Natural Born Killers and JFK, but he is also responsible for writing some of his most critically-admired cinematic works, including each of those aforementioned movies.
Yet one of the best-loved films that Stone is attached to is 1978’s Midnight Express. Stone wrote the movie, adapting it from Billy Hayes’ memoir of the same name, but left the directing duties to Alan Parker. The film focuses on Hayes, a young student from the United States, who is sent to a Turkish prison when he attempts to smuggle hash out of the country.
Brad Davis played the lead role of Hayes, while the likes of Irene Miracle, John Hurt, Bo Hopkins and Randy Quaid also made appearances. The film was critically admired upon its release and received nominations for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ at the Academy Awards, while Stone himself won ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’. However, in 2004, Stone made an apology to the people of Turkey because the film offended many people in the country over the way it depicted the conditions of Turkish prisons. The film was criticised by many figures in Turkey in the decades after its release because they claimed the purported brutality was not accurate and left a sour taste in the mouths of its citizens for many years.
In 2004, Stone visited Turkey for the first time since the film was released back in 1978 and made an admission of “over-dramatising” the screenplay and perhaps going too far on the brutal conditions of its prison setting. He told Turkish reporters in Istanbul (via The Guardian): “It’s true I over-dramatised the script. But the reality of Turkish prisons at the time was also referred to by various human rights associations”. Stone then went on to explain that he had been sceptical about visiting Turkey for many years: “For years, I heard that Turkish people were angry with me, and I didn’t feel safe there,” he added.
Turkish Harvard graduate, Banu Revan, discussed Midnight Express, describing it as “was an awful movie and very humiliating, especially if you were a Turk living abroad”. Detailing further, he added: “Whenever you said you were from Turkey, Americans would automatically say, ‘Oh yes, I’ve seen Midnight Express. Isn’t that the place where they cut the hands off people who are caught stealing?’ as if we lived in Saudi Arabia! It was ridiculous.”
The Turkish minister of culture and tourism at the time, Erkan Mumcu, would later acknowledge Stone’s apology but, in the same breath, admitted that it would never be able to fully heal the wounds and cultural damage the film caused. “Mr Stone’s expression of regret doesn’t heal the wounds our nation [has suffered], but it’s still important,” he said. “There was a time when, worldwide, many artists and intellectuals heavily criticised Turkey, which resulted in our country having a bad image.”
Revisit the controversial movie, below.
