TV and Movies

[catlover]

What a movie this was...............

Watched the sequel and saw the real Billy Hayes as well.

Don't do anything wrong while in a foreign country-their jails are much harsher than ours. They tortured him.

Also...the movie was different than some of the real life events-such as the ending and how he escaped. I wonder why they do this?

[SeaMaiden]

@catlover  The first time I saw  The movie years ago...it was so shocking I never forgot it to this day......

[Love my grandkids]

Never saw the movie, but I read the book. In some countries you can be jailed for spitting on the sidewalk.

[Goldengate8361]

@catlover

If you liked that movie (and I did, too!), you should watch “Locked Up Abroad.” It’s on National Geographic channel (owned ny TLC, I think). Really good!!

[proudlyfromNJ]

I lived in Turkey when this happened. A very scary thing. Husband was in the Army at the time and we were near Istanbul. Never ever do anything like that off base. 

[sunshine45]

there is a sequel?

i have read the book and seen the movie and they both are quite haunting. highly recommend both of them.

[Bridgegal]

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@sunshine45 wrote:

there is a sequel?

i have read the book and seen the movie and they both are quite haunting. highly recommend both of them.

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      I agree.  Haunting is the perfect word.   I read the book first and then saw the movie.  I've seen it several times and it is excellent.   

[Mz iMac]

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@Goldengate8361 wrote:

@catlover

If you liked that movie (and I did, too!), you should watch “Locked Up Abroad.” It’s on National Geographic channel (owned ny TLC, I think). Really good!!

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One of the things that Locked Up Abroad taught me was that US Embassies are a joke if you get in trouble w/the law in a foriegn country.  They will not help you!!!

If the criminals (innocent & guilty) are not rich, their families have to beg, borrow & steal to "bribe" the officials so that their "wayward" adult child can at least survive another day in those forign prisons.

Recently LUA did a 2 hour special of the real person, Billy Hayes.  Billy himself MCed the show.  He explained in detailed how the book & movie was different from the LUA show because of "legalities" between Turkey & the US.  At the time of the LUA story, those "legalities" had expired. 

For the whole 2 hours I was on the edge of my seat looking like....

[mousiegirl]

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@SeaMaiden wrote:

@catlover  The first time I saw  The movie years ago...it was so shocking I never forgot it to this day......

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@SeaMaiden  I was mesmerized the first time I saw it.  I came across it recently on tv, and watched it for a bit.

[I like celery]

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@catlover wrote:

What a movie this was...............

Watched the sequel and saw the real Billy Hayes as well.

Don't do anything wrong while in a foreign country-their jails are much harsher than ours. They tortured him.

Also...the movie was different than some of the real life events-such as the ending and how he escaped. I wonder why they do this?

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The following is what I read from The Oklahoman newspaper (Billy's wife and inlaws were from Oklahoma), regarding how his escape was portrayed in the movie:

"And in fact, Hayes never escaped from the infamous Sagmalcilar prison, but was eventually transferred to an island prison, where he ultimately escaped by sea in a rowboat in the middle of a storm.

"The escape (in the film) is so totally different than my real escape," he said. "It was almost like an afterthought in the film."

In the film, Hayes (Davis) is shown donning a guard's uniform and simply walking out through the gates. Hayes says there was much more to it than that, involving a lot of running and hiding through Turkey, dying his hair different colors, and swimming a river into Greece.

"I had an escape that was made for Hollywood, and they didn't use it in the film," he said.

When Hayes asked Alan Parker about it, he said the director responded, "'What 45 minutes of this film do you want to cut out to put in your escape?'

"Now that I've become a filmmaker and understand the logistics of Hollywood, shooting on the water is so expensive," Hayes said. "Shooting at night in a storm on the water is so expensive. Running through Turkey and all that was involved with my real escape would have jacked the budget of the film up quite a bit."

He, also, explained a few other differences:

"For example, he never bit the tongue out of the mouth of a trusty/informant, as was depicted in one of the film's most horrific scenes, although Hayes admits he did attack and try to kill the man.

Further, the accidental killing of a sadistic guard who was preparing to rape him never happened. There was such a guard, an exception to the rule as the guards went, but he was gunned down in an Istanbul cafe by a former prisoner long before Hayes' escape."

Hayes had the following to say about Turkey:

"I mean when you look at 'Midnight Express' the film, you don't see any good Turks at all," Hayes said in a recent interview at The Oklahoman. "It creates this overall impression that Turkey is this horrific place. Well, that's not fair to Turkey. I love Istanbul. I actually spent quite a bit of time in Istanbul before I was arrested."  "There's an attitude in the film, as much as I love what they did and I think (director) Alan Parker is a brilliant filmmaker, and (actor) Brad Davis put his heart and soul into the part (of Hayes), he was wonderful in that," Hayes said. "(But) there's an overall effect that wasn't true to Turkey and it wasn't true to my story."