If you wonder why Midnight Express isn't gayer than it is, why it isn't as gay as the true story it's based on, that's explained in the extra material on the 30th Anniversary Edition DVD and in the accompanying 28-page booklet by director Alan Parker.
In a homoerotic montage, exactly halfway through the movie, Billy Hayes ( Brad Davis ) , doing time in a Turkish prison for trying to smuggle two kilos of hashish out of the country, bathes and works out balletically with Erich ( Norbert Weisser ) , a fellow prisoner. They kiss passionately in the shower, but when Erich wants to go further Billy shakes his head, gives him a farewell peck and walks away.
In real life, as Hayes recounted in the book about his experience and told me in an interview at the time of the film's release, he didn't shake his head. They became lovers in prison.
The villain was not Oliver Stone, who won the Oscar and Golden Globe for this, his first major produced screenplay; nor were the actors, producers or director reticent ( Parker includes considerable gratuitous male nudity, mostly butt shots ) . It was Columbia studio head Daniel Melnick who originally wanted the whole shower scene taken out but compromised when he saw it. Ironically, he produced Making Love four years later, so homophobia can be cured.
One line that made it into the film is Hayes' observation about Turkish hypocrisy: 'Homosexuality ... is a big crime here, but most of them do it every chance they get.'
Among other revelations, the studio originally wanted Richard Gere for the lead and tried to insist on an action climax that had been scripted when Parker decided to scrap it to make 'a prison movie, not an escape movie.'
I'm happy to report that Midnight Express holds up well. It's as good as it ever was, and it was my favorite picture of 1978. ( It lost the Oscars for picture and director to The Deer Hunter but won the Golden Globe for Best Picture, Drama. )
As Parker points out, his use of a handheld camera, though restrained by today's standards, gives the film more of a contemporary look than most movies of the period.
What's changed the most in 30 years is the international playing field. In recent films about people abused and unjustly held in barbaric foreign prisons, it's the U.S., not Turkey, that's the villain. Check out the documentaries Taxi to the Dark Side and The Road to Guantanamo, or the nearest dramatic equivalent, last year's sadly overlooked Rendition. At least Billy Hayes got a trial in Turkey, if not a fair one.
Davis, who died of AIDS in 1991, didn't even get an Oscar nomination; but this is the role, both intensely physical and intensely emotional, he's best remembered for. His resemblance to the young Montgomery Clift is striking.
Midnight Express probably saved a few lives by warning young Americans of the dangers of drug trafficking abroad. It didn't do much for Turkish tourism or for American-Turkish relations, which in the period of the film ( 1970-75 ) were in the toilet because of President Nixon.
Disco legend Giorgio Moroder won the film's other Oscar for his electronic score, which blends Eurodisco with exotic sounds.
A powerful, well-acted drama with a shower scene that will make you need a cold shower, Midnight Express has stood the test of time.