Billy Hayes (writer) - Book

Book

Hayes wrote a book on his experiences, Midnight Express, which was later adapted into the 1978 film Midnight Express starring Brad Davis as Hayes. The film was directed by Alan Parker, with a screenplay by Oliver Stone. The movie differs from Hayes' account in his book. Among the differences is a scene in which Hayes kills the prison guard Hamid "the bear", the main antagonist of the story. In fact, the prison guard was killed in 1973 by a recently released prisoner, whose family Hamid insulted while beating the prisoner, years before Hayes' actual escape.

For legal reasons, neither the film nor the book had been completely accurate. In 2010, in an episode of National Geographic Channel's "Locked Up Abroad", titled "The Real Midnight Express", Hayes tells his version of the full story about being sent to the infamous Turkish Sagmalcilar prison, eventually escaping from the Marmara Sea prison on İmralı island.

Read more about this topic:  Billy Hayes (writer)

Famous quotes containing the word book:

    Everything that is printed and bound in a book contains some echo at least of the best that is in literature.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.
    Stephen Vizinczey (b. 1933)

    I don’t know but a book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf—at any rate it is safer from criticism. And taking a book off the brain, is akin to the ticklish & dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel—you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety—& even then, the painting may not be worth the trouble.
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)