Billy Hayes: Convicted drug smuggler tells the true story behind Midnight Express
By his own admission, Billy Hayes has been "telling the same bullshit story" for 40 years. But it's quite a story, and he tells it well, so we'll forgive him, even if it is a bit bizarre to see his spoken-word show, Riding the Midnight Express, on the program at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, because a bundle of laughs is not exactly how you'd describe the Billy Hayes story.
"It's kind of an offering to people," says the 68-year-old American, his fit and wiry frame the result, he insists, of a daily regimen of yoga and hashish. "Everyone's been down and out, depressed. It's just that my story is a little more compact, and dramatic."
Hayes' tale became famous through the 1978 film Midnight Express. Written by Oliver Stone and directed by Alan Parker, the movie starred Brad Davis as a young American caught in Turkey in 1970 with two kilograms of hash strapped to his body as he attempted to board a plane home (the police were actually looking for bombs, as the PLO had just initiated the first wave of terrorist attacks on passenger flights).
The film was based on Hayes' memoir of his time in a Turkish prison, during which he was beaten, had a mental breakdown, and saw his sentence increased from four years to life just as his original term was nearing its end. After five years, he made a dash for freedom – and, as it happened, a fair degree of fame.
