Original subtitles

Brad was intense about almost everything that he had to do.

You know, I mean , he would--

And he was, as I say, he was eccentric.

I mean , so much so that John Hurt used to be in awe of him...

...because John Iiked to be eccentric.

And before each take, you know...

...Brad would do his press-ups and handstands.

And he had a bucket that he had to pee in before every--

Don't ask me why, but he did .

And he kind of took everything very seriously.

He really put his entire heart into the whole film .

I've never really, ever in my entire career...

...have had an actor who has put so much into a role.

Because he was the first person I saw...

...doing all those sort of intensely tedious Methody things...

...Iike standing on his head and things...

...and doing deep breathing before every shot.

And in fact, there was one time I thought I'd get him back...

...and I was on the set and I was going like this:

He said , "What are you doing , John?"

And I said , "What do you mean?"

"What are you doing with your hands?"

"I'm doing my exercises before the shot."

So...

But, yes, I used to kid him a Iot.

I used to kid him a Iot.

And I suppose I did kind of Iook after him at that time.

And I kind of pushed him a Iot during the film .

Sometimes I felt that I pushed him too far, actually...

...on some of the more dramatic moments.

But he gave his all to the film...

...and in fact, he was so intense when he made the film , you know.

At the end of 53 days that it took to shoot...

...I always thought that he didn't think...

...that he'd been in a film set for 53 days.

He thought he'd been in prison for four years.

He became Billy, totally.

And I think that affected him , you know, mentally and physically...

...particularly in the days after the film .

But with regards to me having an actor to give of their best...

...to do so brilliantly...

...and to give such attention and such time to making a film ...

...which was absolutely total .

I couldn't have been luckier, really, as a filmmaker.

And in a funny kind of way...

...probably deep down , I was pleased that it wasn't a movie star.

AIan had a totally different way of approaching all four of us.

With Brad , he used to shit on him from a great height...

...because that's the way that Brad responded , you know.

With Randy, who'd you expect to be the big tough guy...

...actually is an enormously sensitive man .

And he'd never, ever give him notes in front of anybody else.

He'd always take him behind the set or something ...

...and chat to him privately.

With Norbert, I could see him just Iook at him and say:

"Well , that's what I'm gonna get, that's what I'm gonna get."

There's no point in saying anything .

With me, he said , "Well , you're just fucking English . Get on with it."

I was very Iucky in that, you know...

...I had M ichael Seresin , who I'd worked a Iot with before.

And so he kind of understood .

He has the same kind of visual sensibility as I have.

I think the film has a very strong visual identity.

AIso, my camera operator had worked with me a Iot before...

...and was particularly good at hand-held ...

...in the days before inventions Iike Steadicam .

And it gave it--

Which is why I think the film now still looks very contemporary.

Because I could block out conventionally in normal--

You know, wide, medium, close, whatever.

But I also had the advantage of--

I didn't shoot two cameras, which I might do-- I would do now.

But at the time, it was just one camera. It's all we could afford .

But a Iot of it was hand-held ...

...which is in to cut with conventional shooting ...

...which gives it another Ievel of energy.

Which , you know, the moment you do something ...

...where you've got terrific coverage...

...and you give that, you know, big pile of stuff...

...to a brilliant editor Iike Gerry Hambling ...

...then out comes something remarkable.

And is it exactly what you conceived it to be in the first place?

Truthfully, probably not, you know.

Sometimes what you see in the back of your head ...

...when you finish the film ...

...sometimes it's better than you imagined .

-Name? -Jesus. William Hayes.

-Name? -Hayes. H-A-Y-E-S.

This is a strange foreign place.

We deliberately don't do subtitles for that reason .

We want the audience to be as alienated ...

...as Billy Hayes must have felt.

And you get this actually quite--

This mélange of different Ianguages, even .

You know, it's not really Turkish .

Turkish people have pointed it out to me many times.

The conversation between the Billy Hayes character...

...and the guy when he's asking him what he had in the backpack...

...he's talking Maltese. He's not talking Turkish at all .

We used Maltese, because obviously, again , a Iot of these were non-actors.

And so he spoke his own Ianguage.

It didn't really matter, because to us, we were in Malta anyway.

And we were in some strange world , some strange Iand ...

...that this American kid had found himself.

And it really wasn't really about Turkey anymore.

It was about being in a foreign place.

Get down . Get down .

The heartbeat, which we use very, very emphatically...

...and very effectively...

...really, it takes the place of music, because in the end--

The soundtrack of a film , people always talk about...

...thinking the soundtrack is actually a scored piece.

And the soundtrack isn't. The soundtrack is actually a mixture...

...of all the layers of sounds that you put together.

And sometimes that includes music, sometimes it doesn't.

And , you know, there can be 50 layers of sound in any particular scene.

And using the heartbeat...

...which has been copied millions of times since in other movies...

...actually, at that moment in time, it was rather original ...

...and gives you the edge-of-the-seat tension ...

...that you require in that moment.

I wanted the film to be organic.

And we did make changes every day.

Something changed .

Some things were very significant...

...in what was changed from the original screenplay.

And the freedom to be able to do that...

...is part of the creative process of making a film .

I've been lucky, really, in all my films.

Fourteen feature films...

...I've worked with the same editor, Gerry Hambling .

He's pretty extraordinary at what he does.

And I'm blessed to have him, really.

I think I shoot pretty accurately most of the time...

...to what I want a cut to be.

Sometimes it's not.

Sometimes you have to feel for the cut.

Or the material that you've shot presents a different kind of cut...

...to what you might have imagined when you shot it, quite frankly.

Most of the time, it's pretty well as I imagined it.

I don't do storyboards, but I do Iots of scribbles and drawings all the time.

And from that, the camera people...

...everybody seems to know what I want.

And then with Gerry, it's the same process.

There's no point in me really--

I've never sat on his shoulder every single minute.

I mean , I'm there all the time in the cutting room.

But I do my work and he does his work, you know.

And I'm forever writing notes on existing cuts or future cuts.

So it's pretty thoroughly worked out.

But in the end , it's an organic process.

And I take advantage of his great skill .

And , you know, I don't cut myself--

Bare in mind , all the 1 4 films I've done with Gerry Hambling ...

...have all been cut on film .

So from point of view of the physicality of it...

...it's very different to cutting d igitally, obviously...

...which is a bit more hands-on , probably, for the director.

But on film, he's about as good as you can be.

And when someone's that great, you really don't want to interfere.

And I can't remember the times...

...when I've been totally d isappointed with a cut.

Sometimes I have been ...

...but most of the times, you just pinch yourself...

...you're so Iucky to have somebody that brilliant.

With the music, what happened was...

...that I have what I call my toolkit method ...

...which is I lay music all the way through ...

...experimenting with different things.

I n the market, in Istanbul ...

...I had got a whole lot of Turkish tapes...

...which I fed into the soundtrack, you know...

...to give us a sense of alienation ...

...and that runs all the way through the film .

But the conventional score--

I didn't really want a conventional score and what I'd done is...

...I had Iaid the music of Vangelis all the way through the film.

And to tell you the truth , it really worked well .

We had an artist in our company, Casablanca Record and Films...

...where I was the chairman and co-owner with Neil Bogart.

And we had Giorgio Moroder, who was very successful ...

...in the disco and syncopation orchestration world ...

...and had many, many hit albu ms with Donna Summer and other artists.

And he wanted to break into the composing of films.

And we believed in him.

And I kind of said to Puttnam , "I don't really wanna do this."

I said , "I Iove what Vangelis has done and I think that--"

You know, the music that Vangelis had already done from his albums.

It wasn't an original score.

That, we would have done if we had gone the Vangelis route.

And his next score, that Vangelis did , was Chariots of Fire.

So can you imagine the music of Chariots of Fire on Midnight Express?

That's how it would've probably sou nded .

So they said to me, "Well , just give Giorgio a try.

If you don't Iike what he does...

...then we can always fall back to Vangelis."

And Vangelis was not inexpensive and this film was inexpensive.

Well , the film wasn't cheap, it was inexpensive.

Very big difference.

And Alan was a really intelligent soul .

He was willing to cast a wide net, Iook at everybody.

He could make the decision . It was his decision to make.

We weren't gonna force the decision on him in any way.

But he was kind of the person that said , "Well , I'Il Iook at anything .

If I can make a decision , why don't I Iook at all the options?"

And Giorgio met with him , he Iistened to the music and he said :

"Cool . I think it was good work."

Giorgio won the Oscar.

The album was a gigantic hit.

And that's to AIan's testament and Giorgio's testament.

I , again , was just a supporter.

I was a person that believed in Giorgio...

...believed in AIan , believed in the film ...

...and tried to edge the process forward .

But, you know, the real qualitative creative aspect...

...was Giorgio Moroder and AIan Parker in that decision .

So I went with Giorgio in M unich .

There was just Giorgio, myself and an engineer.

And he had composed the basic themes.

And , of course, it was all electronic...

...and was incredibly wonderful to work with ...

...because it was so easy to manipulate.

If you do a conventional score with someone wonderful ...

...say, like John Williams...

...you don't know what you're gonna get until you strike up the orchestra...

...and an 80-piece orchestra is playing away there and it's very expensive.

And to change things is quite difficult.

But when it's all been created by one man ...

...with his whole set of, you know, tricks...

...it was very easy to do.

We had a tiny little screen of the film .

And Giorgio did the whole thing actually himself...

...with an engineer in Mu nich .

And it was pretty great.

The studio was interesting in that.

See, the studio's not the villain . I've been a studio head .

I've been a chairman of a company. I've been every part of the process.

But they're interested in six, seven , eight, 1 0, 1 2, 1 5 films at once.

And 50 films in development.

So they Iook at you , they make a decision and they move on .

And the then-head of the stud io said to me:

"Over my dead body will we use one of those disco themes in the movie."

They didn't realise that Giorgio Moroder wrote all the disco themes.

But, you know, again , fate and circumstance...

...and our own prowess and our own ability to persuade...

...and Alan Parker's vision and Giorgio Moroder's talent...

...overcame that obstacle.

We had the template of Vangelis to go with .

And I was able to be there with him , as if it was all created .

And then , of course, we mixed it with all of the effects...

...and other musics which we bled into it.

And that became the soundtrack.

And indeed , it was the first electronic soundtrack...

...to win the Academy Award .

Well , I wrote a Ietter to the crew before I started shooting ...

...which , you know, was a pattern of films that I had done--

The film I'd done before and certainly the films I did later.

--To kind of put in my head and maybe the crews heads...

...the kind of film that we were making .

To me, it was a film about injustice, really...

...and the way in which the Iaws are so different in different countries...

...because cultures are so different in different countries.

And it was about the near verges of insanity...

...which I wanted to explore.

I wanted to make an uncompromisingly brutal film .

I made no bones about that, right from the very beginning .

And in a way, I suppose there were two ways of Iooking at the film.

Was this gonna be a film about escape...

...or was this gonna be a film about imprisonment?

And in a funny kind of way...

...the balance went to imprisonment, I guess.

Mostly because we did change the story when we were filming ...

...which I did because the film had a different ending .

One of the things the studio insisted upon was "based on a true story."

I n actual fact, it isn't.

It's based on a true story, I suppose, vaguely.

But it isn't a true story. The film isn't.

What you have is, with regards to people's perception of what truth is...

...Billy Hayes himself...

...his memory of actually what happened to him in that prison .

H is own hubris obviously gets in the way...

...when he starts to talk about stories that happened to him in that prison .

So truth is probably moved away a little bit there.

And then he recou nts the story to the ghostwriter...

...William Hoffer, who writes the book.

And he puts his slant, Iiterary slant...

...by virtue of the fact that he's writing a book for a publisher.

He wants to sell a Iot of books.

So truth gets moved along there.

OIiver comes along and writes his screenplay, which--

And he definitely moved truth away from the original ...

...in the inventions and fictions that he put into it.

There was input from myself, Guber and the studio...

...with regards to that first draft...

...which then transformed the story even more...

...because of the requirements, necessities of the studio...

...with regards to what makes a strong dramatically structured film .

And therefore, decisions were made.

And more fictions occurred , because of that.

So truth was moved away a little bit more.

And certainly, when I made the film ...

...and a whole lot of stuff was done whilst we were filming ...

...because the place itself and the situation ...

...and the whole 53-day intense journey...

...that we were on , making the film ...

...created another organic movie. A film was made again .

And then when we edited it, another film occurred .

So you get truth moved away at all those things.

So in a way, it's a fictional film .

And in a way, it's a d isservice to the film to say "based on a true story."

They wanted this-- The studio or Guber wanted it.

--Because I suppose, you know, there's some cachet to the fact...

...that it would happen to be a lot of it was true.

But it got us into trouble Iater, particularly with Turkish people.

And in a way, it was--

I used to stop apologising for it being true...

...because it was a dramatic movie.

And they couldn't own up to the fact that it was a dramatic movie.

Decisions were made in order to make a terrific movie.

And that was really first and foremost on everybody's mind .

I hate you .

I hate your nation and I hate your people.

I fuck your sons and daughters because they're pigs.

You're a pig .

You're all pigs.

Believe me, it was not at all directed at Turkey.

And I regret that and I do regret that...

...and when I went to Turkey, they tried to make me apologise.

I said , "I'm not gonna apologise.

I regret the misunderstand ings about racism that occurred .

But it was not based in a racial approach to your cou ntry."

AIthough he says, "You're a nation of pigs"...

...which insults the Muslim concept. I realise that.

But that was his anger talking , to me.

I mean , he never said that.

But in the character's anger...

...it was such that I think he had to say something Iike that...

...because he was at his wit's end .

At the Cannes Film Festival I think was the first time...

...we were a bit in shock, really, at the reaction to it.

I mean , it went from being , you know, a brilliant masterpiece...

...to a CIA-backed fascist scandal of the festival ...

...in that you're not allowed to criticise other nations.

And the criticism of the film was, of course...

...that there didn't seem to be a nice or pleasant Turkish person ...

...in the whole piece.

Well , there isn't in the book either, actually.

And the story we went was from that book.

AIthough as I've said ...

...it got changed so much in minute detail in so many different stages...

...that we had created a complete fiction .

And I think that, for myself...

...I did n't ever think of myself when I was doing it.

And boy, did I become so engrossed in making the film.

I didn't even think that I was in Turkey.

Or even that my movie was.

It was some strange foreign place that this kid had found himself.

And that was all it was.

So to be anti-Turkish was actually far from our mind .

I think that the film does have a dark heart.

I think that dark heart comes from OIiver Stone's original screenplay.

I think there is a very powerful monologue in court...

...which probably disturbs a lot of people...

...particularly if you're Turkish .

And in a way, you know, we were you ng filmmakers.

And somewhat naive in that regard , I think.

I mean , it's easy to say now, "I would've done it differently."

I probably would . I'm more intelligent, more worldly, you know...

...more politically astute than I probably was then .

AII I thought I was making was a movie...

...a really strong dramatic movie about injustice of a penal system...

...and a very brutal penal system , at that...

...all of the clues of which and all the evidence...

...we'd got from Billy Hayes' memoirs, so I thought it was pretty accurate.

Would you have someone now--? You'd have the good guy--

You know, Iike you always have a good Nazi ...

...because not every German was horrible.

Yeah , I suppose you would do that now.

But I stand by the film completely and utterly...

...because it's the film that I wanted to make at that moment in time.

And I'm still very, very proud of it.

Midnight Express was a really important watershed in my Iife...

...in AIan Parker's Iife, probably in Peter Gruber's Iife...

...and Alan Marshall's life.

It's a fine, fine, fine film .

It moves people and affects people as much today as the day we made it.

You can't say that about a Iot of films. I mean , there's not that many films...

...that are able to work outside of their time.

I think Midnight Express does. For me, The Killing Fields does.

There are films that somehow transcend ...

...the moment in which they're shot.

It was Ieaving an executive job running a studio...

...and starting down the road of being a riverboat gambler...

...which a producer is.

And recognising that you better suck all the juice...

...all the marrow out of the bone when they work.

Because when they don't work, wow, they're painful .

And so it was exciting to go on a roller-coaster ride of that film.

And that came together and it was a moment in time and it worked .

Tremendous success for Columbia. Big .

And it launched my career.

Out of nowhere, I was suddenly getting the Academy Award .

It was only my second film.

So it was certainly a Iot more controversial than the first one...

...which was a kids' gangster musical .

But yeah , I mean , it was my first brush with the fact that actually...

...it isn't just about movies...

...and this is a very powerful way to commu nicate to people.

It was a film that was hugely successful .

And whatever is within it from a political point of view...

...is actually gonna get to a Iot of people.

And therefore, it's naive of me to think, "Well , it's just a movie."

Well , movies can do that, you know.

They do it less and Iess these days...

...because they really are about entertainment, in the main .

But sometimes film can be political and it can show the human condition ...

...and it can show how human beings can be cruel to one another.

And out of that world ...

...out of that situation comes some kind of hope that we can be better.

And I think all of that is in the film .

I Iove this movie. I love its energy. I Iove its vitality and madness.

Its very zeal , its sense of excess.

I mean , nothing wrong with that.

Why it holds up is there aren't stars that aged in it.

You know, you're not seeing Robert Redford at 74.

You're not seeing people that you know today.

They're contemporary characters, in some sense.

I make no excuses for it. I'm extremely proud of it.

I think that it's 30 years old .

And I actually defy anyone to look at 30-year-old films--

Any 30-year-old film.

--And see one that is as contemporary...

...and has, you know, I'm very proud to say...

...influenced , you know, a lot of other filmmakers.