Life in a Turkish Prison

In 1977 Billy Hayes, with the assistance of William Hoffer, wrote a best-selling account of his arrest and imprisonment in a Turkish prison entitled Midnight Express. Hayes, an American student on vacation in Turkey, had been apprehended at the Istanbul Airport on October 6, 1970, trying to smuggle 2.2 kilos of hashish out of the country (it was concealed under his clothes and taped to his body). He was sentenced to four years and two months for possession but in 1974, the Turkish High Court in Ankara overturned his original sentence, found him guilty of smuggling and sentenced him to serve an additional 30 years. Hayes’s 1977 account of the brutal prison conditions he endured with his fellow inmates and his eventual escape to Greece in 1975 was a riveting cautionary tale for its era. Not surprisingly, Hollywood came calling and Columbia Pictures eventually acquired the film rights, releasing the big screen adaptation of Midnight Express in October 1978.

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Music Can Change Your Life

Gunnel (Eva Remaeus) serenades a dance hall with her accompanying musicians in SVEN KLANG’S COMBO, a 1976 Swedish film about a small town Dixieland band.

Group dynamics are always a fascinating topic for stories, especially when the focus is the workplace or some social situation. Consider this scenario, for instance, involving a small traveling band that specializes in Dixieland-style dance numbers and popular big band favorites. When a new musician joins their group with innovative musical ideas and the talent to execute them, not everyone is going to be immediately smitten. Such is the case with Sven Klang’s Combo (aka Sven Klangs Kvintett, 1976), a Swedish film by Stellan Olsson, which follows a fateful year in the life of a provincial quintet. They lose a member but gain a hip, new saxophone player from the big city who is heavily influenced by the bebop sounds of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and others. The result is a bittersweet but often amusing look at how some bands either make the decision to go professional (if they are good enough) or content themselves playing for fun the rest of their lives. 

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