LOS ANGELES, May 4, 2013 \u2014 Getting caught for trying to smuggle hash out of Turkey was the beginning of Billy Hayes\u2019 new life. From that point on everything changed for him. He spent five years in a Turkish prison before finally escaping. He told his story in the book, Midnight Express, which was later turned into an Academy Award winning movie with a script by Oliver Stone. In this final installment of a three part interview, Billy discusses Marijuana legalization, what he has been up to lately and visiting Turkey again as a free man.<\/p>\n
THIS IS PART THREE OF A THREE-PART INTERVIEW<\/p>\n
SEE RELATED: Interview: Billy Hayes, author of Midnight Express (Part I)<\/p>\n
KW: What is your stance on marijuana legalization in the United States?<\/p>\n
BH:\u00a0It should absolutely be legal everywhere. The insanity of the war is just, you know, we see the results. There\u2019s human results. There\u2019s economic results. I mean this whole subculture of violence and it corrupts the legal system. Prisons are overcrowded. Half the f**king people in the United States are in there for consensual crime. The insanity of that, the cost of that.<\/p>\n
Take it from the conservative point of view, I mean I\u2019m talking from a liberal point of view. Take it from the conservative point of view. You could save a lot of money. You could have taxes on all this. It should be legal. It\u2019s only f**king expensive because it\u2019s illegal. It\u2019s only violent because it\u2019s illegal. And that\u2019s whoever gets involved. You know, personal little mom and pop stores, or the corporations, if they will.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d rather have half the corporations f**king us than guys blowing each other apart for drugs. That\u2019s insane, the violence that\u2019s involved in it. And I tell you, whatever you think about it, putting an 18, 19, 20 year old kid in prison for pot, trust me, that\u2019s not a good thing for him. It\u2019s not going to help any problem. So, I mean, it\u2019s hypocritical more than anything else when you consider the biggest problem we have is alcohol, which sponsors every sporting event on TV. Cigarettes are sold everywhere.<\/p>\n
SEE RELATED: Interview with author Billy Hayes (Part II)<\/p>\n
The hypocrisy of putting people in prison for pot it\u2019s becoming apparent. It\u2019s an idea whose time has come. We see it slowly moving. Just while you and I are talking about it, there\u2019s kids in prison doing hard f**king time. I can relate to time, it\u2019s a very flexible thing. Guys in jail waiting for this idea\u2019s time to come. There\u2019s a vote here in California in two weeks, three weeks, whenever the election is. It\u2019s been legalized in two states so far. People are changing. I think all drugs should be legal. That\u2019s a whole other issue about freedom.<\/p>\n
You want to talk about freedom? Peter McWilliams\u2019\u00a0Ain\u2019t Nobody\u2019s Business If You Do, as long as I don\u2019t harm you or your property, I should be free to do whatever I want without the threat of being imprisoned. That\u2019s freedom. That\u2019s that cowboy Ted Nugent a**hole bulls**t freedom. It\u2019s an idea whose time is here, but, boy, that\u2019s gonna take some pressure.\u00a0 There\u2019s just not enough politicians with the balls to do it, but it\u2019s happening. Things are happening.<\/p>\n
KW: What do you fill your time with these days?<\/p>\n
BH:\u00a0I\u2019ve been busy. I have a whole bunch of projects happening these days. I just came back from London, they did the\u00a0Midnight Express\u00a0ballet. That just blows my mind. That\u2019s just so outrageous to think there\u2019s been so many iterations of my story between the book and the film and Locked Up Abroad TV show and a ballet. I get all my New York friends are like, \u201cF**kin ballet? What are you talkin\u2019 about?\u201d That\u2019s been fun and good and. I also shot a small part in a film up in Birmingham, England while I was there, which was fun. I had to play a child molester, a rich billionaire American child molester with particularly interesting scenes.<\/p>\n
So, I\u2019ve been acting a bit, but mostly working on\u00a0Letters. It\u2019s a lot of work to self-publish. Back when I had\u00a0Midnight Express\u00a0come out, I had E.P. Dutton. They did all the work! They did everything! Once I got the book written, it was give it to them and it off it went. They just set up everything and told me where to go and who to do and, of course, they took all the money, but they made it easier. I love self-publishing because you don\u2019t have to listen to anybody. Do what you like and then you have to promote it. It\u2019s hard, it\u2019s very hard.<\/p>\n
KW: There is a line in the movie, Airplane!, asking<\/p>\n
BH:\u00a0\u201cSon, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?\u201d [laughs] I\u2019ve got a whole list of those. I\u2019ve got like ten of those.<\/p>\n
KW: Do you feel that line was directly influenced by your book?<\/p>\n
BH:\u00a0Absolutely, it did! And aside from that there\u2019s Jim Carrey in\u00a0Cable Guy. He gets busted and he presses his chest against the window to mock a scene from the movie and from the book, you remember. The part where Lillian presses her t**s against the window, shows them to him.\u00a0Family Guy\u00a0cartoon, the dog gets busted and put in prison. The dog presses his t**s against the window. I\u2019m watching\u00a0Entourage\u00a0one night and Vinnie\u2019s in the elevator. He\u2019s coming down to do a drug test and he\u2019s sweating and chewing gum. His buddy, Billy, says, \u201cYou see Midnight Express? He was sweating. You see what happened to him?\u201d I\u2019m watching Entourage and I hear this.<\/p>\n
They used to have a Midnight Express Packing in London. They also had a Midnight Express tour bus that went from London to Amsterdam and back and smoked hash both ways. That one I love. I drive around town, I see Midnight Express courier service. I always wave at the drivers. They look at me like, \u201cThe f**k you waving at?\u201d It\u2019s so bizarre to me how many ways it has seeped into the culture.\u00a0Seinfeld! I saw aSeinfeld\u00a0where Jerry turns to George and says, \u201cMidnight express, my friend.\u201d It\u2019s crazy, it\u2019s just crazy.<\/p>\n
KW: Have you been back to Turkey since the Interpol warrant was lifted?<\/p>\n
BH:\u00a0I went back to Turkey and I, literally, had the Turkish police surrounding me for four days, watching out for me though. That was really bizarre. I went back about five years ago at the request of the Turkish police. Pretty amazing. I got to sort of reconnect with Turkey, which is good. I had a whole nation of people that hated me, mostly for that speech we talked about, that speech in the movie that cursed them out so bad. When they heard what I actually said, we made some connections and stuff. It sort of healed something.<\/p>\n
In truth, that was my problem with the movie. It made Turkey look so bad and there were no good Turks in the movie and everybody were bad guys. That\u2019s just not true. It wasn\u2019t true of my experience or of Turkey. I loved Istanbul. I made three trips there. I spent a lot of time in Istanbul. I didn\u2019t like the prison, didn\u2019t like the guards, don\u2019t like the legal system, but that would probably be true anywhere you were stupid enough to get caught smuggling whatever.<\/p>\n
KW: Is there anything else you want people to know about you?<\/p>\n
BH:\u00a0I\u2019m the happiest guy I know. I really appreciate being alive. Everybody should. It\u2019s a magical moment, man, and I appreciate it all.<\/p>\n
Midnight Express\u00a0was rereleased in March 2013 along with a new book from Billy Hayes titled,\u00a0The Midnight Express Letters: From a Turkish Prison.<\/p>\n
Kevin J. Wells writes about\u00a0Major League Baseball\u00a0and\u00a0punk rock music.\u00a0 Follow him on Twitter\u00a0@WellsOnBaseball<\/p>\n
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Read more:\u00a0http:\/\/communities.washingtontimes.com\/neighborhood\/written-word\/2013\/may\/4\/billy-hayes-interview-part-iii\/#ixzz2ZDlpWC00 LOS ANGELES, May 4, 2013 \u2014 Getting caught for trying to smuggle hash out of Turkey was the beginning of Billy Hayes\u2019 new life. From that point on everything changed for him. He spent five years in a Turkish prison before finally escaping. He told his story in the book, Midnight Express, which was later […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":25767,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2939],"tags":[3780],"class_list":["post-75898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultureart","tag-midnight-express"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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