ISTANBUL, Dec 14 (AFP) - Movie director Oliver Stone, in Istanbul promoting his new blockbuster "Alexander," took the chance Tuesday to try to make peace with Turkey, where he has been vilified as the man who tarnished the country's image with his screenplay for the classic "Midnight Express."
"I never intended it to be against Turkey," Stone told AFP in an interview here, "it was against injustice... everywhere."
Turks have denounced Stone since the first screening of the award-winning 1978 film, based on the memoirs of Billy Hayes.
Hayes, a young American, was sentenced to 30 years in jail in Turkey after a protracted legal saga that began when he was caught at Istanbul airport trying to smuggle hashish out of the country.
They have accused Stone of taking liberties with Hayes' book and writing a racist screenplay in which every Turkish character, without exception, is depicted as a villain.
The film is also rife with horrific prison scenes of rape and torture.
"Perhaps some of the zealousness, some of the anger came from being young and trying to make the point too much, too hard," Stone acknowledged.
But he added: "It was true that Billy Hayes did get screwed in the Turkish system. He was convicted for relatively nothing to 30 years and he was treated brutally in prison. So this is all documented.
"The larger picture," Stone said, "is that Turkey is not the only country whose prison system is not working. America has similar problems."
He recalled how he was booed when, at the Hollywood ceremony at which he picked up a Golden Globe for best screenplay for "Midnight Express" in 1979, he suggested that the United States take a hard look at its own prison system.
Stone was scheduled to have breakfast Tuesday with Turkish Culture and Tourism Minister Erkan Mumcu at a luxury Istanbul hotel.
The exercise was supposed to have symbolic value, since the hotel -- a regular fixture on "best hotel in the world" lists -- used to be the notorious Sultanahmet jail, where Hayes was incarcerated before being moved to a minimum security facility from which he eventually fled.
But Mumcu, who was held up in Ankara, could not make it.
The two were scheduled to meet later Tuesday at another venue where, Mumcu earlier said, he would discuss with Stone the possibility of undertaking joint projects in this country, which has recently adopted legislation to encourage foreign production companies to film in Turkey.
12/14/2004 17:03 GMT - AFP