Gay Scene: Midnight Express (1978)
It would be hard not to swoon over anything featuring a shirtless Brad Davis, but while many feel it misrepresents the fact that Billy Hayes did have sex with men while in prison in Turkey, this divine sequence from the great Midnight Express is, for me, the most exquisitely erotic scene in cinema.
Brad Davis was such a hottie. And messed up. RIP.
hot and messed up describes every man i’ve ever dated unfortunately.
In the movie, Billy (Davis’s character) rejects the sexual advance of a fellow prisoner. This did not happen in the autobiographical book of the same name.
In the book, Billy Hayes admits to consensual sex and is never raped. In addition, the ending is not violent in the book as it is in the movie.
I still love both and miss Brad Davis, but I will always remember him as a hot young brunet. Look at the differences in how James Dean and Marlon Brando will be remembered.
True, true but it would have impaired the third act suspense (which was also more or less completely the invention of the screenwriter - who just happened to be Oliver Stone) if Billy had an ally inside the jail. We needed to feel he was completely helpless, and alone.
In any case, I for one feel that the soapy thigh, steamy kissing is way sexier than any actual male-male sex scene Alan Parker, or anyone else, would have staged. Look to when Brad Davis did get manrammed on screen in Querelle to see that by comparison to the much more evocative sequence in Midnight Express that sometimes, less is more.
Also, zeroing in on this particular incidence of playing with the facts of Billy Hayes’ actual experiences seems odd when like most biopics a bit of creative screenwriting applied to everything that takes place between the opening to closing credits is the norm - let’s not even start with Milk, for example.
I agree with you Mark 100%.