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Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (film) 1997 - USA - 155 min. - Feature, Color Keywords lawyer, prostitute/prostitution, eccentric, journalist, kill Produced by Malpaso / Silver Pictures / Warner Bros.
Clint Eastwood directed this adaptation of John Berendt's non-fiction best-seller about a Savannah, Georgia, murder case. When this film was released, Berendt's book had been on best-seller lists for four years. As the film begins, New York journalist John Kelso (John Cusack), alter ego of author Berendt, arrives in Savannah to do a brief Town and Country article on the annual Christmas party given by sophisticated, urbane antique dealer Jim Williams (Kevin Spacey), who restored many mansions in Savannah, including the famed Mercer House where he lives. After the party, Williams kills his rude, violent lover Billy Hanson (Jude Law), explaining it as a necessary act of self-defense. Kelso decides to stay in Savannah to cover the trial, encountering a variety of colorful locals, eccentric and otherwise, including black transvestite nightclub performer Lady Chablis (appearing as herself), financially challenged bon vivant Joe Odom (Paul Hipp), vocalist Mandy Nichols (Alison Eastwood), voodoo priestess Minerva (Irma P. Hall), and Williams' deceptively powerful defense attorney Sonny Seiler (Australian actor Jack Thompson with a very convincing Southern accent). Kelso develops a romantic interest in Mandy while tracking the events that led up to the killing. The Mercer House was built by the great-grandfather of songwriter Johnny Mercer, whose tunes are featured on the soundtrack. Though the closing credits state that the film is based on a novel, Berendt's book is a non-fiction account of true events of 1981. Midnight in Savannah, a two-hour documentary, aired by the A&E network and narrated by Berendt, features Savannah history, a tour of the city, background on the Jim Williams case, and interviews with the real-life counterparts of several characters in the Eastwood movie. The Bird Girl statue, seen on the book cover and the film's ad art, was sculpted in 1938 by Sylvia Shaw Judson. The Bird Girl in Savannah's Bonaventure Cemetery was moved to a museum in 1994 after readers of the book began visiting the cemetery to see the Bird Girl. There are several other Bird Girls, including two near Chicago, one in Vermont, and another created by Warner Brothers for this film. -- Bhob Stewart
Credits and description provided by American Movie Guide, http://allmovie.com |
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