When it premiered at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival, Alan Parker's Midnight Express, written by a then up-and-coming Oliver Stone who would later win an Oscar for his script, became an immediate sensation, drawing praise from critics and audiences alike, and drawing the ire of the Turkish government. Now filmmaker Sally Sussman presents the wild and fascinating story of how the film was made as told by those who were there: Oliver Stone, Alan Parker, producers David Putnam and Peter Guber, and real life inspiration Billy Hayes who proved himself, over the course of the ensuing decades, to be a more complicated, and wily, character than even the movie could've dreamt up.