Billy Hayes is as charming a (former) drug smuggler as you’d ever hope to meet.
And if his name isn’t familiar, his story is, thanks to the movie “Midnight Express.” Based on Hayes’ best-selling book about serving five years in Turkish prisons for smuggling hashish, it was a 1978 hit, with an Oscar-winning screenplay by Oliver Stone. But that wasn’t the real story.
For what really went down in Turkey, you’d need to see “Riding the Midnight Express with Billy Hayes,” opening Feb. 5 at off-Broadway’s St. Luke’s Theatre.
For starters, says Hayes, speaking from his home in Los Angeles, he was hardly a novice, as both the book and movie suggest. By the time of his 1970 arrest, he’d smuggled hashish from Turkey three times, a fact his lawyer suggested Hayes omit.
“I thought, ‘Doesn’t it show I have ambition?’ ” says the 66-year-old with a laugh.
The rest of the book, he says, is true.
His prison stint was “the worst and the best thing that ever happened to me.” Not only did it lead to a hit book and film, but he met his wife of 33 years in Cannes, where the movie premiered.
Even so, when he saw the finished film, Hayes was shocked to discover that Hollywood had fudged the facts. In the movie, Hayes — Brad Davis, in a Golden Globe-winning performance — escapes after killing a guard, donning his uniform and walking out of the prison.
The reality, while less violent, was still dramatic: After being transferred to a lower-security prison on an island, Hayes stole a rowboat and made his way to Greece.
Nor did Hayes curse the Turkish people when he was sentenced, as he did in the movie.
“In the courtroom, I actually said that all I can do is forgive you,” he says. “They have me saying, ‘You’re a nation of pigs, I f - - ked your sons, I f - - ked your daughters.’ ”
Unlike his screen incarnation, Hayes had a romantic relationship with a fellow prisoner while incarcerated.
“Brad wanted to do that scene,” Hayes says. “He wanted some intimation that I had a relationship, which I had written about in the book. But the filmmakers didn’t allow that to happen.”
Hayes says his biggest objection to the film was its harsh depiction of the Turks.
“It created this worldwide anti-Turkish feeling, which is my biggest problem with the movie,” he says. “It makes everybody in the country look terrible.”
Hayes returned to Turkey in 2007. He says the jail in which he spent his first night is now a Four Seasons. He wasn’t allowed into the prison where he spent most of his sentence, but he did look up at his former cell.
“That was an interesting perspective,” he admits.
Though he’s spent the last 30 years as an actor and director, he’s still telling the tale of his travails in Turkey.
“I thought, aren’t people tired of hearing this f - - king story?” he says. “[But] I get younger audiences who really respond to it.”
And time, he says, has given his experience some perspective: “It was the ’60s — sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll,” he says. “Everything was easy. And then, suddenly, it wasn’t easy anymore.”
You can practically hear him shrug over the phone.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he says.