1997 American film
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a 1997 American crime drama film directed and produced by Clint Eastwood and starring John Cusack and Kevin Spacey. The screenplay by John Lee Hancock was based on John Berendt's 1994 book of the same name and follows the story of antiques dealer Jim Williams, who was on trial for the killing of a male prostitute who was his lover. The multiple trials depicted in Berendt's book are combined into one trial for the film. John Kelso is introduced as the personification of Berendt.
The on-location scenes were shot in Savannah, Georgia. Several real-life locals appear in the movie, notably in the Christmas party scene at Mercer House, including Williams's sister, Dorothy Kingery, and nieces Susan and Amanda, as well as Georgia senator John R. "Jack" Riley (his wife was played by Mary Alice Hendrix). Filming was permitted inside Mercer House, but action scenes and those in the courtroom were filmed later on a soundstage at Warner Bros.
Three people—The Lady Chablis, Emma Kelly and Jerry Spence—play themselves, while Sonny Seiler, one of Williams's lawyers in the book, plays Judge Samuel L. White. Danny Hansford, the shooting victim in the book, is renamed Billy Hanson in the film and is portrayed by a 24-year-old Jude Law, in one of his early film roles. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was released by Warner Bros. on November 21, 1997. The film received mixed reviews from critics and was a box office bomb, grossing $25.1 million against a $30 million budget.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.