Who Was The Character Billy Hanson Based On In Midnight In The Garden Of Goodof

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By JANET MASLIN

hen Clint Eastwood's film version of the hugely popular "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" arrives in Savannah, Ga., it offers the standard shot of Spanish moss. And when the film's main character, a newly concocted Town and Country writer called John Kelso (John Cusack) first gets to town, he hops onto a double-decker tour bus. Sure enough, it's guided-tour time, as Eastwood brings on the gracious settings and colorful eccentrics that have given John Berendt's book its phenomenal staying power (nearly three years as a best seller). But the fundamental magic of Berendt's account is not on the itinerary here.

Outrageous gossip, chatty anecdote, layer upon layer of local history, the intoxication of falling in love with an exotic new place, the voices of expert Southern raconteurs: these were the elements that brought Berendt's Savannah so vibrantly to life on the page. The book's conjuring of Savannah is so fanciful, in fact, that this film's more direct rendering seems earthbound and literal by comparison. Eastwood, who read the screenplay by John Lee Hancock before even encountering Berendt's story, touches all the bases necessary to a screen version, but he doesn't catch the material's peculiar allure. Had this long, earnest film arrived without a best seller in its background, it could never hope to capture the world's imagination the way that Berendt has.

Equipped with a clean-cut hero, the film begins with a long meet-and-greet phase introducing Savannah's verdant squares and talkative citizens. But for all the film's handsome aerial shots and its architectural detail, these postcard images seldom seem as animated as even the book's casual description. ("The squares were the jewels of Savannah," Berendt recalled being told by one elderly resident.)

Among the prime locations captured here, the piece de resistance is Mercer House, the imposing structure that is home to both a legendary Christmas party and a notorious murder. The film sends John Kelso, tweedy New York journalist, to enjoy the festivities and then investigate the crime.

With Cusack well in command of what becomes a fairly passive role, the film introduces Kelso to Jim Williams, the gay antiques dealer played by Kevin Spacey with clever aplomb. Spacey's performance does have the requisite flavor and mystery, and his Jim Williams glides slyly through the film while drawing Kelso into his elegant web.

But the Town and Country propriety is shattered by the appearance of Billy Hanson (Jude Law), the hot-tempered hustler whose violent death at Mercer House becomes the film's central event. In a remark that covers Billy as well as the story's other nasty secrets, Jim's lawyer (Jack Thompson, playing his role with great gusto) puts it nicely: "Savin' face in the light of unpleasant circumstances is the Savannah way."

While the film moves at a desultory pace to discover the details of Billy's death, its real business is introducing all the eccentrics who populate this story. Showiest of all, on film as on the page, is the teasing transvestite who is known as the Lady Chablis (who plays herself) and just hates being addressed by the real name of Frank. Lady Chablis drips glitter, taunts John Kelso mercilessly and steals any scene not nailed down, though whether this is acting or just extroversion isn't entirely clear. Anyway, she/he makes maximum trouble at a genteel all-black cotillion, being the only person dressed in skintight blue spangles, flamenco-dancer style.

The rest of the book's favorite Savannah residents are played by actors, notably Irma P. Hall as the voodoo queen whose specialty is midnight rituals at the graveyard. (The cryptic cemetery statue that adorns the book's cover, the melancholy figure of a young girl, looks interestingly murky in that photograph but somehow becomes antiseptic on screen.)

These minor characters, like the man who walks an invisible dog or Dorothy Loudon as a flamboyant grande dame, are presented with the mention of appropriate background lore (the man was paid to walk a long-deceased pet and still makes money as long as he walks something). Yet for all the film's hard work at capturing Savannah's spirit, there is seldom enough context to make these characters seem anything but adorably whimsical to excess.

The film's bluntest new ingredient is a character named Mandy, who is played with flirty charm by Alison Eastwood, the director's daughter. Mandy takes a shine to John, but the film is least convincing in its boy-girl, meet-cute aspects. In fact, this subplot is so awkward that it calls at one point for the film to shift abruptly from a graveyard to the flower shop where Mandy works.

Ms. Eastwood, like her father, happens to turn up on the soundtrack singing soft renditions of Johnny Mercer songs, since the film relies charmingly on a Mercer score. Spacey can also be heard singing "That Old Black Magic," which sounds as if it should be Savannah's favorite song.

PRODUCTION NOTES

MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL

Rating: "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" is rated R (under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes brief violence, scattered profanity and lively sexual innuendo.

Directed by Clint Eastwood; written by John Lee Hancock, based on the book by John Berendt; director of photography, Jack N. Green; edited by Joel Cox; music by Lennie Niehaus; production designer, Henry Bumstead; produced by Eastwood and Arnold Stiefel; released by Warner Brothers. Running time: 135 minutes.

Cast: Kevin Spacey (Jim Williams), John Cusack (John Kelso), Jack Thompson (Sonny Seiler), Irma P. Hall (Minerva), Jude Law (Billy Hanson), Alison Eastwood (Mandy Nicholls), the Lady Chablis (herself) and Dorothy Loudon (Serena Dawes).