Georgia Magazine, December 1997: Vol. 77, No. 1

And so does the guy on the other end of the leash, Savannah attorney Sonny Seiler, who saved Jim Williams' hide in Georgia's most publicized murder trial and then landed a plum role in Clint Eastwood's film version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

B Y - K E N T - H A N N O N

Inspired casting: Uga V plays his father, Uga IV, and Seiler plays the judge who denies his motion for bail in the movie.

his whole movie takes place over a mythic six-month period in Savannah," says Sonny Seiler, who is staring out the window of the law offices of Bouhan, Williams & Levy. Another in a steady stream of tour buses has pulled up in front of the historic Armstrong House mansion, where Seiler hatched the defense team strategy that eventually got antiques dealer Jim Williams acquitted in the longest—and most publicized—series of murder trials in Georgia history. But Seiler is oblivious to the Bull Street traffic and to what the man with the microphone is telling tourists about his role in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

In Savannah, it's known simply as The Book. Not as in, "Have you read The Book?" because, of course, everyone has. Rather, "Who do you know that's in The Book?"

Seiler (BBA '56, JD '57), who has just finished a two-year term as president of UGA's National Alumni Association, is all over The Book, having worked on three of the four Williams murder trials over the course of six years. He uses the word "mythic" to describe Clint Eastwood's new film version of "Midnight" movie because the four Williams murder trials have been reduced to one in the movie, and because screenwriter John Lee Hancock has taken other liberties with John Berendt's book besides compressing the time frame. But "Mythic" could also apply to the effect The Book has had on staid old Savannah. Now in its 81st American printing after three years on The New York Times bestseller list, Berendt's first-person account of death and decadence has hiked property values, reinvented the local tourist industry, and given Savannah a dark, sexy, international identity that green beer and St. Patty's Day never could.

Atlanta has GWTW and now Savannah has MGGE. And who better to preview The Movie—and Uga V's role in it!—than Seiler, who got Williams acquitted with a Hollywood-style revelation about a hospital admission sheet and then landed a plum role in Eastwood's film, which opened in late November.

The film's protagonists, as in The Book, are Williams, a Savannah socialite and preservationist whose Christmas parties were legend, and the Berendt character (called John Kelso in the movie), a magazine writer from New York City who comes to Savannah to cover a Williams party and becomes enthralled with both Williams and the low-life stars of Savannah's nether-society, including transvestite entertainer Lady Chablis and Minerva, the voodoo priestess. Williams and Kelso are played by two young guns of character acting, Kevin Spacey and John Cusack. Shooting victim and sometime Williams housemate Danny Hansford (called Billy Hanson in the movie) is played by British actor Jude Law. Australian actor Jack Thompson plays Seiler with the same barrel-chested bravura that Sonny has displayed in Savannah courtrooms for 30 years. And at Eastwood's request, Seiler took time out from his law practice to play the Superior Court judge who, among other things, denies Seiler's motion for bail for Williams. For Seiler's legal colleagues and UGA friends, this kind of Sonny-vs.-Sonny stuff will be worth the price of admission.

"Have you ever done any acting?" Eastwood asked Seiler a few months before filming began.

"Whenever I go to court," Seiler deadpanned back.

In the movie, walking Uga IV is a routine pleasure for antiques dealer Jim Williams (at left, played by actor Kevin Spacey). John Cusack (at right) plays writer John Berendt, called John Kelso in the movie.

"Seriously," said Eastwood. "I would like you to play the judge. You've got the looks, the voice, you're the right age, and you can advise me on courtroom stuff."

When a Hollywood legend, says, in effect, "Make my day by playing this part in my movie," what's a fella to do? So Sonny Seiler—diehard Georgia football fan, patriarch of UGA mascots, and past president of the State Bar of Georgia—joined the Screen Actors Guild. Also at Eastwood's request, he arranged for Bouhan, Williams & Levy to rent out the first floor of Armstrong House to Warner Brothers for a week of on-location filming last June.

Turning away from the scene out on Bull Street, Seiler tells his secretary he's not to be disturbed—"I'll talk to Vince Dooley and to the attorney general, but no one else"—then plunges into a narrative about Hollywood's take on the events of May 2, 1981, when shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion.

"The film begins with a dark overview of Bonaven-ture Cemetery . . . very spooky. In the distance you will see the statue of the little Bird Girl, which is on the cover of the book," says Seiler, whose thunderous baritone diminishes to a whisper on "very spooky." It's easy to imagine what effect he would have on a police detective or juror when he's face to face with them in court and the fate of his case is hanging in the balance.

"I'm not an actor," says Seiler. But when asked for a preview of what The Movie will be like, he does a full range of voices and dialects from "Midnight" characters of various genders and sexual persuasions. He saunters out in front of his desk, hands tucked inside his waistband, to evoke street hustler Hansford giving Kelso the come-on the first time they see each other. Sonny Seiler doing Danny Hansford! He mimics Lady Chablis, velvet fog voice and all. Sonny Seiler doing Lady Chablis! The coup de grace, taken from the opening sequence of The Movie, is Seiler's rendition of Minerva admonishing a once-human squirrel to vacate her bench in Forsyth Park lest she cast another spell on him:

"Quit ahh-ballin' me, Flavius!" says Seiler in a squawky, demonic voice that seems channeled from Minerva herself. "I knowed you when you was a two-bit hustler on Bull Street." Veteran actor Anthony Heald does a bang-up job on Random House's audio-book version of "Midnight." But let the record show that Seiler could've handled the assignment. Would've worked cheaper, too.

eiler is suddenly out the front door of Armstrong House and halfway down the front steps. He's been asked to explain how Uga V—recent cover dog of Sports Illustrated and the nation's No. 1 collegiate sports mascot—makes his Hollywood debut, and he wants to do it on site.

"Jim Williams and John Kelso have met each other at my office, and they're going out for a breath of fresh air when my secretary stops them about here," says Seiler, pointing to the marble steps. (Seiler later says that he told screenwriter John Lee Hancock, "Uga doesn't live at this law firm," but Hancock wanted the scene done this way.) "Then my secretary says, 'Mr. Williams, would you mind?' and then she hands Kevin Spacey Uga on a leash—just like Jim Williams walks Uga all the time. Cusack, or rather Kelso, rolls his eyes and can't believe it."

Williams and Kelso walk Uga into nearby Forsyth Park, where they encounter Mr. Glover and his make-believe dog. A pretty girl rushes up to them and asks Kelso if he'll take her picture with Uga, who doesn't flinch when she puts her arm around him because the pretty girl is played by Seiler's daughter Bess.

"The next line is priceless," says Seiler. "Probably the best line in the movie. It goes something like this:

Williams:	Neither one of us will ever be as famous as that dog.
Kelso:	Who's that dog?
Williams:	Why, that's Uga, the University of Georgia mascot. He's better known than we'll ever be.

At this point, Seiler turns tour guide himself, walking his visitor two blocks north to Monterey Square, where Jim Williams lived.

"Here's where it all happened," says Seiler, pointing to Mercer House. "Danny Hansford was shot in the study there on the left."

Berendt devotes many more pages to Savannah—and to the strange set of characters he hung out with while writing the book—than to Jim Williams and Danny Hanford. But the shooting is the book's most dramatic element, and it has made Mercer House a constant target of shutter-bugs who snap pictures of the Victorian-style mansion round the clock, as though it were the Texas Book Depository. A woman in a tan skirt and white blouse has just opened the front door, walked out to the sidewalk, and chastised a young man with a camera who has tarried too long at 429 Bull Street.

It's Jim Williams' sister, Dorothy Kingery (PhD '82), who left her position as director of UGA's Institute for Behavioral Research following Williams' death in 1990. She has lived in Mercer House ever since, and she allowed Eastwood and his crew to spend eight days filming scenes there.

"Have you ever done any acting?" Eastwood asked Seiler a few months before filming began. "Whenever I go to court," Seiler deadpanned back.

Among the liberties that Hollywood took with real-life events was injecting Lady Chablis (seated in witness chair) into the Jim Williams trial. "Chablis had no connection to the case," says Seiler. "But Hollywood liked her character, and she did a good job with her part."

eiler's walking tour continues on to Jones Street, two blocks north of Monterey Square, where, in the 100 block, Joe Odom's infamous parties were filmed. "The courtroom scenes were all shot at Soundstage 21 in California on elaborate sets, and Warner Brothers recreated Jim Williams' den in Mercer House to scale for the shooting scene," says Seiler. "But everything in Savannah was shot on location. On nights when these streets were roped off and the crews were shooting, you can't believe how many people were out here . . . "

"I hear that movie's coming out in January," says a well-dressed woman who interrupts Seiler's narrative at the corner of Jones and Drayton.

"Yes, Ma'am, hello!" he says, stopping to chat. "But I believe it's actually coming out in November."

"Not that movie. I mean our movie!"

"Oh, yes, Ma'am. I'm looking forward to seeing it, too."

The discussion is not about "Midnight" but about Robert Altman's new film, "The Gingerbread Man," in which Seiler also has a role. He plays a Savannah attorney whose associates are Kenneth Branagh and Daryl Hannah. The woman at the corner is an extra.

Returning to Armstrong House, which his law firm purchased from Jim Williams, Seiler fetches coffee, then launches into a description of the "Midnight" airport scene where he and Uga and a University of Georgia contingent occupied center stage for an entire day of shooting.

"John Kelso knows I'm totally University of Georgia-oriented and a football nut," says Seiler. "When he finds out I'm going to the Dogs' season opener against Alabama on the eve of the Jim Williams trial, he can't believe it. According to the script, we lose that game to 'Bama, but then there's this great scene at a private airport in Savannah where crowds of Georgia fans have come out to give us a great sendoff to a fictional game in Athens the next week against Notre Dame."

UGA's communications office couldn't have scripted this scene any better than John Lee Hancock and Warner Brothers did. They put a Bulldog decal on the plane and hired a group of Georgia alums—decked out in their best red-and-black football garb—to cheer their lungs out.

"People are waving UGA pennants in the background, and here comes Seiler, struttin' along with Uga on a leash, knowing we're gonna kick ass as always," says Seiler, talking about himself in the third person and as giddy about the scene now as when he watched Eastwood shoot it. "And here's Kelso, begging me not to go because we're at a critical juncture in the Williams case, and he feels I'm coppin' out by leaving town."

When Seiler says, "I'm coppin' out," he's referring to his alter-ego, Jack Thompson, who listened to boxes of cassettes from the actual Williams trials in order to master Seiler's Savannah accent and courtroom style. The airport scene ends on a dramatic note as Thompson—who looks enough like Sonny to be his brother—boards the plane, then turns back to the crowd, breaks into an animated, thumbs-up crouch, and yells at the top of his lungs:

"GO DAWGS!!!"

Watching the scene unfold from his usual position next to camera No. 1, Eastwood had a big smile on his face—and a UGA cap on his head.

Actor Jack Thompson posed with Seiler's real-life granddaughters at an airport scene before a fictional UGA-Notre Dame game.

"I think Clint has produced a very serious movie with a lot of funny situations," says Seiler, who had not previewed The Movie as Georgia Magazine was going to press. "He shot four hours' worth of celluloid and practically had to cut that in half. So I don't know how much of the airport scene actually made it into the movie. What I do know is that it was a hell of a lot of fun to shoot with all those alumni, and it brought great recognition to the University of Georgia."

Seiler was surprised by one aspect of Eastwood's filmmaking style: no rehearsals. He recalls a critical courtroom scene where the Seiler character cross-examines a Savannah detective about whether Danny Hansford's hands were bagged for powder burn tests. Williams claimed Hansford shot at him first, and that he fired back in self-defense. But forensic tests revealed no traces of gunpowder on Hansford's hands.

"When the actors showed up to shoot the scene, they'd never even met, let alone rehearsed," says Seiler. "But you should have seen it unfold. Clint asked them if they were comfortable with their parts and if they had any questions. Then, in a quiet voice, he said, 'Camera No. 1 ready? Camera No. 2 ready? Okay . . . we're . . . rolling.'"

The sequence was so letter-perfect that Eastwood shot it in one take.

"I was paralyzed," says Seiler, who watched from the judge's bench. "These guys are going through this tough dialogue bang-bang-bang and acting up a storm, and, watching them, I've lost track of whether I have any lines. Thank God, I didn't!"

im Williams was found guilty in the first two trials, but both verdicts were thrown out on appeal. Trial No. 3 ended in a hung jury. He was acquitted in trial No. 4—due, in large part, to the discovery of a hospital admission sheet which revealed that police never bagged Danny Hansford's hands. The procedure was done by a hospital nurse hours after the shooting, invalidating police gunshot residue tests which indicated that Hansford never shot a gun—and making Williams' self-defense plea plausible. In real life, the admission sheet was discovered by Seiler and his co-counsel, Atlanta attorney Don Samuel (JD '80), who played a significant role in Williams' acquittal. In The Movie, Kelso makes the discovery after a visit to the morgue with his love interest, Mandy—who, as far as anyone knows, was never involved with John Berendt.

Another example of artistic license is Lady Chablis testifying in court, which amuses Seiler. "Chablis had no connection to the case," he says. "But Hollywood liked her character, and she did a good job with her part."

By concentrating on trial No. 4, which merits only three pages in Berendt's book, Hancock's script is able to do something the book didn't do: make a star out of Jim Williams' cat Shelton. In police photos of the crime scene, Shelton can be seen wandering through the Mercer House living room following the shooting. This helped Seiler refute police claims that the crime scene had been secured, and his character takes full advantage of it in the movie.

"Have you seen that game in the funny papers . . . you know, Where's Waldo?" says Seiler, recreating Jack Thompson's courtroom dialogue. "Well, we're gonna play a game called Where's Shelton? I want you to help me find the cat!

"Berendt was actually thinking of calling his book The Cat Did It," says Seiler. "But Random House had given him a deadline and he was running out of time. He has always regretted not devoting more of the book to the fourth trial."

Watching the scene unfold from his usual position next to camera No. 1, Eastwood had a big smile on his face—and a UGA cap on his head.

n the morning of Jan. 14, 1990, eight months after his acquittal, Jim Williams collapsed at Mercer House and died. His body was found within a few feet of where he would have fallen if Danny Hansford had fired a gun and the bullets had found their mark. Cause of death was listed as congestive heart failure.

The better part of a decade has passed since that day. But with the advent of Eastwood's film version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Williams' cult following will increase exponentially, as will the number of shutter-bugs firing away at Mercer House. Dorothy Kingery may want to invest in a stun gun.

Asked if the book and movie portray Savannah accurately, Seiler, a native Savannahian, rephrases the question: "You mean, 'Is Savannah crazy?' Yes. 'Do we have all these crazy people?' We have our share. But L.A. has 50 times as many. It just seems more prevalent in Savannah because of our genteel history and because people all know one another here. If all these things happened in one year, it would be remarkable. But John Berendt went back over a number of years and pulled events together as though they happened in the short period of time he was down here. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is his perception of what it's like to live in Savannah . . . but he's not far wrong."

You can't spell "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" without G-E-O-R-G-I-A
NAME	OCCUPATION	MOVIE ROLE *	NOTES
Sonny Seiler (BBA '56, JD '57)	Savannah attorney, past president of UGA National Alumni Assoc., Uga V's owner	Plays the judge who heard final Williams trial	Clint Eastwood asked him to play the role and give advice on courtroom action.
Uga V	UGA's mascot	Plays Uga IV	Jim Williams walks him through Forsyth Park and tells writer John Kelso that neither of them will ever be as famous as Uga.
Mo Fetzer (BS '56)	Works for Savannah chemical company	Not in film, but . . .	College chum of Seiler's who was the inspiration for the Luther Driggers character—who plays the jury foreman in the movie. Eastwood considered casting him in the role.
Buck Belue (M '80)	Sportscaster, WJCL, Savannah	Plays himself	Announces score of fictional Georgia-Notre Dame game.
EXTRAS Forsyth Park scene with Uga IV: Sonny Seiler's daughter, Bess Thompson Airport scene when writer John Kelso arrives in Savannah: Myrna Smith (BSEd '62, MEd '64) and Jonathan Lane, son of Remer Y. Lane Jr. (see below) Scene at Seiler's law office: Peter Muller (ABJ '84, JD '87) and Remer Y. Lane Jr. (BBA '64) Christmas party scene at Jim Williams' mansion: Williams' niece, Susan Kingery (BFA '83), Amy Chambers (BFA '91), Clark Deriso (BS '65), and Dick Richardson (JD '49) are just a few of the alums in this scene. How many can you spot? Airport scene when Seiler and Uga IV leave Savannah for fictional Georgia-Notre Dame game: Bob Argo (BBA '50), wife Jean, and daughters Amy Argo Cowsert (BSHE '85) and Marty Argo Kemp (BSHE '90); Seiler's wife Cecelia, daughter Swann Seiler Brannon (ABJ '78) and Charlie Brannon (AB '77, JD '80), daughter Sara Seiler Story, son Charles Seiler (AB '83) and wife Wendy; granddaughters Margaret Story and Sara Thompson; and the Lane family, including son Brinson. * At press time, it wasn't clear which scenes would actually be included in the final cut of the film.

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