Courtroom drama Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil based on a book by John Berendt with music by Johnny Mercer allows a range of jazz singers to tackle the great songwriter’s work and catch a cameo by saxophonist James Moody playing a man walking an invisible dog. The film, however, could make some of the book’s characters seem just too eccentric, says Mike Ausden

Clint Eastwood is undoubtedly one of Hollywood’s most committed patrons of jazz. Alongside collaborations with the likes of Lalo Schifrin and Lennie Niehaus, the director and occasional jazz pianist has paid tribute to several icons of American music, notably the bebop legend Charlie Parker (in the biopic Bird), the pianist Erroll Garner in Play Misty For Me (1971), and the singer Johnny Hartman in The Bridges Of Madison County (2000).

For his 1997 murder mystery Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil Eastwood tipped his hat to that giant of the American Songbook, Johnny Mercer.All the songs featured in the film were penned exclusively by Mercer and re-recorded for the film by some of the biggest names in vocal jazz, including Joe Williams, Cassandra Wilson and Rosemary Clooney. Several other singers not inclined ordinarily to jazz lend their vocal talents to the soundtrack, among them Alison Krauss, Paula Cole and k.d lang.

An adaptation of the bestselling novel by John Berendt, Midnight is both a conventional courtroom drama and an offbeat portrait of the deep south. Journalist John Kelso (played by John Cusack) is sent by his New York-based magazine to the town of Savannah in Georgia to report on the notorious Christmas party season. His host is Jim Williams (Kevin Spacey), a millionaire antiques dealer with a penchant for voodoo mysticism.

After one particularly debauched party, Jim’s gay lover (Jude Law) is shot dead in mysterious circumstances and Jim is charged with murder. As the trial gets underway Kelso decides to conduct his own investigations into the murder in an attempt to clear Jim’s name. His research brings him right to the heart of Savannah’s extraordinary world of southern eccentricity.
He meets a transsexual entertainer, a man with bees harnessed to the hairs on his head by strings, a man walking an invisible dog (a cameo performance by Savannah saxophone jazz legend James Moody) and a voodoo priestess. As he tries to unravel the events leading up to the murder he becomes increasingly side-tracked by these strange characters.

Mike Ausden