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.

Several real-life Savannah locals appear in the movie, notably in the Christmas party scene at Mercer House,[4] including Williams's sister, Dorothy Kingery, and nieces Susan and Amanda,[5] as well as Georgia senator John R. "Jack" Riley (his wife was played by Mary Alice Hendrix).

The panoramic tale of Savannah's eccentricities focuses on a deadly shooting and the subsequent trial of Jim Williams, a self-made man, art collector, antiques dealer, bon vivant, and semi-closeted homosexual.

John Kelso, a magazine reporter from New York with one book—Before the Fall—to his name, flies to Savannah, amid beautiful architecture and odd doings, to write a feature for Town & Country on one of Williams's acclaimed Christmas parties.

[9] En route to Savannah's Jones Street, via a tour of the city's tourist hotspots, Kelso alights at Forsyth Park.

During the course of the evening, Kelso meets Emma Kelly, named the "Lady of 6,000 Songs" by Savannah's own Johnny Mercer,[10] Harry Cram, the former silent-film actress Serena Dawes and Williams's mother, Blanche.

After explaining Hanson's situation to Kelso, Williams sits down and plays "Jeepers Creepers" on the organ, demonstrating that he uses it to drown out the sound of his neighbour Lorne Atwell's dog.

Along the way, he meets some characters: the irrepressible The Lady Chablis, a transgender entertainer; Luther Driggers, a man who keeps flies attached to strings on his lapels and threatens daily to poison the water supply; the members of the Married Woman's Card Club; and Minerva, a spiritualist and root doctor, based on real-life Valerie Boles.

[12] Between becoming Williams's friend, a love interest of Mandy (whom he discovers is a torch singer), meeting every eccentric in Savannah, participating in Minerva's midnight graveyard rituals, and helping solve the mysteries surrounding Hanson's death, Kelso has his hands full.

Kelso discovers that the bagging of Hanson's hands was performed by a nurse at Candler Hospital, when it should have been done at the crime scene instead.

When Williams becomes confident he can win his case on a matter of flawed police procedure, he falsely testifies to killing Hanson with return fire in self-defense.

This disappoints Kelso, to whom Williams has confessed he executed Hanson in retaliation for attempting to shoot him with the gun's safety catch on.

As Kelso is leaving town, when saying goodbye to Williams in the Mercer House study, he asks one last question for the book: Does he want to tell him what really happened?

"With the steering wheel and gas and clutch on the opposite side, I thought I was going to kill a bunch of background actors that day.

"[19] Flavis, the squirrel Minerva talks to on the Forsyth Park bench at the beginning of the movie, was a trained animal.

Williams's real life attorney, Sonny Seiler, played Samuel L. White, the presiding judge of the trial.

'"[23] Seiler's daughter, Bess Thompson, appears in the movie as the "pretty girl"[24] in Forsyth Park who asks if she can have her picture taken with Uga.

[25] Advertising for the film became a source of controversy when Warner Bros. used elements of Jack Leigh's famous photograph in the posters without permission, infringing copyright law.

[25] When it came to the Christmas party scenes, the house contained so many valuable pieces of art and furniture that it presented a security problem.

[6] John Kelso is shown being welcomed by Mrs. Baxter to the Italianate house at 2 East Taylor Street — the 1880-built former home of Hugh Comer (1842–1900), president of Central of Georgia Railroad, on the square's northeastern ward.

Kelso does not stay there in the movie, however; his carriage-house apartment was built on a soundstage in Burbank, California,[29] with backdrops outside his windows provided by J. C. Backings.

Establishing window shots from inside the carriage house were filmed across from 115 East Jones Street, which Joe Odom was looking after for its owner, who was in New York.

)[30] Kelso's six-month rental, shown at the end of the film, is 218 West Jones Street, which is now valued at over $1.15 million.

[31] The scenes at Sonny Seiler's offices were filmed at the Armstrong House, 447 Bull Street, south of Monterey Square and close to the northern edge of Forsyth Park.

[32] In 2017, Bouhan Falligant LLP moved to One West Park Avenue[33] after developer Richard C. Kessler bought Armstrong House.

The Married Woman's Card Club is at 126 East Gaston Street, now known as Granite Hall and part of SCAD.

Churchill's Pub was located at 9 Drayton Street at the time of filming, but it was damaged in a fire six years later and closed.

Bonaventure Cemetery, on the city's eastern edge, is featured on several occasions, including for the funeral service of Jim Williams which was shot near Johnny Mercer's burial site.

The site's consensus states: "Clint Eastwood's spare directorial style proves an ill fit for this Southern potboiler, which dutifully trudges through its mystery while remaining disinterested in the cultural flourishes that gave its source material its sense of intrigue.

I had offered [Spacey] recordings so he could listen to Jim Williams talking to me, regaling me with stories while sitting in his living room in Mercer House.