clint eastwood , in his ripe old age , is cashing one talent in for another . 
midnight in the garden of good and evil is an eastwood-directed film clint isn't even in , and it's damn good . 
adapted from a best-selling john berendt novel based on true events , this movie is set in the bizarre georgia town of savannah , where people walk invisible dogs and attach horseflies to their head . 
and that's just the mayor . 
as director and producer , eastwood contributes a self- indulgent but very competent 150 minutes , neatly balancing drama , suspense and humor . 
like all great movies , midnight in the garden has a lot of funny moments that spring from the characters themselves , and not from some contrived , juvenile intrusion . 
the acting , from big-time stars john cusack and kevin spacey , is as good as you'd expect , but it's the supporting stable that gives the movie its offbeat charm . 
cusack plays a free-lance reporter sent to savannah to write a fluff story for town & country magazine about one of eccentric millionaire spacey's parties . 
lots of food , beverages and gunplay . 
yes , an employee of spacey's has a huge argument in front of cusack and later turns up dead . 
it seems like a simple matter of self- defense -- the guy threatened spacey , shot at him , missed , then spacey took him out -- but being a movie , there's much more to it than that , and cusack decides to stay in town and write a book about the murder , a book which will eventually become a movie he will star in . 
the weird circle of entertainment . 
this is where the stable of supporting characters comes in . 
there's the requisite sexy woman ( alison " nepotist's daughter " eastwood ) , the strange piano player , the voodoo woman and the transvestite . 
miss chablis deserves a paragraph of his/her own , as the stealer of every scene she appears in -- what would this movie be without the castilian scene and her testimony ? 
chablis , playing herself , is five times funnier than reigning drag queen rupaul , but never seems exploited as the movie's comic relief or out of place in a basically serious movie . 
there are also a fair share of courtroom scenes , which these days almost never seem welcome in a movie , but even here clint manages to keep the movie fascinating . 
certainly the characterizations of the judge and spacey's lawyer both help immensely , as does having the fly-guy as the jury's foreman . 
it's here we realize the case boils down to an indictment of spacey's homosexuality . 
yes , spacey had a sexual relationship with the dead man -- before he shot him , of course . 
midnight in the garden of good and evil isn't a classic , but it is one of the better celebrity-directed , true-story best-seller adaptations out there . 
likewise , no one from this movie will be getting any oscar nominations , but the performances are all great . 
in fact , i'd almost recommend that the academy add a best supporting transvestite category . 
serving america for more than 1/25th of a century !