Midnight Cowboy

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Template:Infobox Film Midnight Cowboy is a 1969 film written by Waldo Salt based on the novel by James Leo Herlihy, and directed by John Schlesinger. It stars Dustin Hoffman, and newcomer Jon Voight in the title role. An assortment of much smaller roles are filled by Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Barnard Hughes, Ruth White, Jennifer Salt (the screenwriter's daughter), and Bob Balaban.

The film is the only X-rated film to win the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. Both Hoffman and Voight were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. For Hoffman, the role enabled him to avoid any typecasting due to his previous role in The Graduate and began his reputation as an actor of considerable dramatic range.

In 1971 the film was re-submitted to the MPAA ratings board in anticipation of a re-release. This time the board granted it an "R" rating. The re-released version of the film was identical to the original.

The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

John Barry, who supervised the music for the film, won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Theme. The film featured the song "Everybody's Talkin'", written by Fred Neil and sung by Harry Nilsson, which won a Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance; Schlesinger chose that song over "I Guess The Lord Must Be In New York City", which Nilsson had written specifically for the film. (Other songs considered for the movie included Randy Newman's "Cowboy", and reportedly Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay".) The song "He Quit Me" was also on the soundtrack; it was written by Warren Zevon, who also included it (as "She Quit Me") on his debut album Wanted Dead or Alive.

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Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film follows the story of a young Texan named Joe Buck (Jon Voight) who dresses like a rodeo cowboy. (As he tells people he meets, "I ain't a for-real cowboy, but I am a hell of a stud!") He heads to New York City in the hope of leading the life of a kept man. His naïveté becomes evident as quickly as his cash disappears. He is soon forced to hustle for a meager living as a "midnight cowboy" with a clientele that is the opposite (in affluence, and often gender) of the wealthy women he had originally set out to attract.

He meets the lame, scraggly Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), who first cons him out of $20, but after they cross paths a second time, they begin a partnership, with Ratso working as Buck's "manager". Over the course of the rest of the film the two deal with the realities of all-but-homeless street life (living in an abandoned building waiting to be torn down), suspended briefly by a foray into a Warhol-esque party scene (with some of the Warhol superstars in cameo appearances). They form a friendship, none too soon for Ratso, who becomes increasingly dependent upon Joe as mounting health problems (probably including tuberculosis) begin to take their toll on him. Joe wants to take Ratso to a doctor, but he spurns the offer, not wanting to end up in Bellevue Hospital or someplace worse, and Ratso dreams of leaving New York for Florida before winter comes.

The events of Joe Buck's life are told in mostly chronological order, interspersed by flashbacks or daydream sequences which hint at his back-story. The only people Joe ever cared about were his grandmother Sally, who raised him but died while he was away serving in the Army, and his onetime girlfriend, a "loose" girl called Crazy Annie, who was committed to a mental hospital after the two were caught together. Losing them both had left Joe completely alone in the world. Ratso Rizzo's story comes mostly through things he tells Joe; his father was an illiterate shoe shiner who worked at a subway station, developed a bad back, and "coughed his lungs out breathin' in that wax every day!" Ratso learned shining from his father, but he refused to follow (such as he could, with a bad leg) in the old man's footsteps.

Ultimately, Ratso collapses, unable to walk at all, as winter sets in. Joe beats and robs a customer to raise the money to take them to Florida, where Ratso can hopefully recover in the warm weather and Joe can find honest work. They leave on a southbound bus, with Joe discarding his cowboy clothes enroute, but Ratso dies as they approach Miami. Joe is alone once more, and wary of the future.

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Trivia

Rizzo the Rat, a street-wise but pesky Muppet, was named by Frank Oz after Hoffman's character (according to Steve Whitmire the puppeteer behind his performances).
The line "I'm walkin' here!", which reached #27 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes, is often said to have been improvised. Despite popular belief, Producer Jerome Hellman's comments on the 2-disk DVD set of Midnight Cowboy discredit this account. The cab which runs into Dustin Hoffman was driven by a hired actor during a scipted take. The Production team filmed it to look like an ad-lib.
Opening scenes filmed in Big Spring, Texas
There is an echo of the tubercular Doc Holliday in con-man Rizzo. But in this sly modern version of the myth, Holliday's real-life loyal companions, prostitute Big Nose Kate and archetypal "cowboy" Wyatt Earp have been rolled up into a single memorable composite.