Midnight Cowboy

Midnight Cowboy is a 1969 American buddy drama film, based on the 1965 novel of the same name by James Leo Herlihy. The film was written by Waldo Salt, directed by John Schlesinger, and stars Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, with notable smaller roles being filled by Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Bob Balaban, Jennifer Salt, and Barnard Hughes. Set in New York City, Midnight Cowboy depicts the unlikely friendship between two hustlers: naïve sex worker Joe Buck (Voight), and ailing con man "Ratso" Rizzo (Hoffman).

This article is about the 1969 film. For the novel upon which this film is based, see Midnight Cowboy (novel). For other uses, see Midnight Cowboy (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Urban Cowboy.
Midnight Cowboy
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJohn Schlesinger
Produced byJerome Hellman
Screenplay byWaldo Salt
Based onMidnight Cowboy
by James Leo Herlihy
Starring
Music byJohn Barry
CinematographyAdam Holender
Edited byHugh A. Robertson
Production
company
Jerome Hellman Productions
Mist Entertainment
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release date
  • May 25, 1969 (1969-05-25)
Running time
113 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$3.2 million[1]
Box office$44.8 million[2]

At the 42nd Academy Awards, the film won three awards: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Midnight Cowboy is the only X-rated film ever to win Best Picture.[3][4] It has since been placed 36th on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American films of all time, and 43rd on its 2007 updated version.

In 1994, Midnight Cowboy was deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.[5]

Plot

Joe Buck, a young Texan working as a dishwasher, quits his job and heads to New York City to become a male prostitute. Initially unsuccessful, he manages to bed a middle-aged woman, Cass, in her posh Park Avenue apartment. The encounter ends badly as he gives her money after she is insulted and throws a tantrum when he requests payment.

Joe meets Enrico Salvatore "Ratso" Rizzo, a con man with a limp who takes $20 from him by ostensibly introducing him to a pimp. After discovering that the man is actually an unhinged homosexual religious fanatic, Joe flees in pursuit of Ratso but cannot find him. Joe spends his days wandering the city and sitting in his hotel room. Soon broke, he is locked out of his hotel room and his belongings are impounded.

Joe tries to make money by receiving oral sex from a young man in a movie theater, but learns after the act that the young man has no money. Joe threatens him and asks for his watch, but eventually lets him go unharmed. The next day, Joe spots Ratso and angrily shakes him down. Ratso offers to share the apartment in a condemned building where he is squatting. Joe reluctantly accepts his offer, and they begin a "business relationship" as hustlers. As they develop a bond, Ratso's health grows steadily worse.

In a flashback, Joe's grandmother raises him after his mother abandons him. He also has a tragic relationship with Annie, a mentally unstable girl. The film has successive flashbacks to an experience in which he and Annie were jumped while naked in a parked car and both raped by a gang of cowboys. The viewer gains more information about the experience as the flashbacks accumulate.

Ratso tells Joe his father was an illiterate Italian immigrant shoeshiner whose job led to a bad back and lung damage from long-term exposure to shoe polish. Ratso learned shoeshining from his father but considers it degrading and generally refuses to do it, although he does shine Joe's cowboy boots to help him attract clients. Ratso harbors hopes of moving to Miami, shown in daydreams in which he and Joe frolic carefree on a beach and are surrounded by dozens of adoring middle-aged women.

A Warhol-like silent artsy filmmaker/photographer (Hansel McAlbertson) and an outgoing passionate female artist (Gretel McAlbertson) approach Joe in a diner and take his Polaroid photograph and hand him a flyer inviting him to a Warhol-esque happening/party, that fleetingly incorporates some of the Warhol Superstars, including Viva, Isabelle Collin Dufresne (aka Ultra Violet), Taylor Mead, Joe Dallesandro and the Warhol-related filmmaker Paul Morrissey.[6] Joe and Ratso attend, but Ratso's poor health and hygiene attract unwanted attention from several guests. Joe mistakes a joint for a cigarette and starts to hallucinate after taking several long puffs, along with some "uppers" he is offered. He leaves the party with Shirley, a socialite who agrees to pay him $20 for spending the night, but Joe cannot perform sexually. They play Scribbage together and the resulting wordplay leads Shirley to suggest that Joe may be gay; suddenly he is able to perform. The next morning, she sets up her friend as Joe's next client and it appears that his career is finally taking off.

When Joe returns home, Ratso is bedridden and feverish. He refuses medical help and begs Joe to put him on a bus to Florida. Desperate, Joe picks up a man in an amusement arcade and robs him during a violent encounter in the man's hotel room where Joe brutally beats the man (it is implied that Joe may have killed the man). Joe buys bus tickets with the money so he and Ratso can board a bus to Florida. During the trip, Ratso's health deteriorates further as he becomes incontinent and sweat-drenched.

At a rest stop, Joe buys new clothing for Ratso and himself and discards his cowboy outfit. On the bus, Joe muses that there must be easier ways to earn a living than hustling, and tells Ratso he plans to get a regular job in Florida. When Ratso fails to respond, Joe realizes that he has died. The driver tells Joe there is nothing to do but continue to Miami and asks Joe to close Ratso's eyelids. Joe, with tears welling in his eyes, sits with his arm around his dead friend, alone.

Cast

Production

The opening scenes were filmed in Big Spring, Texas. A roadside billboard, stating "IF YOU DON'T HAVE AN OIL WELL...GET ONE!" was shown as the New York-bound bus carrying Joe Buck rolled through Texas.[7] Such advertisements, common in the Southwestern United States in the late 1960s and through the 1970s, promoted Eddie Chiles's Western Company of North America.[8] In the film, Joe stays at the Hotel Claridge, at the southeast corner of Broadway and West 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan. His room overlooked the northern half of Times Square.[9] The building, designed by D. H. Burnham & Company and opened in 1911, was demolished in 1972.[10] A motif featured three times throughout the New York scenes was the sign at the top of the facade of the Mutual of New York (MONY) Building at 1740 Broadway.[7] It was extended into the Scribbage scene with Shirley the socialite, when Joe's incorrect spelling of the word "money" matched that of the signage.[11]

Despite his portrayal of Joe Buck, a character hopelessly out of his element in New York, Jon Voight is a native New Yorker, hailing from Yonkers.[12] Dustin Hoffman, who played a grizzled veteran of New York's streets, is from Los Angeles.[13][14] Voight was paid "scale", or the Screen Actors Guild minimum wage, for his portrayal of Joe Buck, a concession he willingly made to obtain the part.[15]

The character of Shirley, the bohemian socialite Joe hooks up with was allegedly based on socialite and Warhol Superstar Edie Sedgwick.

The line "I'm walkin' here!", which reached No. 27 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes, is often said to have been improvised, but producer Jerome Hellman disputes this account on the 2-disc DVD set of Midnight Cowboy. Although the scene, which originally had Ratso pretend to be hit by a taxi to feign an injury, is written into the first draft of the original script,[16] Hoffman's version explained it differently on an installment of Bravo's Inside the Actors Studio. He stated that there were many takes to hit the traffic light just right so that they would not have to pause while walking. In that take, the timing was perfect, but a cab nearly hit them. Hoffman wanted to say, "We're filming a movie here!", but stayed in character, allowing the take to be used.[17]

Upon initial review by the Motion Picture Association of America, Midnight Cowboy received a "Restricted" ("R") rating. However, after consulting with a psychologist, executives at United Artists were told to accept an "X" rating, due to the "homosexual frame of reference" and its "possible influence upon youngsters.” The film was released with an X rating.[1] The MPAA later broadened the requirements for the "R" rating to allow more content and raised the age restriction from sixteen to seventeen. The film was later rated "R" for a reissue in 1971. It retains its R rating.[1][18]

Reception

Critical response to the film has been largely positive; Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune said of the film: "I cannot recall a more marvelous pair of acting performances in any one film."[19] In a 25th anniversary retrospective in 1994, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly wrote: "Midnight Cowboy's peep-show vision of Manhattan lowlife may no longer be shocking, but what is shocking, in 1994, is to see a major studio film linger this lovingly on characters who have nothing to offer the audience but their own lost souls."[20]

Midnight Cowboy currently holds an 89% approval rating on online review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 8.41/10, based on 73 reviews. The website's critical consensus states: "John Schlesinger's gritty, unrelentingly bleak look at the seedy underbelly of urban American life is undeniably disturbing, but Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight's performances make it difficult to turn away."[21]

Box office

The film opened at the Coronet Theatre in New York City and grossed a house record $61,503 in its first week.[22] In its tenth week of release, the film became number one in the United States with a weekly gross of $550,237[23] and was the highest-grossing movie in September 1969.[24] The film earned $11 million in rentals in the United States and Canada in 1969[25] and added a further $5.3 million the following year when it was nominated and won the Academy Award for Best Picture.[26] It eventually earned rentals of $20.5 million.[27]

Accolades
Award Year Category Recipient Result
42nd Academy Awards 1970 Best Picture Jerome Hellman Won
Best Director John Schlesinger Won
Best Actor Dustin Hoffman Nominated
Best Actor Jon Voight Nominated
Best Supporting Actress Sylvia Miles Nominated
Best Adapted Screenplay Waldo Salt Won
Best Film Editing Hugh A. Robertson Nominated
23rd British Academy Film Awards 1970 Best Film Jerome Hellman Won
Best Direction John Schlesinger Won
Best Actor in a Leading Role Dustin Hoffman Won
Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles Jon Voight Won
Best Screenplay Waldo Salt Won
Best Editing Hugh A. Robertson Won
Berlin International Film Festival 1969 Golden Bear John Schlesinger Nominated
OCIC Award Won
David di Donatello Awards 1970 Best Foreign Director John Schlesinger Won
David di Donatello for Best Foreign Actor Dustin Hoffman Won
New York Film Critics Circle 1969 Best Actor Jon Voight Won
Directors Guild of America 1969 Outstanding Directing John Schlesinger Won
Writers Guild of America Awards 1969 Best Adapted Screenplay Waldo Salt Won

Soundtrack

John Barry composed the score, winning a Grammy for Best Instrumental Theme, though he did not receive an on-screen credit.[28] Fred Neil's song "Everybody's Talkin'" won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Vocal Performance, Male for Harry Nilsson. Schlesinger chose the song as its theme, and the song underscores the first act. Other songs considered for the theme included Nilsson's own "I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City" and Randy Newman's "Cowboy". Bob Dylan wrote "Lay Lady Lay" to serve as the theme song, but did not finish it in time.[29] The movie's main theme, "Midnight Cowboy", featured harmonica by Toots Thielemans, but on its album version it was played by Tommy Reilly. The soundtrack album was released by United Artists Records in 1969.[30] The title music from Midnight Cowboy and some of the incidental cues were included in the documentary ToryBoy The Movie in 2011.

Theme song
  • John Barry's version, used on the soundtrack, charted at #116 in 1969.
  • Johnny Mathis's rendition, the only one containing lyrics, reached #20 on the U.S. Adult Contemporary chart in the fall of 1969.
  • Ferrante & Teicher's version, by far the most successful, reached #10 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, #2 Easy Listening chart.[31] Outside the US, it went to #11 in Canada[32] and #91 in Australia[33] in 1970.
  • Faith No More released their version as the final track on their 1992 album Angel Dust.

Charts
Chart (1970) Position
Australia (Kent Music Report)[33] 22

Certifications
Region CertificationCertified units/sales
United States (RIAA)[34] Gold 500,000^

^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

See also

References
  1. Balio, Tino (1987). United Artists: The Company That Changed the Film Industry. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 292. ISBN 9780299114404.
  2. "Midnight Cowboy". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on January 30, 2012. Retrieved February 26, 2012.
  3. Mitchell, David (2014). "Gay Pasts and Disability Future(s) Tense". Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies. 8 (1): 1–16. doi:10.3828/jlcds.2014.1. S2CID 145241198.
  4. Ditmore, Melissa Hope (2006). "Midnight Cowboy". Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work. 1. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 307–308. ISBN 9780313329685.
  5. "Complete National Film Registry Listing". National Film Registry. The Library of Congress. Archived from the original on October 31, 2016. Retrieved January 24, 2017.
  6. Blake Gopnik, Warhol: A Life as Art London: Allen Lane. March 5, 2020. ISBN 978-0-241-00338-1 p. 629
  7. Chris (October 5, 2006). "Midnight Cowboy locations". Exquisitely Bored in Nacogdoches. Archived from the original on January 6, 2015. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
  8. Popik, Barry (August 22, 2007). "The Big Apple: "If you don't have an oil well, get one!" (Eddie Chiles of Western Company)". The Big Apple. Archived from the original on March 19, 2015. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
  9. "Midnight Cowboy Film Locations". On the Set of New York. Archived from the original on January 7, 2015. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
  10. "Hotel Claridge, New York City". Skyscraper Page. Skyscraper Source Media. Archived from the original on March 26, 2015. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
  11. "Midnight Cowboy (1969)". AMC Filmsite. AMC Network Entertainment. Archived from the original on February 14, 2015. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
  12. Votruba, Martin. "Jon Voight". Slovak Studies Program. University of Pittsburgh. Archived from the original on February 19, 2015. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
  13. Smith, Grady (August 10, 2012). "Monitor: August 10, 2012". Entertainment Weekly. Time. p. 27. Missing or empty |url= (help)
  14. "The Birth of Dustin Hoffman". California Birth Records, 1905 Thru 1995. Archived from the original on November 29, 2014. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
  15. "Voight Worked for Scale for 'Midnight Cowboy' Role". The Denver Post. Digital First Media. Associated Press. August 29, 2013. Retrieved August 29, 2013.
  16. "Midnight Cowboy by Waldo Salt; Based on a novel by James Leo Herlihy; Draft: 2/2/68". Archived from the original on 2018-11-30. Retrieved 2018-11-21.
  17. Onda, David. "Greatest Unscripted Movie Moments". Xfinity. Archived from the original on August 17, 2012. Retrieved September 20, 2012.
  18. Monaco, Paul (2001). History of the American Cinema: 1960–1969. The Sixties. 8. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 166. ISBN 9780520238046.
  19. Siskel, Gene (October 15, 1999). "The Movie Reviews". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on July 1, 2014. Retrieved July 16, 2018.
  20. Gleiberman, Owen (March 4, 1994). "Midnight Cowboy". Entertainment Weekly. Time. Archived from the original on June 15, 2018. Retrieved July 16, 2018.
  21. "Midnight Cowboy (1969)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Archived from the original on September 20, 2019. Retrieved March 12, 2020.
  22. "'Men' Meek $17,219 on Slow B'way; But 'Cowboy' Tall $54,460 2d., 'West' Fast $54,324 in 2 Sites, 'Che' 52G". Variety. June 11, 1969. p. 8.
  23. "50 Top-Grossing Films". Variety. August 13, 1969. p. 11.
  24. Wear, Mike (October 8, 1969). "Sept. Totals Soar to High Plateau; 'Cowboy,' 'True Grit,' 'Easy Rider,' 'Daddy,' 'Oliver,' 'Curious' Leaders". Variety. p. 7.
  25. "Big Rental Films of 1969". Variety. January 7, 1970. p. 15. Retrieved July 16, 2018.
  26. Fredrick, Robert B. (January 6, 1971). "Top 10 Films Yield 40% Of Rentals". Variety. p. 11.
  27. Cohn, Lawrence (October 15, 1990). "All-Time Film Rental Champs". Variety. p. M172.
  28. "Midnight Cowboy (1969)". IMDb. Archived from the original on March 16, 2014. Retrieved March 14, 2014.
  29. Heylin, Clinton (1991). Dylan: Behind The Shades: The Biography. New York: Viking Books. p. 193. ISBN 978-0-6708-36024.
  30. "Midnight Cowboy — John Barry". Music Files. Archived from the original on August 16, 2016. Retrieved July 18, 2016.
  31. Whitburn, Joel (2002). Top Adult Contemporary: 1961-2001. Record Research. p. 91.
  32. "RPM Top 100 Singles - January 17, 1970" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on June 12, 2012. Retrieved February 19, 2019.
  33. Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992 (illustrated ed.). St Ives, N.S.W.: Australian Chart Book. p. 110. ISBN 0-646-11917-6.
  34. "American album certifications – John Barry – Midnight Cowboy". Recording Industry Association of America. If necessary, click Advanced, then click Format, then select Album, then click SEARCH. 
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