Midnight Cowboy

I had no idea how grim and dire the situation would be with the guys living in a squat etc.

It was much more about the relationship between Rizzo and the Cowboy than the hustling.

...and I thought it was a happy ending having seen scenes on the bus of them going to Florida. I was shocked.

I am surprised (and pleased) no one has tried to re-make this.

[quote]I am surprised (and pleased) no one has tried to re-make this.

I thought the same thing when I watched it recently too. Give it time though. Something tells me there's already a script in the pipeline. Hollywood is bankrupt when it comes to creativity.

The real surprise is that Sylvia Miles got an Oscar nomination for playing blowsy self.

Oh, please don't let them do a remake. They'll ruin it.

I have a difficult time watching this movie. It's one of the most depressing movies I've ever seen and it leaves me in a horrible funk for days afterwards.

Who the hell do you think you're dealing with reply 3, some old slut on 42nd Street? In case you didn't happen to notice it, she's one helluva gorgeous chick!

r4%0D %0D really? get a life

Only X rated movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. "A Clockwork Orange" was the second to be nominated.

"Why are you here?"

I dunno?

"Who brought you?"

I dunno?

You can't spoil a movie that old.

Wonderful film score to this movie- it really captures Joe Buck's naivete and sadness.%0D %0D Anyone ever read the Herlihy novel it is based on? I wonder if the movie is closely similar in tone (or not).%0D %0D

I just wish they hadn't wimped out and had Voigt kiss a girl in the theater when he was on the 'date' with the nerdy gay guy.%0D %0D

Fans of this movie should read the book it was based on. The book really fleshes out the characters of Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo and clears up some things in the movie that are somewhat hard to understand, like the girl in the flashbacks. The books completely explains Joe's relationship with her and its horrible ending.

I recently read the book, and it's just as depressing.

The book is quite good and not very long. Most people could easily read it in an afternoon.

Thank you, R12, I will- the books sounds like a great read. Midnight Cowboy is my favorite movie of all time.

[quote]The books completely explains Joe's relationship with her and its horrible ending.

Do tell, R12. I doubt I'll get around to reading it.

That "nerdy gay guy" was Bob Balaban.

I saw it again a few years ago and I was kind of shocked that Joe couldn't make a go of the hustling. One or two weak attempts and then he gives up? It seemed unrealistic to me.

That girl in the flashback was Jennifer Salt of "Sisters" and the daughter of Midnight Cowboy's screenplay Waldo salt for which he won the Oscar.

Did Voight also win an oscar?

Someone spill. What was the backstory with the girl?

This movie affected me like few other movies have. Stylistically, I found a lot of comparisons between it and "Milk."

The book supposedly makes it clear that Joe and Ratzo were gay lovers.

The X rating was because of all of the homo content/suggestion in the movie. Life magazine critic Richard Schickel was thoroughly disgusted by it!

I don't think they could remake it unless they set it in the 70s or 80s.

Hustling just doesn't have the same cache when it's being conducted over the internets.

R20 not for this though he was nominated. He won for COMING HOME almost a decade later.

There was a remake. They called it My Own Private Idaho.

R21 - I haven't read the book in years, so my memory is a little shaky on some points.

In the book, Joe Buck was raised by a crazy grandmother who had all sorts of shady people hanging around. One colorful friend of the grandmother was a gay Native American guy. It was implied that during a drunken party that Joe Buck and his teenaged girlfriend were drugged and both sexually attacked. The GF later died; I THINK it was suicide.

The Indian guy's name was Tombaby Barefoot and it was implied that he was attracted to Joe Buck. The book was ambiguous but it seemed that Tombaby (along with some friends) may have raped JB during a drug and alcohol fueled party.

Aren't there flashes to a sexual assault on Joe Buck in the opening sequence? I don't remember that being explained in the movie, although the backstory above fills it in.

There were flashes to a rape several times throughout the film.

No explanation but Joe's behavior to me was an explanation. His need to validate himself via money for sex.

I think I heard once that Dustin Hoffman's famous "I'm walkin' here!" scene was not scripted - I don't know if that's true, but I've seen this movie so many times that I've noticed he even SOUNDS like he's stepping out of character and just being himself during that moment. Anyway I love this movie and still watch it sometimes late night on cable - those flashback scenes that Joe Buck has are so haunting.

[quote]I think I heard once that Dustin Hoffman's famous "I'm walkin' here!" scene was not scripted %0D %0D Yes, it's true. Not THAT fantastic an improvisation.%0D %0D John Schlesinger had a hip young boyfriend who turned him onto all the cool music that was used in the film, including Everybody's Talkin'.

The Oscar that year went to John Wayne in "True Grit". Voight and Hoffman were both nominated also. Wayne got the sympathy vote. It should have gone to Hoffman.

[quote]Not THAT fantastic an improvisation.

True R32, it's just something that I think is slightly amusing when it happens.

Here's one of the songs from the soundtrack that I love. With more exposure, it may have been a Fifth Dimension/Carpenters type hit pop song. I know it's MOR, but I like it anyway.

That's a really nice one too, R34.%0D I'm sort of glad that it didn't become a mainstream hit single.%0D %0D It's reminding me that circa 1969 lots of people had the LP.%0D %0D I know my parents did and it was played in our house for years. Long before I was old enough to actually see the film.%0D %0D Do people still buy soundtrack albums the way they used to, in any form? I can't remember the last time I saw a film and thought 'Must buy the soundtrack'.

[quote]I'm sort of glad that it didn't become a mainstream hit single.

Now that I think of it, I agree with you R35.

I don't think soundtracks have had as big an impact in recent years - it doesn't help that a lot of the music these days is crappy.

Joe Buck was never sexually assaulted in the book. He WAS frequently in humiliating sexual situations. And there was no rape in the book that I recall, either heterosexual or homosexual. %0D %0D Here's the story about the girl:%0D %0D As a child and teenager Joe Buck was alone and friendless and socially unskilled. Abandoned by his mother as a toddler, he's brought up by his grandmother Sally Buck, who has no interest in him and almost completely ignores him. He has no idea how to talk to people or make friends.%0D %0D In a movie theater he meets an ordinary looking teenage girl. She flirts with him and they start kissing. A group of boys come in the theater and see them and start taunting them. The girl Joe is making out with is Anastasia Pratt; her nickname is "Chalkline Annie." The nickname comes from the order that needs to be maintained during the times where she fucks a group of boys, one at a time. Everybody in town knows about her noctural activities except her clueless parents and poor dumb Joe Buck. %0D %0D The boys see Joe kissing her and are amazed: "somebody's KISSING her!" One of the boys tells Joe in a friendly manner that if he's been kissing her he better go "swallow a drugstore; she's copped every joint in Albuquerque." After a little prodding (Anastasia is dumb as a rock and easily swayed) she gets up and all the boys, including Joe, follow her to a secluded area in the theater. She drops her panties, lies down and says "somebody nice has to go first, otherwise nothing doing." The boys take their turns, and so does Joe. %0D %0D Joe and Chalkline Annie have an affair. Joe takes part out of loneliness and Anastasia has a fondness for Joe because he kisses her (the other definitely WON'T do that). Somehow her parents find out about her goings-on and are outraged; they blame Joe! It all ends very badly; Joe is branded as some kind of perverse sex fiend and Anastasia is sent to an asylum. Weird rumors abound; some people say that Joe drove the girl mad by doing unspeakable things to her, or maybe there was something about his member that caused her to lose her mind. At any rate, Joe ends up as lonely as before and is viewed as some kind of a freak. %0D %0D That was Joe Buck's first relationship. And it was just the beginning; future humiliations follow.

In the movie, Joe Buck's grandmother sexually abuses him.

[QUOTE] Joe Buck was never sexually assaulted in the book.

Yeah he was. Reread the scene at Juanita's right after he punches Perry.

I thought Sally Buck and her drunk cowboy husband were doing inappropriate things with Joe. Why was he in the bed with them and massaging her?

There's one scene where they show young Joe and presumably his mother and a friend walking up Sally's driveway. The mother is wearing tight orange pants and she looks trashy and definitely not the motherly type. I always wish I could see more of her and hear what she's saying in that scene, her expression is so funny.

Great now I'll have harmonicas in my head all day.

I love seeing NYC in that era. So gritty, so exciting. Like Panic In Needle Park.%0D %0D And I sort of wish they had made a sequal -- I'd love to know what JB did in Miami (another city that was pretty cool back then).

Several years ago, I read: Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance ever nominated for an Oscar with her role in "Midnight Cowboy." Her entire role lasted only six minutes.%0D %0D Has anyone shortened that time for a nominated performance?

R43: Chris Sarandon, Best Supporting Actor nominee for "Dog Day Afternoon". Onscreen for one short appearance as the lover of gay bank robber Al Pacino. Was it less than six minutes?

R43, Hermione Baddeley clocked the shortest nominated performance for her work in Room at the Top (1959). I believe she's only in the film for under three minutes.

In the book Joe's grandmother does NOT sexually molest him. She hardly has anything to do with him. Her boyfriends don't sexually molest him either; they usually ignore him too. There was one boyfriend of hers named Woodsy Niles that acted as a father figure to Joe, teaching him things and actually giving him some attention. But his relationship with Sally didn't last long, and soon he's out of Joe's life.

"Yeah he was. Reread the scene at Juanita's right after he punches Perry."%0D %0D As I recall, what happened was a sexual "scene" involving several people. But I don't remember anybody assaulting Joe; it seemed like he was just drawn into the situation. Joe tended to let people push him around. At least that's what I remember from the book.

R46, the movie shows the grandmother behaving inappropriately with Joe.

"As I recall, what happened was a sexual "scene" involving several people. But I don't remember anybody assaulting Joe"

It isn't entirely clear, but it read to me more like a sexual assault. He experiences the whole thing as if he'd been drugged and it begins after Juanita tells Tombaby "You been wanting that, and this is the only way you're going to get it," and next thing you know Buck spends 2 days hiding away in his "H otel" room before deciding to leave for New York.

It's different in the book. In the book Voight's character finds out Rizzo has the AIDS and then Voight give him an OD of meth and the tweaker dies alone on the bus.

Imagine, Midnight Cowboy knew about AIDS 20 years before AIDS was discovered.

And Meth too, r51

It's a beautifully written film. I love how it makes me care about these characters. Most of you probably know that the top screenwriting award at Sundance is named after its scripter, Waldo Salt.

[R42] I love that too, It really captured that time period in New York very well. I wish Times Square was still like that.

I interpreted the scene at juanita's as him being sucked off by the cowboy guy and he going into a trance of shame and lust. He immediately moved right after that.

The very end is really a downer, nothing different in action from the film, but in tone completely different

"Yes, it's true. Not THAT fantastic an improvisation."

Then how do you explain its iconic nature?

Really cool movie! I didn't have a clue what the plot was. I had never seen it but watching it reminded maybe I had seen parts of it with my mom or something. I liked Angelina's dad in this! They have the same mouth!

"Where's the Statue of Liberty? Up in Central Park taking a leak. If you hurry you can catch the second show."

That's how they gotted them names R51 & R52.

I think the "I'm walking here" improvisation is noted because he reacted in character.

In that documentary about casting agents/directors one of the pioneers of the business talks about how she pushed to cast Jon Voight. The studios wanted Michael Sarrazin.

Love this....

Both Helen Lawson and Lucille Ball were up for the role of Joe's grandmother. Helen used too much Helenesque in the bath and ended up passed out in the producer's office.

Gary, of course, talked Lucy out of even considering the role.

I thought Lucy was up for the Brenda Vaccaro part. After all, they both had the same voice.

I thought Lucy was up for the part of Ratso.

R60...I love that song too.

Sound different from the version on the OST.

"In the book, Joe Buck was raised by a crazy grandmother who had all sorts of shady people hanging around. One colorful friend of the grandmother was a gay Native American guy. It was implied that during a drunken party that Joe Buck and his teenaged girlfriend were drugged and both sexually attacked. The GF later died; I THINK it was suicide."

Actually Sally Buck was dead when Joe had the encounter with Tombaby Barefoot, "a light-haired, oddly-constructed halfbreed" and his scraggly prostitute mother, Juanita Collins Harmeyer Barefoot. He came to meet them through his association with Perry, a slimy young hustler. Joe, not knowing any better, always got involved with people who used him and took advantage of him.

In the book Joe and his erstwhile slutty girlfriend Anastasia Pratt, were not drugged or sexually attacked. Their affair, after it was found out, ended simply: she was sent to a mental institution and he was branded a deviate. I think in the movie it was implied that a posse of some sort came after Joe and Chalkline Annie and caught them in flagrante delicto and dragged them away, thus ending the affair. I don't think it meant to imply they were both raped and drugged. I think it was just a way to make their ruinous union end violently, with a bang instead of a whimper.

Sally Buck, in the book, never behaved inappropriately with her grandson Joe. All she did was run her hair salon and date an unending series of men. Joe didn't mean anything to her, and she ignored him.

Not Starting lists some interesting people up for roles.

LEE MAJORS!! AS JOE BUCK!!

In the book, the "downtown" arty scene is far more disturbing.

The end is downright sad.

In the movie, it looks like the group of young guys in town also sexually assault JB with a stick or something after they catch him and the girl in the car. There's definitely some kind of humiliation happening.

It actually looks like he literally gets cornholed

[quote]In the book, the "downtown" arty scene is far more disturbing.

Yes, absolutely. I finished this book a week ago. Midnight Cowboy is my favorite movie so when I read there is a book for which the movie was based, I had to read it. Great book, I highly recommend it. Yes, that party is disturbing and creepy-the movie's portrayal of the party was merely psychedelic.

A very key moment taking place in the stairwell of the underground party that the pair attend.

Such a perfect movie. Voight was sexier than Jolie has ever been.

Hoffman proves why he's my favorite actor. There's a very subtle feminine quality to him and his mix of drama and comedic pathos and timing is always a gift to behold.

This film still stings and stirs with it's relevancy today

Anyone out there ever encounter the actor Jonathan Kramer back in the '60 and '70s? He portrays Jackie, the bar patron who seems to have a pretty personal grudge against Ratso. I recognized him as the reporter who drives Candy Darling over the edge at the end of "Women In Revolt!".

He died quite young. He was only thirty.

Have not read the book, but I read once an interpretation of the film that said that JB got the shit beaten out of him by the guys b/c when he had his "affair" with Annie, he basically took her out of circulation for them.

I used to watch this movie after midnight (late late show on ABC in New York) and it was obviously edited for tv. In about 1982, I saw the unedited version at the Bleeker Street Cinema. Found the unedited version highly disturbing...

[quote]It was much more about the relationship between Rizzo and the Cowboy than the hustling.

Only a homosexual would think so, and then only because of Jon Voight. If it was Dustin Hoffman and Art Garfunkel you would never even thought to look, because both of them are ugly.

Opening credits : as soon as I heard "Everybody's Talkin' at Me, " with Harry Nilsson's version for the film, I instantly knew all the rest would be superb. The way that sequence ends, with the woman in rollers sipping on her soda. The way the drum brush strokes in the score add to the locomotion of Joe's trip. Just wonderful.

The cameos are eccentric/sad and add greatly to the whole, along with Miles, John McGiver as the religious nut and Barnard Hughes as guilt-ridden, Catholic closet case Towny do great work.

R76, I agree 100 percent. A snapshot of life in NY in 1969. And the end of the film is amazing, so touching and sad.

You asked ME for money! You were going to ask ME for money!

I like this music used in the film:

R74 I also watched a highly edited version on late night local NYC tv year ago. So when I saw the movie screened at the Film Forum this past summer, I was blown away by everything that had been cut (including the fact that they actually made it to Florida!).

Thanks, R81... you also have to love the scene when he is on the bus from TX to NY and he picks up the old pop music station 77 WABC (AM) on the radio and is so excited. All kids in NY listened to that station in the 60s and early 70s.

And the slightly hostile stares of the other folks on the bus at the end of the film.........just so accurately captures the indifference of humans to other humans....again, New Yorkers of the period.

[quote]I like this music used in the film:

I remember buying the vinyl album. The movie came out when I was a senior in HS; I went to see it with my FATHER, of all people. I don't think I completely understood everything at the time (I guess I was rather sheltered.)

What a great film! I caught it at IFC this weekend. I had never seen it. It didn't seem dated to me at all—the whole thing felt fresh and current. Timeless is timeless, and this movie has that timeless air about it—while also very vividly depicting a very specific moment in NYC's history.

Also, I just checked Wikipedia and saw that Hoffman and Voight both lost Best Actor to John Wayne. Yuck!

[quote]77 WABC (AM) on the radio and is so excited. All kids in NY listened to that station in the 60s and early 70s.

As one of those kids, r82, I switched to WABC-FM (WPLJ) and WNEW-FM in 1967.

In response to R22 (who probably isn't around as that reply is from 2011, but to anyone else):

I read the book and saw the movie 100 years ago, and I guess I should have have figured this out by now, but... were these characters in love w/each other? Going from memory, I can't recall a definitive moment that made this clear. I think they banded together out of loneliness, and maybe Ratso had a bit of a hero worship/crush thing going on, but I don't remember LOVE.

[quote]I don't remember LOVE.

The moment when Joe uses his own shirt to wipe the grease out of Ratso's hair before going up to the Warhol party was the moment when I thought there was something like love between them.

The weirdest thing about this movie was that it is Jimmy Carter's favorite. When he was president he would screen it over and over again in the White House. I wonder what he responded to in it.

Just finished watching this movie. The ending is sad. I believe there was something going on between Joe and Ratso

James Leo Herlihy, who wrote the novel, committed suicide.

Herlihy, unsurprisingly, was gay.

Pauline Kael pointed out that the biggest weakness of the film is that Schlesinger finds no one in the entire movie redeemable except for Joe and Ratso. All of Joe's clients and targets are monsters and freaks.

[quote](possible spoilers inside)

I cannot believe that no one has mocked OP for a spoiler alert on a 50 year old movie.

It's like a spoiler alert on the bible - SPOILER ALERT - Jesus is crucified and dies. But, here's the twist worthy of M. Night - he's resurrected.

You people are slipping.

Jon Voight's beating up of a creepy masochistic Barnard Hughes is a really hard scene to watch.

Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo were never lovers. They were FRIENDS. Both were sorely in need of one; both were overwhelmingly lonely people. That's a major theme in the film and novel, the loneliness of being adrift in a New York City, among millions of people, yet being utterly alone.

R97 completely agree. I also would like to add that they did grow their feeling for each other tho. Unspeakable emotion. Deep down, they know that they really care for each other in this cruel cruel world

I hate to share this, but when my Dad was admitted to Hospice care, I visited every day, and watched clips from 'Midnight Cowboy' when I got home because I was paralyzed with grief, and had to find a way to make myself cry. My friends at work later confided to me that I had turned grey, and they were all worried I was going to die any day. I watched it about a year after my Dad died with my brother, and we were both very silent once it ended. There wasn't anything to say once it ended.

The last scene is just heartbreaking

I saw the movie when I was a kid, and way too young to understand any of it. I didn't even know what being gay was. I shall have to watch it again. Thanks for the suggestion.

This pretty much says a lot:

“With Ratso gone, there is no one to tell Joe’s story; no advocate: he’s just not articulate enough. His mind paralysed at the time of the abuse, Joe retreats into his childish alter ego, alone and scared. Maybe what stirs me most is the realisation that no one has ever loved Joe as much as Ratso.”

Great. Now I'm crying.

It's a beautiful picture and I think the best representation of the underbelly of NYC at that time. If you lived on the fringes, it could suck the soul right out of you. Joe was always a simple man, and by getting out (to Florida) he has a chance to shake off the death grip living like that can get you into.

I absolutely love the film. One of my all-time favorites

At end end of the novel, Joe is going over in his mind what he needs to do; give Ratso a decent burial, find a job and keep it, get his life in order. The novel ends:

Joe went though his plans in his mind, and then once again, and still a third time until he was certain he had done everything there was to do up to this moment. And then he did something he'd always wanted to do from the very beginning, from the very first night he'd met Ratso at Everett's Bar on Broadway; he put his arm around him to hold him for a while, for these last few miles anyway. He knew this comforting wasn't doing Ratso any good. It was for himself. Because of course he was scared now, scared to death.

When I was in high school in the mid-1960s I had an incredible English teacher who brought a few of us into NYC to see an unforgettable off-Broadway production of A View from the Bridgein Greenwich Village.

It was the first time I saw Jon Voight, who played the illegal Italian alien, and because he was so brilliant and sexy, I remembered him and was not surprised when he became a movie star in Midnight Cowboy a few years later.

But the big shock was when I recently looked at the Playbill from that production and discovered in the credits, Dustin Hoffman was listed as the Assistant Stage Manager! So interesting to know that he and Voight already had some history. I wonder if Hoffman helped him get the role of Joe Buck?

I was too young to see it when it was first released (in seventh grade) and only saw it later when I was in college. I remember being indignant that it beat "Hello, Dolly!" for Best Picture (OMG, I know.) But I remember my parents, who were by no means liberals nor sophisticates (just middle class) went with their friends to see it at the theatre and thought it was a great film--and they stressed how much it was about friendship and loneliness. (And they knew that it was also about homos, they weren't THAT unsophisticated.). So, it may have been doing some important cultural work, even if some of it feels part of a past no longer recoverable.

Just saw it last night. The jump cuts and flashbacks were very 60s and dated. That kind of stylishness can lend a kind of fable-like, carnivalesque aura to characters living extra-ordinary, heightened lives on the fringes, like in a Southern Gothic. But John Schlesinger is no John Huston or Powell and Pressberger.

I found it kind of cheapened the whole exercise as well. These 2 guys were as helpless and pathetic as Dickensian street urchins but it kind of seemed like an exercise in “look at the poor people” movie anthropology. And I almost get that feeling from movies about people in poverty, so I was really surprised by how turned off I was. Maybe Schlesinger being British and from Oxbridge couldn’t relate as much as he thought he could. Thank God his boyfriend made him hip to the soundtrack.

Dustin Hoffman gave a much more delicate and low key performance than I was expecting. He’s so great. And didn’t 90s era Angelina look just Jon Voight in this?

Oh r99, hugs for you.

When my pa died I fell asleep on the sofa and awoke to see IN AMERICA. I lost it.

Wasn't this Dustin's second film right after The Graduate? If he was hoping to break out of the preppy nerd mold, he couldn't have chosen a better role.

Actually, Dustin Hoffman's next film right after "The Graduate" was a modern day type rom-com with Mia Farrow called (I think) "John Loves Mary." It was meant to be commercial but only did so-so.

Gurl, there's a brand new Midnight Cowboy thread.