Midnight Cowboy (1969) Queer Film (A)

DIRECTOR: John Schlesinger

Joe Buck (John Voight) a young dishwasher from Texas, quits his job and heads to New York dressed in cowboy attire, imagining he’ll succeed as a male prostitute catering to wealthy women. His attempts fail; instead of making money, he ends up broke and exploited. Joe encounters Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), a streetwise but physically frail con man suffering from tuberculosis. Though Ratso initially cheats him, the two eventually bond. They move into a dilapidated apartment, struggling to survive. Ratso dreams of escaping to Florida, where the climate might improve his health. As Ratso’s illness worsens, Joe turns to desperate measures, including robbery, to fund their escape. On a bus trip to Florida, Ratso dies in Joe’s arms.

I’M WALKIN’ HERE

(Ratso Rizzo [Dustin Hoffman] to an unfortunate driver on the streets of Manhattan).

Director John Schlesinger’s American debut is the only X-rated movie to win Best Picture. Dated now, it still boasts two great performances courtesy of Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffmann. The gay thing is a bit primitive, with tortured souls getting killed by their tricks and numerous queer types from The Village in small parts, so the audience will not clue into the more basic details of the Joe Buck/Ratso Rizzo relationship. And like Darling, Midnight Cowboy is almost ruined by that long Warhol-inspired psychedelic party scene with Brenda Vaccaro.

YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE JOE, YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE

(Crazy Annie [Jennifer Salt] to Joe Buck [John Voight])

The film also features Bob Balaban, Bernard Hughes, and Sylvia Myles, who received an Oscar nomination for a few minutes’ work, and, in a series of flashbacks, Jennifer Salt as Crazy Annie, Joe Buck’s girl back in Texas. The movie is based on the novel by gay writer James Leo Herlihy, who took his own life with an overdose of sleeping tablets in Los Angeles in 1993. He was sixty-six. Waldo Salt (Jennifer’s father) wrote the Oscar-winning adapted screenplay.

OSCARS (1969)

BEST FILM (Jerome Hellman, Producer)

BEST DIRECTOR (John Schlesinger)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY (Waldo Salt)

John Barry’s haunting harmonica score sounds eerily similar to his gorgeous symphonic score for the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice, two years before. Harry Neilson’s famous recording of Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’,” was not written directly for the screen and, therefore, ineligible for Academy consideration.

Cinematography: Adam Holender

Editing: Hugh A. Robertson (the first person of color to be nominated in this category)

Costumes: Ann Roth

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