Midnight Cowboy
- 113 minutes. Rated X, downgraded to R.
Rizzo: The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk. Did you know that? That’s a fact.
I have always had a strange association with Texas, a heartfelt love of Harry Nilsson, and a neo-hippie ( / Punk) heart. There are three movies that I owe my specific tastes in film, even now: Easy Rider, Taxi Driver, and Midnight Cowboy. A close friend’s free-spirited, intellectual older brother introduced them to us both, and we soon absorbed any of his music/film suggestions like sponges. We invited his Svengali-like hold on our creative senses, shared the same misanthropic outlook on the tastes of our peers, and had convinced that we knew what was good art. Nowadays, I find them all more melancholy than I did at fifteen, but all films portray an authenticity in story line and character that influence my creative unconscious.
Midnight Cowboy is one of my stand-out favorites because it tells the story of two human beings alone. One, a naïve country man named Joe Buck (Jon Voight) portraying himself as a much in demand gigolo cowboy; the other a street urchin, Ratzo “Enrico” Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), without a dime and suffering with a chronic tubercular illness and childhood polio. Both of these characters navigate the mean streets of New York, and though they venture out friendless in the beginning of the film, after meeting, they are side-by-side (literally) until the end.
One of the most telling and compelling devices used in this movie are its flashback sequences. There are scenes of Joe’s abandonment by his mother and over-coddling grandmother. During some of the very first childhood flashbacks Joe has on his bus ride East (his grandmother’s over affectionate bedtime cuddling, and the adoring sentiments “You’re gonna be the best looking cowboy there…” ), we are clued in to past sheltered treatment and abuse that causes Joe’s sense of self worth to exist based solely on his “studliness,” good looks, and cowboy appeal. My first watch I found this utterly creepy. Watching as an adult, it maintains that dark quality, but I am left finding it just depressing. But the realism in characters, setting, and subculture, is incredible. None of the side characters seem like decent people. Everyone is a crass monster that poor clueless Joe happily approaches in his quest for showcasing his country-boy libido all over the city sidewalks. Joe is not wise, in fact, he often seems a bit slow. However, this innocence comes from an empty longing for positive reinforcement from something, or someone. Joe was hurt, and his life of hurt has brought him here. Once alone in a small Texas town, now he finds himself lost in an unsympathetic, gritty environment with no prospects.
Joe’s telling memories also show violence meshed with tender scenes with his Texas girlfriend Annie (Jennifer Salt) , who consistently coos to him how he “is the best–the only one.” (more of the same carnal reinforcement.) These flashbacks are 1. super uncomfortable, at least they were to me as a fourteen year old viewer, and 2.effective in revealing how it is Joe Buck became convinced that heading to NY in pursuit of rich women to fulfill his American Dream became his life’s purpose. They also present both Joe and “Crazy Annie” as tormented souls that were taken advantage of (Joe perhaps molested at a young age) and violated in the worst ways imaginable (And was Annie–perhaps along with Joe–gang raped by her enraged en masse of townie lovers?)
A cheerful, self-described hustler, Joe is able to score a successful trick here or there, but is unable to appeal to the rich clientele he imagined would swarm him right off the Greyhound; yet determined, he plugs on. His childlike, happy-go-lucky demeanor is almost hard to watch during his revelations of what his reality actually is here in New York City. Joe’s desperation in his new environment leads to some sordid sexual exploits: a hustle in a movie theater with a young man (who he attempts to rough up in demand for money owed, but can’t manage), and a disturbing hotel room scene with a religious fanatic set-up by a newly minted pimp, Ratzo.
In an earlier heart wrenching scene, after becoming broke and with nowhere to go, Joe enters a soup kitchen and, while watching a crazy lady dance a toy mouse on her and her child’s face, clearly nervous and uncomfortable, spills on himself while trying to feed himself with ketchup and crackers. It’s moments like these that feel the most emotional and raw. Jon Voight brings a believable weakness to Joe Buck that is poignant to an extreme. Poor Joe, things just go from bad to worse, In every scene we see the good-natured buckaroo struggling, wearing looks of frozen animal confusion and just trying to make his futile attempts at hustling work in his new digs. The vulnerable sides of the characters, and the concept of humanity in this film, is a powerful one to me.
Now another decrepit brick in the city wall, once-confident Joe, finds himself struggling and down and out, with nowhere to turn. As time goes on, Ratzo Rizzo, who had earlier swindled him, becomes the only solid person in Joe’s life, and vice versa. These two unlikely friends end up needing each other: Ratzo’s con man swagger and street smarts; Joe’s almost maternal role taking care of an ailing Ratzo, until the bus ride to Florida.
Beyond all the X-rated hype, and some debate on its worthiness in beating out Butch Cassidy and Easy Rider in 1969. (yes, it is the only X-rated flick to win an Academy Award), Midnight Cowboy has two amazing things going for it: One, the great acting by everyone, even the peripheral characters are believable, as terrible as they might be. I am specifically thinking of Cass (Sylvia Miles), Joe’s first paying customer. Cass is a rich monster who seemed like she leaped right off the pages of a Tennessee Williams play (Think, Sweet Bird of Youth). Did she really swindle him out of money after throwing a fit and indulging in his “services??” Welcome to the real world, Joe.
Which brings me to the second stellar quality: the humanness that permeates throughout this film. Joe transitions from confident sexy cowboy to humiliated and destitute homeless man. This, and his ability to accept this truth of his circumstance and man-up, get on a Greyhound bus, agree to care for a sickly friend and embrace this journey is incredibly humbling.
Harry Nilsson, the gifted American singer/songwriter who once impressed John Lennon, is responsible for the breezy title track “Everybody’s Talkin’ at Me.” (Huge fan, and highly recommend Nilsson Schmilson to everyone who hasn’t already listened).
Some of the film drags, namely the drug party scene, which actually brings Joe a second paying customer, Shirley (Brenda Vaccaro.) The hippies were a bit Warhol-happy to an extreme, but remember, this WAS 1969 in NYC. The film was considered scandalous and received an X-rating rating owing to the sexual content, and nude scenes. It was definitely edgy for its time period, but by today’s Hollywood standards, while Midnight Cowboy is still sad and thematically dark, it is too tame to qualify for an actual X-rating. Society’s standards of what is inappropriate content in films has obviously changed. These days, most viewers seem desensitized to seeing rape, incest, and excessive violence glorified by the entertainment industry.
There is something timeless about this 1960/s film. The flawless acting maybe, the human struggles of two lonely, new friends struggling to survive in an indifferent city; whatever it is, Midnight Cowboy should never be snubbed as that third-rate, X-rated hippie movie that beat out “Butch Cassidy…”
