1969 was an interesting turning point in American cinema and no film better reflects that than
Midnight Cowboy. Not only was it the first X-rated film to win the Best Picture Oscar but it presented a view of New York City that was the most bleak and depressing portrait since Ray Milland hit every seedy Manhattan bar in
The Lost Weekend (1945). While more traditional Hollywood films like
Hello, Dolly!,
Anne of the Thousand Days and
True Grit were well represented at the 1969 Academy Awards ceremony, it was obvious that the counterculture movement of the sixties had finally made an impact on mainstream cinema with major nominations that year going to
Midnight Cowboy,
Last Summer,
Alice's Restaurant,
Easy Rider and
Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice - films that ushered in a new permissiveness in dealing with sex on-screen.
Midnight Cowboy was easily the most provocative of the lot. It's a tale of urban alienation and human need, expressed through two social outcasts. The main character, Joe Buck, is a hopelessly naive Texan who leaves his dishwashing job and catches a bus to New York City where he plans to hustle wealthy women for sex and money. Once he arrives in Manhattan, he is quickly fleeced by Ratso Rizzo, a slightly crippled two-bit con artist. Yet, despite their initial conflagration the two men develop a supportive relationship with Ratso playing pimp to Buck's male prostitute. The irony is that Buck's macho cowboy getup mainly attracts homosexuals and not the clientele he originally envisioned.
Director John Schlesinger first read the James Leo Herlihy novel (also entitled
Midnight Cowboy) while he was working on
Darling in 1965 and suggested it as a future project to his producer at the time, Joseph Janni. But Janni wasn't comfortable with the idea of filming in the U.S. (he wanted to change the setting to London) so Schlesinger partnered with American producer Jerome Hellman and they began production following the release of
Far From the Madding Crowd (1967). Naturally, the distributor, United Artists, was nervous about the sordid subject matter but after Schlesinger and Hellman agreed to cut their salaries in exchange for a percentage of the profits, the project was approved.
Schlesinger had longed for an opportunity to work on a film set in a totally American milieu; in this case, the rarely shown aspects of New York City life - the dreary flop houses, grimy coffee shops and seedy neighborhoods - which accurately depict the world of a male prostitute working the Times Square area. Initially Warren Beatty had expressed interest in playing Joe Buck but Schlesinger knew audiences would never accept the actor as a failed 42nd Street hustler and thought Michael Sarrazin would be a better choice. But Sarrazin's asking price was too high so the director turned to his second choice, Jon Voight. At the time, Voight had only appeared in minor film roles and was relatively untested as a lead actor but under Schlesinger's tutelage he quickly grew into his character. In
John Schlesinger by Gene D. Phillips (Twayne Publishing), the director said, "Jon Voight took a tape recorder with him when we first went down to Big Spring, Texas, for some preproduction planning; and he recorded the voices of Texans whom he interviewed for bit parts in the picture. Then he drove us all mad by playing back the tapes incessantly on the way back to New York. But he did get his Texas drawl down perfectly in the bargain."
The other crucial casting decision was the part of Ratso. Dustin Hoffman was the clear favorite but Schlesinger wasn't sure that he was right for the part until Hoffman, dressed in a filthy raincoat, took him on a tour of New York's underbelly and demonstrated how easily he could blend into his surroundings. Hoffman also spent a considerable amount of time in the New York slums observing tramps and street people and studying their physical movements and behavior. As for Hoffman's makeup, the director said, "We wanted him to look homely, but not grotesque. The makeup man, with the help of Dustin's own dentist, made a dental plate for him in order to give the impression of Ratso's rotted teeth." The actor also took great care in perfecting Ratso's distinctive limp and his consumptive cough.
Filming on
Midnight Cowboy began in May 1968 at the Filmways Studio in the Bronx. Schlesinger recalled "the designer recreated the flat in which Ratso and Joe Buck stayed from one that we had seen while we were location hunting. The building was an old tenement that was about to be torn down; so we took the doors from one of the rooms, along with some discarded furnishings, and put them right onto the studio set." Other location work was done in Florida and Texas and it wasn't unusual for Schlesinger to improvise certain scenes prior to shooting, particularly dialogue between Ratso and Buck. He would have the actors converse in character and then add bits and pieces of their rehearsal dialogue into the final script.
When
Midnight Cowboy was released theatrically, it received an X-rating from the Motion Picture Association of America due to its adult treatment of sexuality which now seems tame by today's standards. But instead of hurting its chances at the box office, the X-rating obviously helped the film for it went on to become the third top-grossing film of 1969 after
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and
The Love Bug. Shortly after its release, the rating was changed to a more benign R.
Midnight Cowboy also scored seven Oscar nominations winning Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay (Waldo Salt).
In retrospect, Schlesinger has admitted that there are some things in
Midnight Cowboy that he would change now such as the overlong party sequence featuring Andy Warhol regulars like Viva, Ultra Violet and Paul Morrisey. But, for the most part, he felt he succeeded in making a film that was compassionate rather than bleak, one that truly captured "the mixture of desperation and humor which I found all along Forty-Second Street."
Producer: Jerome Hellman
Director: John Schlesinger
Screenplay: Waldo Salt, based on the novel by James Leo Herlihy
Art Direction: John Robert Lloyd
Cinematography: Adam Holender
Editing: Hugh A. Robertson
Music: John Barry
Cast: Dustin Hoffman (Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo), Jon Voight (Joe Buck), Sylvia Miles (Cass), John McGiver (O'Daniel), Brenda Vaccaro (Shirley), Barnard Hughes (Towny), Ruth White (Sally Buck), Jennifer Salt (Annie), Gilman Rankin (Woodsy Niles), Bob Balaban (young boy in movie theatre).
C-113m. Letterboxed.
by Jeff Stafford
