Midnight Cowboy

Midnight Cowboy

The first, and only, X-rated film to win a best picture Academy Award, John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy seems a lot less daring today (and has been reclassified as an R), but remains a fascinating time capsule of late-1960s sexual decadence in mainstream American cinema. In a career-making performance, Jon Voight plays Joe Buck, a naive Texas dishwasher who goes to the big city (New York) to make his fortune as a sexual hustler. Although enthusiastic about selling himself to rich ladies for stud services, he quickly finds it hard to make a living and eventually crashes in a seedy dump with a crippled petty thief named Ratzo Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman, doing one of his more effective "stupid acting tricks," with a limp and a high-pitch rasp of a voice). Schlesinger's quick-cut, semi-psychedelic style has dated severely, as has his ruthlessly cynical approach to almost everybody but the lead characters. But at its heart the movie is a sad tale of friendship between a couple of losers lost in the big city, and with an ending no studio would approve today. It's a bit like an urban Of Mice and Men, but where both guys are Lenny. --Jim Emerson

Genre: Drama
Director(s): John Schlesinger
Production: United Artists
  Won 3 Oscars. Another 24 wins & 15 nominations.
 
IMDB:
7.9
Metacritic:
79
Rotten Tomatoes:
90%
R (Restricted)
Year:
1969
113
Website
3,542 Views

Ratso:
I gotta get outta here, gotta get outta here. Miami Beach, that's where you could score. Anybody can score there, even you. In New York, no rich lady with any class at all buys that cowboy crap anymore. They're laughin' at you on the street.

Joe:
Ain't nobody laughin' at me on the street.

Ratso:
Behind your back, I've seen 'em laughin' at you, fella.

Joe:
Aw, what the hell you know about women anyway? When's the last time you scored, boy?

Ratso:
That's a matter I only talk about at confession. We're not talkin' about me now.

Joe:
And when's the last time you've been to confession?

Ratso:
It's between me and my confessor. And I'll tell ya another thing. Frankly, you're beginning to smell. And for a stud in New York, that's a handicap.

Joe:
Well, don't talk to me about clean. I ain't never seen you change your underwear once the whole time I've been here in New York. And that's pretty peculiar behavior.

Ratso:
I don't have to do that kind of thing in public. I ain't got no need to expose myself.

Joe:
No, I bet you don't. I bet you ain't never even been laid! How about that? And you're gonna tell me what appeals to women!

Ratso:
I know enough to know that that great big, dumb cowboy crap of yours don't appeal to nobody except every jockey on 42nd Street. That's f*ggot stuff! You wanna call it by its name? That's strictly for fags!

Joe:
John Wayne! You wanna tell me he's a fag? I like the way I look. It makes me feel good. It does. And women like me, god-dammit. Hell, only one thing I've ever been good for is lovin'. Women go crazy for me. That's a really true fact. Ratso, hell: Crazy Annie, they had to send her away.

Ratso:
Then how come you ain't scored once, the whole time you've been in New York?

Joe:
'Cause, 'cause I need management, god-dammit. 'Cause you stole twenty dollars offa me. That's why you're gonna stop crappin' around about Florida. And, and get your skinny butt movin.' And earn twenty dollars worth of management which you owe me.


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