See my superscript notes for more details and descriptions, plus some of my own personal commentary!! There's a lot of details that I adore as a fan-- but may muddle a straightfoward synopsis. This is a mushy-gushy recalling of the events of Midnight Cowboy-- most of the book and film and the same, with some exceptions.
Midnight Cowboy is a 1965 book and 1969 movie about the goings-on of Joe Buck (Jon Voight). A Texan, eigth-grade dropout, Vietnam vet, former dishwasher, coded bisexual1, and, the main focus of the novel-- a prostitute. There's a lot of history Joe leaves behind in Texas, which is encapsulated in Part One of the novel and various flashbacks in the film. There are two and a half things you REALLY need to know about Joe. He lived with his grandmother, whose fleeting boyfriend formed Joe's fascination with Cowboys. Secondly, Joe fell in love with a lot of things in Texas. Jesus, for a very short time. Anatasia Pratt, who was hauled off to the hospital, and Perry. Perry introduced Joe into hustling, and despite being a two-bit manipulator, inspires Joe enough so that he leaves. He moves to New York in an attempt to make a living as a hustler, working old rich women.
Except... New York City isn't all it's made out to be. Joe can't pay for TV in his hotel room- the only item he can keep is his portable radio. He picks up some lady client...only to realize she's also a prostitute and needs five bucks from him. Then, Joe can't pay for his actual room, let alone the TV, losing his suitcase along the way. And on top of that-- some Italian scammed him out of ten bucks, pretending he was setting up Joe with a pimp<2! One of the few friendly faces in the city swiping money from him!
Joe roams the streets for Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), the guy who's got Joe eating nothing and cleaning himself in Subway bathrooms. When he finds him, Joe wants to kill him. But he doesn't. Rico's pathetic. He asks Joe to stay with him in his tenement, a condemned apartment building called the X-flat. Rico fantasizes about escaping New York and living in Florida, but he's sick. Rico has tuberculosis. As he gets sicker and sicker, he and Joe float around the city. They visit Rico's dad's grave, laying flowers snatched from someone else. They sell his radio, something that had followed Joe throughout his journey.
They... attend a Warhol party?3 Or something like that, at least. It's evident Rico isn't really in the right shape to be at a party, but Joe insists Rizzo should be by his side. So, he goes. At least he can eat at the buffet. Joe gets high and picks up a client, Shirley, a socialite (Brenda Vaccaro). After working out payment (which includes Rico's taxi fare home) Rico falls on the stairs. Despite Joe's worry, both Shirley and Rico insist Joe goes home with her.
After spending the night together4, Joe returns to the X-flat. Rico is a mess. He's really dying this time. He wants to take Rico to the hospital, but he refuses. He calls Shirley, but she doesn't answer. So. He does one final job. Him and Rico must get to Florida. He meets Towny, a businessman intown for work. In the hotel room, Towny hesitates, but decides not to sleep with Joe. Instead, he offers, Joe can come back tomorrow5. Joe can't wait until then. He needs the money now. He hurts Towny. He steals his money. He (maybe) kills him6.
Now they can get to Florida. Rico's terrible now. His body is shutting down, and he's incontinent. At one of the bus's stops, he ditches his spiffy Cowboy outfit and well-walked boots for ordinary clothes. He gets Rico a new outfit, too. He heads back on the bus, explaining his whole plan to Rico7. He's gonna get a regular job. They're going to make it work. It'll all be okay. He looks for Rico for reassurance. Except Rico's slumped over. The only man in New York who cared if Joe swam or sunk was dead. The driver has to pull the bus over. People are staring. He closes Rico's eyes and puts his arm around him, waiting silently for Miami.
1. "coded bisexual"
Listen. Joe's bi. You (may or may not) know it, but I know it. Waldo Salt, Midnight Cowboy's screenwriter, might not have thought so. However, both Voight and Hoffman did. Midnight Cowboy is an explicitly queer film. Its raunchiness and depiction of homosexuality was a motivator for its X-rating. Joe's fascination with Perry is charged by his interest in him. Rico quite clearly is shown to have romantic feelings for Joe in the Florida Fantasy section of the film. Their relationship gets freaky in the novel though. Joe is obsessed with the idea of finding a nice blonde woman to settle down with (Rico is blond in the novel, btw!!). As Rico gets sicker, Joe implements him into this family dynamic by having Rico act as a son-type or ward. This is different from the depiction of their relationship in the film.
2. "with a pimp"
So, it goes like this. Rico and Joe meet in some seedy bar. They talk for a bit, but are interupted by a gay man named Jackie. He asks for a cigarette. Joe starts to oblige, but Rico stops him, spouting some homophobic nonsense. Jackie goes away for a bit, giving Joe time to explain his situation- that he's a hustler, etc etc. Rico says that he can provide Joe with a manager- for a price. Jackie comes over again. He lays it all out- Rico is a scam artist. Rico shoos him away, explaining that Jackie is lying. He says, "oh, people just say stuff like that because they're trying to make things even worse for people like me." Rico had polio as a child and developed a limp because of it. Joe promises Rico ten bucks for hooking him up with this pimp. They almost get run over by a taxi along the way-- which is where that oh-so-famous line, "I'm walkin' here!" came from! After getting his $10, Rico splits. Turns out, O'Daniel is a street preacher, and a weirdo one at that! Joe's outta ten dollars. And frankly, he's outta a whole lot of dignity, too.
3. "Warhol party?"
There's not a lot of extra info to put here about the contents of the party itself. Joe gets high. Rico gets overwhelmed as the Warhol-types (named in the film as Hansel and Gretel, one played by Warhol superstar Viva) who try to make him into documentary fodder. This isn't the same in the book. It's not Warhol-y. It includes weird performance art. Hansel and Gretel paid a poor woman into acting in their art. It's terrible. They ask him why he's stealing the food when its free. They tell him to go run upstairs and take a shower. All sorts of stuff. A lot of reviews (like Siskel's, Ebert's, and Kael's) for the film interpret the party scene as... a lot. Time is almost wasted with it. There's too much bitterness in it. I agree with this interpretation. I'm not crazy about the party scene. Kael sees the movie as too cynical, and if there's any scene that I'd say is too much so-- it's this one. I think the book and initial screenplay are a bit less so. Behind the scenes is very interesting though. Warhol HATED Midnight Cowboy. He thought it was phony- especially compared to the flicks he was making at the time. Some are actually seen in the background of the film, alongside some of his Superstars. Viva, who plays Gretel, was on the set of Midnight Cowboy when she got the call that Warhol had been shot. He was at the premiere, too. One photo actually shows him with the actress who plays Cass, the first woman Joe tries to hustle while in NYC.
4. "the night together"
It's a bit funny- they play a game together. Shirley suggests that Joe is gay. Hmm....
5. "come back tomorrow"
Towny can't seem to make up his mind. He seems alright for it-- until his mother calls. He thanks Joe for keeping him good. For helping him not feed into his identity. He gives Joe a symbol of Saint Christopher, the Saint of travellers. Towny is a burdened man.
6. "(maybe) kills him"
THIS IS WHERE STUFF GETS WEIRD!! There are three different ways to see Towny's assault. In the novel, it is pleasurable for him, and he in no way dies. In the screenplay, there's the impression he's dead. In all interpretations, Rico asks if Joe killed Towny. The screenplay Joe is a little too quick to say no and a bit too angered at the question. When searching for Rico in the earlier portion of the screenplay, Joe is plagued by imaginary newspapers and magazines saying he's killed someone. That's presumably about Rico-- but there's certainly the idea planted that Joe could do it. As for the film-- I just don't think he did it in the movie.
7. "whole plan to Rico"?
He doesn't explain it in the book- Rico dies before he can.
Isn't it obvious? Look at me! I'm a nerd! That's the simple answer, right? Fine. I'll be genuine. I like Midnight Cowboy because I like things that make me feel desperate and hopeful. I've seen the movie five times now, but there's always that little idea in the back of my head that wonders-- what if Rico lived? If he had been a little bit more okay with seeing a doctor (Joe's suggestions in the film are met with a beleaguered cry for "no doctors, no cops"), or if Shirley had been available for one last job, maybe things could have worked out. Midnight Cowboy manages to confront the horrors of capitalism without ever uttering the word. It becomes a wonderful point of prediction for what was coming in the 1970's. The Graduate, a prior Hoffman film, captures the generation's angst. Midnight Cowboy captures the generation's misery.
Midnight Cowboy is a noticable part of gay history, too. Midnight Cowboy came out only a few weeks before the Stonewall Riots.
I hear a fair amount of criticism from contemporary reviews that the film is more homophobic than it is gay. I tend to disagree. While I do think Rico and Joe are rather harsh on Jackie, a feminine gay character, that is derived from a sense of self-hatred. To me, the homophobia within Midnight Cowboy makes sense when you consider... who they are. I don't really believe I have to explain that. The LGBTQ community at this point doesn't really exist yet. Even in areas like NYC. Glenn Frankel's Shooting Midnight Cowboy discusses this history in further detail. When you hear Rico shout a slur at Jackie-- you have an understanding it isn't just Jackie he's belittling. He hates himself, too. Discrediting a film for featuring internal homophobia, especially when it had so many gay creatives behind it, feels insulting. John Schlesinger, the director, was gay (his partner Michael Childers was director's assistant) and James Leo Herlihy, the author of the novel, was gay, too. He dedicated the book to his lover, Dick Duane.
The film is sometimes described as being heterosexual (a narrative promoted by Childers, Schlesinger's nephew, Jon Voight, and others). This I plainly disagree with. There were bound to be many hetero hustlers during the 1960's, Joe is clearly NOT ONE OF THEM??? I'M SORRY I'M LIKE LAUGHING SO HARD THE FIRST PART OF THE NOVEL SETS UP A PARALLEL BETWEEN ANNIE, JOE'S FIRST GIRLFRIEND, AND PERRY, THE MAN THAT INTRODUCES HIM TO HUSTLING LIKE!! LET'S NOT FORGET THE SOURCE MATERIAL.!? The novel also introduces Joe's obsession with finding a blonde wife... Rico's blond in the book... Their relationship is muddled by Joe's seemingly parental adoration of Rico (which is, at times, confusing). So MAYBE they could say that that's what they were going for in the movie, too. EXCEPT ARE WE FORGETTING THE FLORIDA FANTASY SEQUENCE?? It's like a cheesy romance flick! Get outta here with the whole "its just an alternative view of relationships". Hoffman and Voight wanted it to be gayer? They asked Schlesinger if they could have shared a bed instead of having two cots. HONESTLY,, I'm not surprised Voight has now all of a sudden decided that Joe was a straight guy-- considering his entire personality post-9/11 is about denying reality!
Midnight Cowboy is beautiful. Kael is right-- it is a bit cynical. There's a scene where a man lays down on the pavement of a busy street, and the New Yorkers all pass him. Funny enough- they had to shoot it multiple times. Why? Because people cared. To me, the film is about all the good from the people that care, AND all the hurt caused by those that don't. I love Midnight Cowboy because, sometimes, it feels like a memoir of a whole lotta people. Herlihy, -maybe Schlesinger, a little, though he saw Sunday, Bloody Sunday as his true coming-out film. Even Waldo Salt, the film's screenwriter, has some connection to Joe and Rico- he was an outcast too, a member of those blacklisted from Hollywood. Sometimes, it feels like Joe and Rico have only got bad luck. As a movie- that's cynical. But in a memoir... there are a lot of people that never make blackjack.
Joe was never very set up for success in life.
Frankly? He got screwed. He was dropped off by his mother onto his grandmother's front porch. Sally Buck wasn't much of a caregiver. She was nice, of course. But Sally was sort of absent. Joe grew up in the middle-of-nowhere Texas, born sometimes in the 1940s. He's 28 at the time of the book/movie. Joe became enraptured by the Cowboy-schtick when he met Woodsy Niles, a boyfriend of Sally's. Joe served during the Vietnam war. He didn't really do much, though. Sally's death during this period resulted in him not returning to service.
Joe suffers from past memories / trauma of his religious past, a horrifying experience of sexual assault, and, at times, a nagging fear that he could hurt someone.
Can you tell he's Italian?
Rico Rizzo, from the Bronx! A little bit younger than Joe (he's early 20s in the novel, but its undisclosed in the film), Rico is from a poor immigrant family. He's the youngest of 12 siblings, and went uncared for in his childhood. His mother was too sick to look out for him, and was largely bedridden for much of Rico's life. His father was a bricklayer (novel) or shoeshiner (film) and was too busy working for childrearing. At a young age Rico was found dying. He was sick with polio, which caused a limp he maintained throughout his life.
Shirley is a rich socialite. She hires Joe after their meeting at Hansel and Gretel's party. She's pretty cool, in my opinion! She's pretty kind to Joe (though she gets a lil annoyed at Rico at some points). She and Joe have a very strange interaction in the hosts' darkroom- oops! I guess reefer will do that to you, or something. She's a smart person -and fashion-forward, might I add!
Glenn Frankel narrates the origins of Midnight Cowboy- following Herlihy's roots as a young author, Hoffman's ascendance into the boy burn-out Ben Braddock, Jon Voight into... Jon Voight... Schlesinger's coming into American film... and MORE. A wonderful book! I wish I could have met him during one of his book tours, but he did send me a lovely book plate for my copy!
HONESTLY! Just putting this here as a pairing with Frankel's book. It is an adaptation of Frankel's book. I'll reserve my opinions but I do not agree with some of Nancy Buirski, the director's, takes, as discussed in my "Why Do I Like Midnight Cowboy" section.
I'd also be hesitant to suggest anything Jon Voight related that came out after Midnight Cowboy (okay. Anything after the Bush era. I think that's when he started going down the weirdo right-wing patriot conspiracy stuff. OR anything after Angelina Jolie disowning him. OR after Baby Genuises. Maybe I wouldn't suggest anything involving Jon Voight at all). I wrote a VERY LONG review of this film on my letterboxd. 2 1/2 stars that provides some cool stories (incl a tale of Voight/Abbie Hoffman friendship. huh) but also falls flat at convincing me it's uhh. good.
This seems like a joke- but it isn't! If you're curious about Midnight Cowboy, feel free to contact me through my guestbook or by commenting on my profile (preferably the latter, please!) Obviously, I can't know everything, but I'm always willing to try. If you're also a fan of the movie, also feel free to come and talk to me!
