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Midnight Cowboy
Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.
1969 · Directed by John Schlesinger · 113 min · Drama · Screenplay in the scene database · 18 frames
Tagline
For those who have never seen it and those who have never forgotten it.
Plot
Young Texan Joe Buck quits his dishwashing job, and heads by bus to New York City in cowboy attire to become a male prostitute. Initially unsuccessful, he finally beds a middle-aged woman, Cass, in her Park Avenue apartment. She is insulted when he requests payment, and Joe ultimately gives money to her.
Joe meets Rico "Ratso" Rizzo, an indigent con man with a limp who takes $20 for introducing him to a pimp. After discovering that the alleged pimp is actually an unhinged religious fanatic, Joe flees and unsuccessfully searches for Rico. Joe spends his days wandering the city, listening to his Zenith portable radio and sitting in his hotel room. When his money runs out, management locks Joe out and impounds his belongings.
In an attempt to make money, Joe receives oral sex from a meek young man in a movie theater, but the man cannot pay. Joe threatens him, but releases him unharmed. The next day, Joe spots Rico at a diner, and angrily confronts him. Rico manages to calm Joe, and invites him to share his squalid, condemned apartment squat. Joe reluctantly accepts, and the two begin a "business relationship" as hustlers. Rico asks Joe to call him "Rico" instead of "Ratso", but Joe does not oblige. They struggle with severe poverty, stealing food and failing to get work for Joe. Joe pawns his radio and sells his blood, while Rico's persistent cough worsens during a winter without heat in the freezing apartment.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Waldo Salt
- Cinematography: Adam Holender
- Edited by: Hugh A. Robertson
- Music: John Barry
- Production design: John Robert Lloyd
- Produced by: Jerome Hellman
Cast
- Dustin Hoffman as Ratso
- Jon Voight as Joe Buck
- Sylvia Miles as Cass
- John McGiver as Mr. O'Daniel
- Brenda Vaccaro as Shirley
- Barnard Hughes as Towny
- Ruth White as Sally Buck
- Jennifer Salt as Annie
- Gilman Rankin as Woodsy Niles
- Gary Owens as Little Joe
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English, Italian
- Studios: Florin Productions, Jerome Hellman Productions, United Artists
- Budget: $3,600,000
- Box office: $44,785,053
- Themes: new york city, friendship, prostitute, rape, based on novel or book, shower, texas, hustler, homelessness, rape of a male
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