New York. Just like I pictured it – skyscrapers, and ev’rythang.
*****
One uneventful day during my interminably monotonous youth, I decided that, when I grew up, I was going to live in New York City.
Seemed pretty obvious to me. Hard to pinpoint any one thing in particular that did it. Perhaps a few too many Sesame Street episodes at an impressionable age, one dialogue-laden Woody Allen movie past the legal limit, a saxophone-laced Billy Joel ballad catching me at an unguarded moment. But, for a kid who longed to escape the dingy trailer park in coastal California from which he arose, no other spot on the map seemed to offer such a complete and total break from the world he knew.
New York came across like an edifice so grand that I assumed standing in the middle of it would simply wipe my prior existence away. Those aged, stone buildings that would bear no trace of the 10-year-old strip malls and shopping centers so often frequented by my parents … the neon lights, the world-renown museums, the stately bridges, the constant, ceaseless buzz of activity … agreeing to live anywhere else almost felt an admission of failure, or at the very least, a compromise.
Yet as I grew a little older, and a little wiser, I realized that what I wanted wasn’t merely to live in New York City. What I wanted was to live in New York City … with money.
And so, for the majority my adult years, every conversation about “where I would want to live” has tended to go something like this:
Random Person: “Where would you want to live, if you could live anywhere in the world?”
Me: “Probably New York City.”
Random Person: “Really, New York, huh?”
Me: “Yeah.”
Random Person: “You know, I can see that. You strike me as a New York kind of guy. So if you love New York so much, why don’t you go ahead and move there?”
Me: “Well, the thing is, I wouldn’t want to just show up Midnight Cowboy-style.”
And almost invariably, at the simple mention of this one potent film title, an instant nod of recognition and understanding – a knowing, slightly cringe-inducing pall – will appear across Random Person’s face. Any need for further explanation as to why I don’t just up and “move to New York” is swiftly rendered unnecessary.
*****
Midnight Cowboy, directed by John Schlesinger, is the story of Joe Buck, a young man without the handy advantage I had of being able, before considering moving to New York, to view Midnight Cowboy first.
Might have saved him a lot of trouble, but nope. All this man had to go on were rumors, legends, Horatio Alger myths, and a sea of Hollywood archetypes that, their many charms and positive attributes aside, arguably promulgated a vision of human behavior and relations that could charitably be called “dishonest.” Look, once upon a time, I fell for it too.
On the surface, Joe Buck and I would appear to have little in common. I am not from Texas, I am not tall, blonde, and manly, I have never sold my body for sex (as far as I know?), I have never prowled Times Square at 2:00am without a cent to my name. But every time I watch Joe hop on a Greyhound bus to the Big Apple with optimistic dreams of rich, bored women showering him with cash for his, ahem, “services,” possessing that lethal combination of imagination and ignorance, his story is my story. Perhaps we’ve all got a little Joe Buck in us.
Like this ersatz cowboy, my notions regarding proper adult behavior had been molded by countless viewings of hokey sitcoms, farfetched blockbuster comedies, “moon-June-spoon” pop song lyrics, and advertisement-driven magazines pitched toward conforming suburban moms. I did not know the reality from the bullshit. Thus, upon reaching my teenage years, I attempted to interact with girls by using, as a guidebook, all the unrealistic pop culture crapola that I had been weaned on. And it didn’t work like it was supposed to. At all.
And I got really confused! “But … but … in that Julia Roberts romantic comedy I saw on TV, the guy says this, and then the girl says that, and then everybody gets what they want.” Utterly without warning, this massive pile of media artifacts that I’d relied on to shape my notions of human behavior was failing me, and failing me horrendously. I had to revise my entire worldview from scratch.
Bit by bit, piece by piece, I became a part-time Buddhist.
And as I built this newer, sturdier part-time Buddhist psychological foundation beneath me, I began to seek out the movies that wouldn’t lead me so infuriatingly astray. Like Joe Buck, I needed friends who I could trust.
I’m reminded a great exchange in the film noir Out of the Past, where Robert Mitchum’s character attempts to explain to his innocent love interest what the femme fatale is like. His “sweet” girl says, in an effort to be generous, “No one’s all bad.” Mitchum replies, “No, but she comes closest.”
Well, no movie is all honest, but Midnight Cowboy comes closest.
How did they let this one escape? A missing decimal point in a United Artists accountant’s ledger? A mix-up on a studio executive’s chalkboard? A prank by somebody’s nephew that got wildly out of hand? Not sure who slipped up here. Aren’t the protagonists of big-budget Hollywood movies supposed to be intelligent, confident, suave, witty, sophisticated, urbane? Who gives a shit about all those “other” people?
Well, I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but one day, in May 1969, those “other” people finally got their very own widescreen, color, big-budget Hollywood blockbuster.
*****
Midnight Cowboy is just about the loneliest movie I know of. How lonely is it? Midnight Cowboy is lonelier than Eleanor Rigby and Father MacKenzie put together (or … isolated further?). Midnight Cowboy is so lonely, it makes Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” sound like Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family.” There may be movies that capture loneliness as effectively as Midnight Cowboy does (off the top of my head: Citizen Kane, The Searchers, The Last Picture Show, Taxi Driver), but if there’s a movie that captures loneliness better than Midnight Cowboy does, please share its title with me.
There are certain shots in this film that ooze so much loneliness, being exposed to them may cause lasting damage. I believe I am legally required to offer a LONELINESS WARNING before showing these to you:
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation … while hustling for a quick lay,” I believe Thoreau once said. Or this one:
God damn. Or this one:
[Puts fist in mouth] Or how about this one:
Jon Voight isn’t even in this shot, and it’s lonely. You hear that sound coming from the back room? That’s the sound of me snorting lines of fresh Columbian loneliness. To quote Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction, “I said God damn.” (Sidenote: maybe it’s just me, but I feel like, if I stare closely enough at that shot of Manhattan traffic … I can almost see Guido Anselmi’s head popping out of the roof of one of those cars?)
Speaking of 8 ½: like that seemingly dissimilar film, Midnight Cowboy could also be described as a movie about a man who experiences intense difficulty reconciling fantasy with reality. But here, when our protagonist snaps out of his appealing reverie, instead of waking up in a health spa surrounded by old ladies and nuns, he wakes up in a Times Square movie theater getting his dick sucked for cash – and not by Claudia Cardinale.
By the end of 8 ½, I think what Guido comes to realize is that his daily life is, all in all, pretty damn nice. Joe Buck would make that trade in a heartbeat, you know what I’m saying? Both films may serve up the same dish – those jarring, sudden, and yet thought-provoking juxtapositions between fanciful daydream and cold, mundane reality – but I think this one leaves more of an aftertaste. I’m always a sucker for those cherished “whiplash moments,” and Midnight Cowboy really knows how to make them sting.
Even right off the bat, there’s a sly bit of whiplash. The very first thing we see? Why, it appears to be a blank white screen, accompanied by the boisterous cacophony of a dramatic gunfight (presumably from a Hollywood western), but … something feels “off,” no? The camera gradually zooms out to reveal that the “blank white screen” we’ve been looking at is in fact … the blank white screen of a desolate Texas drive-in theater, baking in the mid-afternoon sun, entirely devoid of any projected film. It’s a trick! Panning back further, a child enters the frame from below, bouncing up and down on a rocking horse – i.e. a fake horse. Not exactly the kind of cowboy I was expecting.
Welcome to arguably the first disappointment among many – although it’s going to take a lot more than that to slow down Joe Buck. Here is a man starring in his own self-directed movie – the only problem being that he’s on the wrong set.
Before the credits have a chance to roll, Schlesinger shows Joe horsing around in his (soon to be former) Texas bedroom, posing in the mirror, writing the flawless script for the scene in which he quits that thankless dishwashing job. He’s got his rebellious, anti-authoritarian, pre-scripted lines all ready to go: “You know what you can do?” It’s his big moment, and he can hardly wait to soak in the shocked and appalled reaction from his soon-to-be ex-colleagues …
… aaaaaaand when he actually marches in to the restaurant and spouts his (slightly mumbled and incoherent) lines, the big scene lands with a thud. It’s bad enough that no one hears his perfectly-honed statement; can’t he even get a single look in his direction? A pile of dishes rattle, that’s about it. The anticipated satisfaction shrivels up into a nonentity. It all played out so much better in his head.
Joe is the kind of person who can’t quite “read the room.” On the bus ride to New York, he keeps trying to be best buds with everybody, but aside from bits of small talk, the other passengers mostly just seem to want some peace and quiet. A cadre of girls giggle at his western get-up, while he assumes they’re giggling with lust. But that’s OK, New York will solve everything.
The suddenness of the skyline coming into view through Joe’s bus window always makes me take a breath.
Oooh. Ahhh. It’s like Disneyland, except … people actually live there. The place looks like a mad scientist’s renegade experiment on some distant planet (of course that’s nothing compared to what it looks like today, but I digress). Then just as suddenly, WHAM, we’re in Times Square, and shit, even the hotel TV costs money.
So if Joe thought the anti-climactic denouement to his Texas dishwashing job was rough, whoo boy, the let-downs are just beginning.
After attempting to pick up a middle-aged woman on the street and being immediately scolded, he attempts to pick up another middle-aged woman on the street, which at first seems to go successfully, but either she assumes he’s some stranger who wants to screw her just for the hell of it, or she knows precisely what he’s up to and pretends otherwise, because at the end of it all, she sobs and pleads, and, well, he ends up handing money to her.
At this point, I suspect he realizes he’s in over his head, but does he leave? Leave to where? As my old video guide book Rating the Movies puts it, “… he discovers it’s just as dreary and lonesome in the big city as it was in the hick town he came from.”
Am I surprised at the lengths our troubled protagonist goes through in order to avoid taking the “normal” job that, while allowing him to survive, would, in his mind at least, be an admission of failure? Peeking into a restaurant window and seeing not only hot food on a grill but a “DISHWASHER WANTED” sign, the conflict within him arises.
Hmmmm …. tempting but … damn it, he didn’t come all the way to New York City just to end up taking the same thankless, menial job he could’ve taken back home, right? I love the “This could be you” stare his alter-ego gives him.
Now if it were me, I’d certainly rather wash dishes for a couple of weeks than hang around Times Square and get my dick sucked by a member of the sex to which I’m not particularly attracted (although perhaps one might best describe Joe as “sexually fluid”), which would seem to me like a clear admission of failure, but hey, I’m not Joe Buck.
Personal anecdote: About 20 years ago, my own doomed (if far less harrowing) New York dream ended up petering out about seven hours west, somewhere on the shores of Lake Ontario. I, for one, was so utterly convinced that, after attending graduate school in a certain declining Great Lakes city which shall remain nameless, I would not be moving back to California, that, somewhat as a last resort, I took employment, Master’s degree hot off the grill, not as a substitute teacher, but as a substitute teacher’s aide.
At a time when I desperately needed to generate new connections, I found myself, after getting to know certain teachers and students over the course of one school day, instantly plunged the very next day into an entirely brand new and unfamiliar school, effectively unable to create any social or professional momentum for myself.
Not only that, but being a substitute teacher’s aide, something that I had no legitimate interest in, still wasn’t fully paying my bills, and so I found myself grinding myself into dust like the tip of a pencil, and needing to ask my father for money anyway – virtually negating the whole idea of my living there in the first place.
Nothing that winter seemed go right. Bush won re-election. My record player broke. I remember one chilly December morning, transferring at the bus station downtown, handing a homeless guy some money, only for him to scream into my face, “Punk! Punnnk!” There was just some evil mojo in the air.
Did I really want to avoid a return to California that badly? Well let me tell you, most people would have given up on the idea long before I did. To quote Morrissey, “Oh I can smile about it now, but at the time it was terrible.”
But back to that little Times Square fellatio in Midnight Cowboy: Bob Balaban, welcome to Hollywood! I can hear the conversation he must have had with his agent now:
“Hey, you wanted to make it in the movies, right? Well here’s your big breakthrough role.”
“I have to do what?”
“Listen, Bob, you suck this one dick, and it’ll buy you a lifetime supply of Wes Anderson and Christopher Guest bit roles for all eternity.”
“Well, in that case …”
But this scene. Whoa. It’s like the Jolt Cola of sadness, because somehow, despite all my intentions to the contrary, I end up sympathizing with both characters.
How does Joe get through this, exactly? He pretends it’s his hometown sweetheart Crazy Annie sucking him dry, instead of Rick Moranis’s long-lost father. And when it turns out that this bespectacled young loner doesn’t have any money either, I’m right there with Joe in wanting to throttle this future star of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Gosford Park against the grimy bathroom walls. I mean, to go through an act like that only for the money, and then to be denied even the money?
But Joe realizes that, well, this kid doesn’t amount to much of a villain. Wouldn’t it be easier if there were a villain?
*****
Enter Ratso Rizzo.
Not as the villain, I mean. Or let’s just say he morphs from “phony friend” to “potential villain” to “genuine friend” with alarming speed.
I wish I could declare with confidence that I have less in common with Ratso Rizzo than I do with Joe Buck, but I fear that might not be the case. Nevertheless, I will say this: almost every movie I have ever seen features a lead male character who, at least on some level, I envy, or feel slightly inferior to. Ratso Rizzo inspires absolutely zero feelings of envy or inferiority within me. Whenever I make a downward comparison between myself and Ratso Rizzo, I come out ahead every time.
Although there is one area where I think Ratso has me beat: he surely emits the most nasal and whiny “Come-ahhhn” in the history of the motion picture medium. That “Come-ahhhn” could wake the pharaohs. Otherwise, Ratso strikes me as the champion of pretty much nothing. No petty scheme or small-minded con is beneath him.
Here is a man so pathetic that 1) whenever he passes a pay phone, he instinctively scans the coin dispenser for change; 2) when he visits his father’s grave, he grabs a bouquet of flowers from someone else’s grave and tosses them onto his own father’s; 3) when he’s invited to a Warhol-esque “happening,” he immediately heads for the catering table and proceeds to cagily stick bologna into his coat pocket (upon spotting this, one of the organizers of the party asks him, “Why are you stealing food? Well you know it’s free, you don’t have to steal it.” This concept proceeds to delicately blow Ratso’s mind.)
I love how “small-time” all the cons that Ratso ropes Joe into are: snatching a couple of tomatoes from a grocery stand; pretending to assist a pregnant lady with her laundry in order to sneak their own filthy clothing into the washing machine; kicking the locks off a shoeshine stand and stealing the equipment for ten minutes. It makes me wonder: are half these schemes even worth the effort? Wouldn’t they be better off just … panhandling?
But I think Ratso possesses in spades one quality that Joe sorely lacks and could use a good deal more of: a crusty, cynical realism. The man is no dewy-eyed dreamer. Two examples:
- As Joe and Ratso slither their way between a mob of protestors (although, given that the signs read “END MADNESS NOW” and “LIBERATE FREEDOM,” I have to wonder what, exactly, they’re protesting), Ratso mutters “Get outta hear … come on … fuckin’ creeps … go to work.” Global ramifications of the post-war military industrial complex not weighing heavily on the man’s conscience, I suppose.
- Nor is Ratso impressed with the “Factory” crowd: “You want the word on that brother and sister act? Hansel’s a fag and Gretel’s got the hots for herself, so who cares, right? Load up on the salami.” Load up on the salami, indeed. You see all that nice shit out there in the world? That’s for other people, not for guys like Ratso.
Fortunately, both Joe and Ratso share my favorite coping mechanism: bleak humor. When Ratso proceeds to plop a homemade substance resembling food onto Joe’s plate, Joe remarks, “Smells worse hot than it did cold.”
“All right,” Ratso retorts, “starting tomorrow you cook your own God damn dinner. Or you get one of your rich Park Avenue ladies to cook for you …”
“I’m eatin’ it, I’m eatin’ it, see?”
“… in her penthouse.”
“Look, I’m eatin’ this shit, Ratso. Mmm, good.”
At last, after screaming into the bottomless urban void, Joe finally has a foil to bounce his bitter disappointment against. And I can’t help but grin at the desperate but somehow goofy sight of Joe and Ratso shuffling around in their unheated apartment, thumbs jerking left and right “Elaine”-style, in a vain attempt to stay warm, the inane jingle “Orange juice on ice is nice” emanating from the radio.
(Another priceless moment: While Joe, with a heavy heart, sells his trusty portable radio to a pawn shop, Ratso sneaks around in the back and … how about that? Who knew the man could play a mean xylophone?)
Our boys retain their sense of humor to the bitter end. While slowly rotting away in that bus seat on the way to Miami, Ratso comments, “Here I am goin’ to Florida. My leg hurts, my butt hurts, my chest hurts, my face hurts, and like that ain’t enough, I gotta pee all over myself.”
And how does Joe react to this pitiful statement? He chuckles.
“That’s funny? I’m fallin’ apahht here.”
“You just … you know what happened? You just took a little rest stop that wasn’t on the schedule.” This, I believe, was precisely the perspective the moment called for.
I’m also fond of the scenes simply depicting Joe and Ratso chatting about random existential matters. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “Ratso Rizzo, World-Renown Philosopher”:
“It all depends on what you believe in, you know? Like sometimes your spirit goes up, sometimes it goes … uh, it goes other places. This whole kind of thing is, uh, spiritual matters … some people believe you can come back in another body.”
“Well I hope I don’t come back in your body.”
“I ain’t asking you to come back in my body, I’m just saying you could come back as a … a dog or a president.”
“If I had my choice between a dog and a president, I’d come back as a president. I ain’t that dumb.”
Sure Joe, if you say so.
*****
Now, is it a “perfect” movie? But is it a “perfect” world we live in?
I’ve occasionally read reviews docking Midnight Cowboy points for failing to be nearly as “risqué” and “taboo-shattering” now as it was purportedly feted to be upon its release. From the All Movie Guide:
“… Cowboy shocked audiences with its squalid subject matter and signaled a trend towards films that explored lurid and personal material. Whereas the mere suggestion of a blow job in Cowboy was scandalous in 1969, the film helped pave the way for later mainstream films in which a blow job might have as much shock value as the weather forecast. For that reason, Cowboy loses a substantial part of its impact when viewed all these years after its original release.”
Well, too bad for those people who’d assumed the film’s artistic merit was tied to its shock value, but … that’s not my problem. If, for some low-information Baby Boomers, half of its original appeal was rooted in the notion of “Oh my God, they’re talking about that? In a Hollywood movie? I better go see this,” and now, decades later, those same viewers who found the content “brave” and “edgy” are now slightly embarrassed at their youthful pearl-clutching and see the movie as a product of its time, well, doesn’t that say more about them than it does about the movie?
Besides, I don’t know about anybody else, but when I viewed the film in the late ‘90s as a green, naïve, impressionable 17-year-old, I certainly found the content plenty shocking enough.
That misguided demerit aside, would I feel comfortable stating that Midnight Cowboy, at least compared to my other favorite films of the decade, lacks elements that are dated?
Schlesinger certainly does a lot of “stuff.” You want your pseudo-avant-garde flashbacks? He’s got your pseudo-avant-garde flashbacks right here, buddy. I suspect Schlesinger intended these sequences (mostly occurring during Joe’s initial bus ride from Texas to New York) to come across as “subtle backstory building” and “multi-layered character development,” but in my eyes they feel a little self-consciously “European” and “wannabe psychedelic.”
Or how about all that channel-flipping on the TV as Joe’s body presses against the remote while making love to Poodle Lady? Come on Schlesinger, put down the Marshall McLuhan and gimme a proper scene. Then there’s the sequence where Joe tries to chase Ratso through the subway, interspersed with, as I understand it, his memories of having been gang-raped by a bunch of Texas good ol’ boys, while fuzztone guitar blares on the soundtrack and Schlesinger frantically alternates between black and white and color footage. Far out, man.
And yet, every now and then, I find some of Schlesinger’s potentially self-conscious editing ploys to be devastatingly effective, such as the moment when Joe, fueled by rage after realizing he’s been had by Ratso, picks up a beer bottle and plans to chuck it against a mirror, only to experience what appears to be a flashback of his younger Texan self throwing an object at a mirror while his grandmother screams “Stop it! Stop it!” in the background, ultimately causing him to conclude, “Eh, it just ain’t worth it.”
Also, let’s not forget the aforementioned “happening” segment, which I had initially assumed was Schlesinger’s attempt at depicting a Warhol-esque party through random Hollywood actors, but later learned was a scene that actually employed genuine Warhol Superstars such as Viva, Ultra Violet, and Joe Dallesandro (!). All right, fine, he may have cajoled some real Warhol associates to appear in it (if not Andy himself, still presumably recovering from his gunshot wound), but I wonder if the “hip” and “with-it” viewers of 1969 would have gotten a bigger kick out of those cameos than I get out of them today, although perhaps the scene serves as a useful document of that milieu?
In summary: is Midnight Cowboy the most “timeless” movie ever, in that Godfather or Casablanca sort of way? This old ranch hand says no.
I’m inclined to suggest that these elements have, over the years, contributed to the film’s less-than-reverential reputation among, say, the Sight & Sound crowd, but even certain critics back in 1969 had their issues with it. Pauline Kael disliked it, as I recall (shocker of the century); while I don’t think I ever read her review of the movie itself, I recall reading another review of hers that must have been published shortly after Midnight Cowboy’s release, because she wrote something along the lines of (I’m no fan of paraphrasing, but if you’d like to comb through 100 bile-filled, tightly-wound movie reviews Kael wrote in 1969 just to find the quote I remember, then be my guest), “It’s the bond between the two main characters that audiences seem to relate to; if only the film had extended that same level of compassion to the rest of the characters.” Even if I agreed with that take – which I don’t – isn’t the film essentially, like, the story of the two main characters? Anyone else think that’s a really odd complaint to make? She sounded so puzzled that audiences strongly related to a movie that bothered to depict loneliness, alienation, and disillusionment. People seem to “connect” to that stuff? Huh, go figure.
Likewise, anyone hoping to find Midnight Cowboy in Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” essay series might be looking for a while. Part of me thinks Ebert read Kael’s review before both seeing the film and writing his own review, because, although he gives high marks to individual elements, his complaints sound suspiciously similar to hers:
The performances have a flat, painful accuracy. The world of Times Square, a world of people without hope and esteem, seems terribly real. Here is America’s underbelly and it even smells that way. And seeing these things and reaching to them, we are ready to praise the movie where we found them. And cannot … John Schlesinger has not been brave enough to tell his story and draw his characters with the simplicity they require. He has taken these magnificent performances, and his own careful perception of American society, and dropped them into an offensively trendy, gimmick-ridden, tarted-up, vulgar exercise in fashionable cinema. Trying to get the good out of Midnight Cowboy is like looking at a great painting through six inches of Jell-O. It is there — the greatness is there — but unworthy hands have meddled with it almost beyond repair … Ratso has a measure of humanity. So does Joe Buck. They come together because there is no other way to turn. Midnight Cowboy should have been about their mutual self-discovery; about the process that took place as they learned to know each other.
And … it isn’t? Here’s a classic textbook example of Ebert unleashing the dreaded “we” in a movie review, as if he already knew how every other viewer would react to it and could provide us with our own freshly-baked opinion right out of the oven.
He even had the perfect opportunity to revise his take upon reviewing the film’s 25th anniversary re-release, and yet, despite noting how it had struck a chord with moviegoers for two-and-a-half decades … he apparently felt exactly the same way about it as he had 25 years earlier:
Long after it was first released, Midnight Cowboy remains one of a handful of films that stay in our memory after the others have evaporated. Its love story between two drifters, the naïve Joe Buck and the street-savvy Ratso Rizzo, is a reference point for other films. Some of its moments, like the one where Ratso pounds on a nudging taxi and shouts, “I’m walking here!” have entered into the folklore.
And yet, and yet … a 1994 viewing of the film confirms my original opinion, expressed in 1969, that the movie as a whole doesn’t live up to its parts. And that Joe and Ratso rise above the material, taking on a reality of their own while the screenplay detours into the fashionable New York demimonde. Midnight Cowboy is a good movie with a masterpiece inside, struggling to break free … What has happened to Midnight Cowboy is that we’ve done our own editing job on it. We’ve forgotten the excesses and the detours, and remembered the purity of the central characters and the Voight and Hoffman performances.
Well … yeah. Because that’s like, the part that matters. It’s not that I don’t notice any of the potential flaws that seemed to get Ebert’s goat; it’s just that they … don’t bother me very much. He got hung up on all the unimportant shit. Mark Harris, in an essay for the film’s Criterion Collection release, seems to know what the deal is:
Schlesinger’s camera (brilliantly manned by first-time cinematography Adam Holender) situates Joe and Ratso in one of the truest versions of New York City ever seen in a Hollywood movie to that point. And while they deploy a whole bag of sixties tricks – a journey into verite at a happening, flashbacks, head trips, and dream sequences, an occasional hallucinatory use of black and white – the film is at its most effective when it simply observes Joe on New York’s streets, lit with sooty neon, peopled by the needy, the dejected, con men and easy marks.
In other words, the good stuff is so freaking good. Instead of the “dated” scenes knocking the film down from, say, four stars to three stars (as they apparently did for Ebert), it’s more like they knock the film down from potentially my 3rd favorite film of the 1960s to, like, my 8th. I dunno. Maybe Ebert was just fortunate never to have felt the kind of agonizing desolation that I sense pouring out of every frame of this big, beautiful hunk of urban alienation.
Seriously though, Ebert had some weird issues with this movie. Here’s another quote from his original 1969 review: “How long will it be before we recover from The Graduate and can make a movie without half a dozen soul-searching pseudo-significant ballads? When we dump the songs, we’ll also be able to get rid of all those scenes of riding on buses, walking the rainy streets, hanging around, etc., that are necessary while the songs are being sung.”
Uh … yeah! You know what the big problem with Midnight Cowboy is? It’s that lousy “Everybody’s Talkin’,” crooned by that piece of shit Harry Nilsson, accompanying all those tacky, hideous shots of Joe Buck forlornly making his way across the haunted backdrop of derelict, tumbleweed America.
Really, Roger? You want to go there?
*****
Like the film’s occasionally less-than-timeless visual choices, perhaps one could accuse several soundtrack cuts of feeling distinctly of their era, sounding like the sort of quasi-bargain bin psychedelic ephemera that MGM must have offered to Schlesinger in a box labeled “Music That Won’t Cost Us Anything to Use.”
I dare my readers not to chuckle at the intentionally misspelled contributor known as “the Groop.” Another artist with an equally chuckle-worthy name, Elephant’s Memory, is at least famous for one other thing besides being included on the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack (having later backed John Lennon on Some Time in New York City). Not sure if Leslie Miller went on to do much of note, but the composer of the track she performed, Warren Zevon, appears to have done so – I’m sure the arrival of those royalty checks turned the presumably starving songwriter into quite the, ahem, excitable boy.
But frankly, a movie soundtrack only needs to feature one transcendent piece of music within it to skate by (see, for instance, my #7 favorite film of the ‘60s), and in my view, Midnight Cowboy doubles that equation.
Speaking of The Graduate, though (and, by extension, Simon & Garfunkel): you know how certain American cities have “sister cities”? Sometimes I like to believe that certain movies have a “sister song,” or vice versa. Think American Graffiti and “American Pie.” Well, as a candidate for Midnight Cowboy’s “sister song,” I hereby nominate “The Boxer.”
If somebody ever desired to make a film adaptation of “The Boxer,” they would be plum out of luck, because it’s already been done. Read these lyrics and tell me they don’t sound like scenes from a certain movie which shall remain nameless:
When I left my home and my family
I was no more than a boy
In the company of strangers
In the quiet of the railway station
Running scared
Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters
Where the ragged people go
Looking for the places only they would knowAsking only workman’s wages
I come looking for a job
But I get no offers
Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue
I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort thereThen I’m laying out my winter clothes
And wishing I was gone
Going home
Where the New York City winters aren’t bleeding me
Leading me
Going home
Joe, Ratso, is that you, harmonizing with Garfunkel behind the bass harmonica? I mean really. It’s almost too close to be a coincidence, although I suspect it was precisely that (the song having been released two months prior to the film). All I’ve got to go on is a slight Dustin Hoffman/Graduate connection. No, I think the scent of 20th century alienation was simply in the air, mixed in with the urine and rotting vegetables.
The last verse of “The Boxer” is the kicker, where the titular pugilist proclaims, “I am leaving, I am leaving!” and yet, Simon ambiguously adds, “the fighter still remains.” The question of whether he should remain, or might be better off leaving, stays tantalizingly unanswered, merely transposed into an enigmatic “lie-la-lie” coda and the most gargantuan, terrifying percussion slaps to ever grace a wimpy folk-pop ballad.
(Tip for other aspiring ‘60s recording artists: If you know you’re not going to be putting out a new album in 1969, but you still want to placate your restless fanbase and show the music scene you’ve still “got it” by, at the very least, releasing a stand-alone single, release “The Boxer.”)
Hold on, whose song am I writing about again? Maybe using “The Boxer” would have been a little too “on-the-nose.” But 1969 was certainly not a year bereft of wistful, haunting, singer-songwriter-flavored folk-rock ballads to choose from. Hell, why choose a pre-existing song if you can get the hottest names in the business to compose one for you? Legend has it that Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Randy Newman all gave it a shot, and even a certain Harry Nilsson threw his hat into the ring, with a composition called “I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City.” All right, let’s see what he came up with:
I’ll say goodbye to all my sorrow
And by tomorrow I’ll be on my way
I guess the Lord must be in New York CityI’m so tired of getting’ nowhere
Seeing my prayers going unanswered
I guess the Lord must be in New York CityWell here I am Lord, knockin’ at your back door
Ain’t it wonderful to be where I always wanted to be
For the first time I’ll breath free here in New York City
Eh … it’s too literal. You know what I get when I hear this? “Hey everybody, I just read the script for Midnight Cowboy! And I’m writing a song from the point of view of the main character! He goes to New York City! So I’ve put ‘New York City’ in the lyrics!” Pass.
But what about that other song he’d just put out as a single, you know, that nice Fred Neil cover? You know what I get when I hear “Everybody’s Talkin’”? “Man, I just can’t seem to find my place in the world, but to hell with all those other people, I’m gonna keep on movin’ along and doin’ my thing.”
Neil certainly has his admirers, and I do possess a double-disc Fred Neil “best of” somewhere in my bottomless mp3 collection, but I wouldn’t say his work stands out too much from the standard “guy with a guitar in a coffee shop” template. (My favorite might be “That’s the Bag I’m In,” with its line “They’ll probably drop the atom bomb the day my ship comes in” being right up my paranoid, Kafkaesque alley.) When I eventually heard Neil’s version of “Everybody’s Talkin’,” it sounded more or less like what I figured it would have sounded like: low-key and unadorned.
Of course, while Nilsson was no stranger to songwriting himself, he tended to skirt around direct, confessional sentiments, preferring to express his emotions through childlike metaphors (“Cuddly Toy”) and McCartney-esque third person narratives (“1941”). In other words, Harry Nilsson, talented though I believe he was, didn’t really write songs like “Everybody’s Talkin’.”
The thing is, in Nilsson’s string-drenched hands, I think the beatnik machismo of Fred Neil’s lyrics suddenly takes on a more fragile, wounded quality. Neil sounds tough; Nilsson sounds damaged and scared. When his suddenly double-tracked vocals hit that “no I won’t let you luh-eeeeeeave” right before the fade-out … boy, that’s one lonely note from one lonely singer (and yes, one is the loneliest number). And the subsequent, elongated “whowwwooaaaa-haaaaaaa”? Man. That is Nilsson tapping into a reservoir of sorrow the source of which I don’t think even he could have pinpointed (and that no one else dared try to pinpoint). To me, the power of Nilsson’s version is in the scared man’s bitter, forlorn, meditative, defiant determination to still go his own way, despite his inner fear, the skeptical opinions of society be damned.
(Perhaps Schlesinger couldn’t acquire the rights to the original recording that had appeared on RCA, or perhaps he wanted to have the flexibility of Harry scatting and bebopping his vocals to better match the rhythm of the opening credits, but I should mention that the version of “Everybody’s Talkin’” used in the film is an entirely different recording from the one that was initially released on Aerial Ballet, which is the version which became a hit single in the wake of the film, is the version most people know today, and is the version I personally prefer.)
I would also add that Nilsson’s interpretation conjures up motion and travel in a way that perhaps Neil’s more lugubrious rendition, for all its merits, doesn’t quite do, thanks to its railroad-esque acoustic fingerpicking and brushes-and-hi-hat percussion. And those strings. The strings are like the chilly December wind blowing between the 42nd street buildings and directly under my shivering armpits. They soar, then dip, then rise again, then hastily spiral downward between the line “sailin’ on a summer breeze” and “skippin’ over the ocean like a stone.” It’s like the strings and Nilsson’s falsetto are battling it out to see who can sound more troubled and distraught.
That said, John Barry’s “Theme from Midnight Cowboy” might have out-troubled and out-distraughted them both. Upon closer inspection, it’s dawning on me that both Barry’s theme and “Everybody’s Talkin’” feature the same high, cutting strings and fingerpicked acoustic guitar … which might have something to do with why they work together so well? But it’s the song’s harmonica that really chafes my aorta. The irony, or so I gather, is that at first, this grandly orchestrated, widescreen, waltz-time theme which reeks of “big-budget western” is almost mocking Joe’s shakily constructed persona, and yet, over time, takes on an air of consolation. The theme is out of place, but so is Joe – so in a sense, neither one of them are out of place at all.
*****
As noted, I part ways with Ebert regarding his overall take on Cowboy, but when he suggests that viewers may have “done their own editing job on it,” one scene in particular makes me suspect I know what he means.
So, towards the film’s denouement, as Ratso claims that he’s too sick to walk, and yet refuses to be taken to a hospital (I’d personally rather just go to the hospital, but, whatever), Joe beats up an old, lonely, closeted businessman in order to get his hands on enough money to pay for his and Ratso’s bus fare to Miami. As one does.
Honestly, until I viewed the movie a second time, I didn’t even remember this scene existing (possibly because I preferred not to)? With each subsequent viewing, I tend to wonder if I’m completely on board with it, but on the DVD commentary track, at least, Schlesinger expresses zero regrets:
This was a scene which … was hotly debated, as to whether it should be in to the full extent it is or not. We tried it cut down … the fear always was whether it would make Joe too unsympathetic. I don’t subscribe to that. And indeed, also you’re dealing with someone [the businessman] who is a masochist … My assistant begged me to take that scene out, thought it was so awful … and I was absolutely sure we needed something as violent and as vicious as this in a sense, to emphasize the desperation of it. I’m sure that if we’d previewed this, this would have been something we’d been begged to take out, by studios or by anything … we didn’t have that problem. Well the question was raised whether he’d killed him, but it didn’t worry me – he didn’t.
Terrific. I’m glad one of us is confident that Joe didn’t kill him. Call me crazy, but ending the scene with a shot which, filmed from the perspective of the businessman’s mouth, features Joe shoving the receiver of a phone over the entirety of the lens, does kinda sorta imply that Joe has just suffocated the man to death, no? Or do people just shove phones into other people’s mouths for fun?
Then there’s this question Ratso poses on the bus only a few minutes later: “You didn’t kill him, did you? Got blood on your jacket.”
Awkward pause.
“I don’t wanna talk about it.”
Sounds like a “yes” to me, but I wasn’t in the room, so who knows? Note, also, this sentence from Wikipedia’s plot summary: “Desperate, Joe picks up a man in an amusement arcade and robs him during a violent encounter in the man’s hotel room where Joe brutally beats the man (it is implied that Joe may have killed the man).” Well, if even Wikipedia thinks you’ve depicted your main character as a murderer, then perhaps your directorial intentions might have gone a tad astray?
Because if Joe has killed the guy, then what does that say about his quixotic attempt at personal growth? Does Joe think that it’s OK to snuff a stranger in order to “save” a friend he intimately knows (and who, despite the touching gesture, won’t even last much longer anyway)?
On the other hand, I admire Schlesinger for refusing to go soft or letting the audience “off the hook.” This story arc is hardcore, man! You want a flawless hero? Go watch a John Wayne flick. In the booklet for the film’s Criterion Collection release, Mark Harris writes:
[Joe’s] journey toward actual love – tenderness, encouragement, caretaking, kindness – gives Midnight Cowboy its wrenching climax, and … is so well-remembered that the scene that predates that climax, in which Joe hits bottom with a truly savage act of violence against one of his johns, comes as a fresh shock every time. Is there any redemption for Joe – any future for him – after that?
I’d like to think so. Look, this whole New York thing has really done a number on him. Just get the hell out of there, Joe, and you’ll be back to your non-phone-assaulting ways in no time. To be fair, the businessman does say, “Thank you, thank you” after Joe slaps the man’s dentures out, so maybe he gets off on being beaten to a pulp by random gigolos? Am I arguing that the scene doesn’t belong in the film, or that it doesn’t ring “true” to Joe’s character? Eh. Let’s just say that I’m on the fence.
Because I think the most part-time Buddhist framework in which to interpret the film’s conclusion is that, potential telephone suffocation aside, this gut-wrenching, illusion-shattering Big Apple adventure has ultimately been good for Joe.
Imagine an alternate universe in which Joe’s original plan had worked to a T. Say, in Universe #1, he arrived in New York, learned the ropes like a pro, and raked in the cash. Now compare that alternate outcome to the outcome he did experience. Would he have genuinely been happier in Universe #1? I mean, how long can a person be happy by sleeping with strangers for money? You know what I think? I think the universe in which Joe failed miserably, and was forced, piece by agonizing piece, to abandon his cockamamie notions and come crashing to Earth, was the better outcome. No, it wasn’t fun, but who ever said developing psychological maturity was fun?
In a bit of convenient (a little too convenient?) narrative irony, the moment when he finally serves his first satisfied customer and achieves a genuine taste of “success” is the precise moment when Ratso’s health takes a dive, and yet, when presented with a choice between furthering his “career” and aiding his ailing buddy, the choice doesn’t strike him as much of one at all.
It sure took the man long enough, but I think he’s finally come to understand that this whole idea of becoming “one hell of a stud” was more of a narrative rooted in narcissism and self-absorption. A round of applause for Joe as he courageously tosses his cowboy clothes in the trash during a quick bus stop north of Miami, and an even louder round of applause as he converses with a waitress without trying to “make something happen.” Producer Jerome Hellman observes on the DVD commentary: “It was the first time that he spoke to a woman in which he didn’t attempt to somehow sexualize it in a bizarre, romanticized fashion, you know, like he was a great big stud and all that, and she was supposed to fall in a swoon. He just dealt with her in a very simple, straightforward way.” Unheard of. Outrageous!
It’s not hard in this world to find people who can stroke your ego. Ratso offering Joe his companionship, on the other hand, at a time when no one else had bothered to do the same – a companionship not rooted in notions of financial gain, or of climbing the social ladder … aren’t the gifts people give when they are not obligated to do so the ones that truly matter?
So Joe, in turn, is inspired to give Ratso, this other human being who is not a blood relation and cannot provide him with wealth and status, a gift of his own. Only moments before our dear Enrico Salvatore Rizzo heads to that great Miami Beach bingo game in the sky, Joe straightens his sickly friend’s brand new Hawaiian shirt, and Ratso emits a quiet “Thanks, Joe.” Coming from a man who has never been one to offer his gratitude generously, I find this tiny little “Thanks, Joe” an epic poem of sonorous acknowledgement and generosity of spirit worthy of Virgil or Milton.
After an existence consisting mostly of people shitting on him, here, in his last moments, Ratso appreciates that someone is trying, however clumsily, however pathetically, to take care of him. This is like the most plausible “happy ending” he could have hoped for. Now, expiring while staring out the window at palm trees doesn’t strike me as being much more pleasant than expiring while staring at the walls of a dingy New York hospital, but for Ratso, I suppose it’s about wanting the ability to choose at least a sliver of his destiny.
And so, in the end, Joe discovers that companionship, not sex, or big bucks, or the fulfillment of a lonely Texas boy’s half-baked, capitalist-fueled fantasy, is what he’s really been after all along. It’s not about the glory, it’s about the sickly, crippled friends we made along the way.
(Also, props to the bus driver: “OK folks, just a little illness, we’ll be in Miami in a few minutes.” A true professional.)
Having sat down one school evening, at the age of seventeen, to view this film, not knowing the damnedest thing about the content therein and only planning to watch, say, the first 30 minutes or so, I found myself, two gripping, grueling, riveting, exhausting hours later, taking my rented VHS copy out of the VCR with my shaky, traumatized hands, and pronouncing the following verdict: “Great, but depressing.”
But you know what? These days, I think I might just cross out the word “depressing” from that statement. Producer Hellman puts it nicely in the DVD commentary track:
I would point out to you, if I may, that we all die alone, it’s not a choice that’s affected by what we do in our life. It’s LIVING alone that’s tough, really, and the reality of this is that Joe now has to live alone until he makes another connection. But I think that clearly, clearly the film suggests that he has that capability now. I think that’s what makes it an ‘upper,’ not a really thoroughly depressing experience. I think it’s very clear by the end of this that Joe is going to be able to make contact, and on a perhaps more profound, more real level.
You got that, everybody? Midnight Cowboy is an upper.
But it kind of is! Let’s call it downbeat, but not unremittingly bleak. This is a part-time Buddhist’s idea of a “feel-good movie.” The old saying “ignorance is bliss”? Don’t tell that to a part-time Buddhist.
*****
I don’t eagerly go around tossing out terms such as “overrated” and “underrated,” but I do find the current reputation of this film somewhat curious. For instance, on They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They’s list of “1,000 Greatest Films,” Midnight Cowboy comes in at respectable #336, but look at some of the other ‘60s art-house titles that come in above it: Pierre le Fou (#63), Last Year at Marienbad (#99), Mouchette (#178), Faces (#262), My Night at Maud’s (#261), Red Desert (#307) … I dunno. Maybe it has its moments of clunkiness or artistic overreach compared to these more “abstract” and “emotionless” films but … come-ahhhhn. I barely even remember anything about those other movies. I give a shit about Midnight Cowboy.
This one reaches me in a place beyond lists and rankings, where the intellectual debate within me is brusquely pushed aside by my primal connection with the characters’ plight. It’s the 113 minute-length buddy that won’t feed me horse-pucky and is always going to give it to me straight. When all the other movies in my life are letting me down, Midnight Cowboy is there for me, man.
Everybody’s talkin’ smack about Midnight Cowboy, but I don’t hear a word they’re saying, just the echoes of Harry Nilsson’s piercing falsetto in my mind. This, right here, is the kind of friend I’m looking for in our cold, heartless world. I just wish he’d take a shower every once in a while.
What I’m trying to say is, on the list of “Movies I Give a Shit About,” I’d put this one pretty damn high.