Midnight Cowboy

In the opening scenes of Midnight Cowboy, Joe “Longhorn” Buck (played by Jon Voight, the owner of the ballsack that carried the seed of Angelina Jolie) is leaving his country life behind for the big city. He’s chasing the American dream. His blue-eyed optimism, his incredible cowboy get-up and Harry Nilsson’s Everybody’s talking at me set things up for a breezy light movie and it seems right. A Fish out of water tale. But in that same introduction there are silences in the music; we witness flashbacks tinged with tragedy - that’s where we should be paying attention. Because fish out of water don’t do very well. And maybe that’s sadness in Joe Buck’s blue eyes.

Joe Buck’s plans for hustling in New York quickly deflated. The early scenes seem to set us up for a 60’s sex comedy as Joe attempts to establish himself as a Male Escort, complete with quick-cut montage of dropping trou, jumping on the bed, rolling around and comically switching the channels on the tv remote with bums. But the director gets fixated on the TV and we hold on it as the channels keep flicking, picking up words here and there before switching on to other channels. We hold there watching this flicking TV for just a little too long until it becomes uncomfortable. Over and over again this movie presents an idea only to then pollute that idea into something more sickening often with disturbing montages. Joe’s attempts to extract money out of his little sexual escapade don’t exactly go according to plan, and sure enough in no time at all Joe resigns himself to a bit of squalid gay prostitution on 42nd street, but even that doesn’t work out too successfully.

The movie shifts fully into gear with the introduction of Dustin Hoffman’s Rico “Ratso” Rizzo - the ultimate sleazy skeezy New York “I’m walkin’ here” asshole. It’s one hell of a performance at a time where Hoffman was early on in a run of committing himself and disappearing into almost every role he performed in. Previously he was best known for playing Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate so his turn as Rizzo was an early sign of the kind of character work could do. It certainly left an impression, inspiring, as I’m sure everyone has realised, a muppet. I’d love to see The Muppets version of this movie as Kermit has to give dirty old men head in a movie theatre and goes with Rizzo Rat to psychedelic parties to fuck Miss Piggy for money. Back to Hoffman though, he’s easily the best part of the movie. A perfect counterpoint to Jon Voight’s big dumb basic cowboy, he is at once smart, pathetic, devious, completely untrustworthy but also kind of lovable. To be honest he may ultimately be the only part of the movie that really works for me.

The way the film keeps finding new ways to upset its audience isn’t exactly my idea of a great time. This film could have been a kind of Deuce Bigalow Cowboy Gigolo and I’d have been here for it, even with the same cast and the fun Harry Nilsson soundtrack, but instead it spends too much time dwelling on gang rape, illness and disease, the horrors of prostitution and annoying hallucination sequences. It really killed my vibe man.

Amongst the squalor, constant disappointment and far too many fucking head-ache induction psychedelic montages there is a tale about friendship in this movie and I found myself somewhat reinvesting in that element in the final scenes of the movie as the duo cut their losses in New York and move on like George and Lenny Of Mice and Men: “someday--we're gonna get the jack together and we're gonna have a little house and a couple of acres.” I guess the American dream of the late 1960’s isn’t exactly what it was in Steinbeck’s day.

2 Stetsons out of 5