“Having seen it, you won’t ever again feel detached as
you walk down West Forty-Second Street, avoiding the drifters, stepping around
the little islands of hustlers…” Vincent Canby, New York Times
1987 and my first visit to New York City, wandering
goggle-eyed through a Times Square showing the World its arse at 10 o’clock in
the morning, I’d never seen anything like it and it wasn’t just “show”. I saw
one guy getting hustled along a side street towards West-side with the words
“c’mon man you know it’s what you’ve always wanted…” Nothing me or my
girlfriend could do but watch him make his choice. I wonder what happened?
Thirty years later, there’s nothing left of this terrifying Times
Square but twenty years before it was home to Jon Voigt striding through its seedy
streets to the saddest harmonica playing in human history, Jean 'Toots'
Thielemans lines over John Barry’s sublime score. Midnight Cowboy’s
third star was naughty, haughty 42nd Street and her sisters, gone to
seed and on their uppers, Times Square went completely method for this part and
almost showed up even Dustin Hoffman who’s "Ratso" Rizzo is like the
walking dead from the get-go. Barry’s score comes in fourth being all the
sadder for the fact it dares to dream.
That’s pretty much how the story goes, Voigt’s innocent
cowboy, Joe Buck, setting his heart on an escape to New York City from his
dead-end job in Texas and – possibly – a sexual assault (his dreams are split
between erotic fantasies of Annie (Jennifer Salt) saying he is the only one to
accusing him of being the one…). Joe has decided to become a hustler and to
make his fortune servicing rich married ladies looking for some extra marital
fun. Trouble is there are already so many cowboy sex workers in the City and
he’s lacking the instinct for the job.
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| Jon and Dustin |
He succeeds in picking up a client, Cass (Sylvia Miles) and
a good time is had by all until she refuses to pay out forcing him to “loan”
her a twenty out of guilt. He ends up with a male client in a cinema and finds
that even this sheepish guy (the esteemed Bob Balaban no less!) guilts him out
of steeling his watch in payment.
Joe’s a sucker and meets a guy unlikely to give him an even
break in a dive bar. Enrico Salvatore "Ratso" Rizzo takes his money
and sends him off to a guy who can act as his “manager”, in reality, a
religious maniac who tries to “convert” him back to the true path. There’s no one
to trust in a city that eats cowboy hustlers for brunch.
The lessons keep on building up for Joe and after he
re-encounters Ratso, recriminations are overlooked as they concentrate on the
act of survival, squatting in a dingy condemned building and relying on day to
day luck.
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| The soup of human kindness |
It has been said that British Director, John Schlesinger,
brought kitchen-sink ethos to this very American poverty trap but I’m sure this
scene was and is played out in cities across the world. It’s also been said
that if this film wasn’t the first gay buddy film then it helped clear the path
for those to follow: I’m not sure that’s true for, whilst the relationship that
develops between the two men is highly emotional, sexuality doesn’t even come into it, this is
about mutual respect, love and survival in a world gone very wrong.
It’s a stunning tale and one that leaves you reeling after
seeing this sparkling 50th anniversary restoration on screen… Midnight Cowboy is re-released by BFI on
13th September and will be available across the UK until November.
Full details are on their website here.
Harrowing but also hopeful, it’s a grown-up film that has
grown up some more over the last few years… a classic you simply cannot walk by
and ignore. Not now or anymore.
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