A young man with severe mental issues, Joe Buck (Jon Voight), leaves Texas and
travels to New York City in hopes of being a long-legged mack daddy. He soon
finds out, mainly thanks to his brain having the computing power of 14 Fig
Newtons superglued to a half-dead AAA battery, that although he has long legs,
he damn sure ain’t no mack daddy! Things happen and before you can say “I should
write a YA novel called ‘Donner Party Slumber Party Massacre’ about teens
playing a slumber party game where whoever falls asleep first gets eaten.” Ol’
Joe Buck is homeless and starving to death. At the same time, he befriends a
predatory street hustler with the confidence building name of Ratso (Dustin
Hoffman). Together these two champions go into business capitalizing on Buck’s
supposed ability to satisfy women. Things go about as well as you would
expect.
MIDNIGHT COWBOY won three Oscars at the 42nd Academy Awards, including Best
Picture. Looking back on it meow, was MC really the best movie of
1969? I have no clue. I haven't seen every movie released in 1969,
but I am curious (and will probably update this review in the future) because
while it is a good film...I cannot imagine that it was really the absolute best
movie of the year. Then again 1969 was like three or four hundred years
ago, so who knows what the fuck was going on back then. One thing I do
know is MIDNIGHT COWBOY is a very interesting time capsule back to a time that
looks absolutely foreign as fuck compared to [insert the year you're reading this]. Another interesting tidbit is MIDNIGHT COWBOY is the only X-rated film
ever to win Best Picture. Being "rated X" you're probably expecting to see
wall-to-wall big floppy juicy dongs and titties bouncing all over the place, but
sadly what little nudity there is was extremely non-erotic and honestly
depressing as hell due to (most of) it being in rape flashback nightmares.
Instead, I'm guessing, the X rating was due to overall depressing tone of the
film, the homosexual subject matter and the strongly implied sexual abuse Joe
suffered as a young child at the hands of his grandmother.
Should you watch MIDNIGHT COWBOY? Definitely. 100%. It's still
a good film with strong acting, amazing NYC locations and wildly influential on
movies and TV shows even still today. Especially the
"I'm walking here!" quote. That shits been used in everything from
FORREST GUMP to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Check it out.
[Update 03/02/2022: This has absolutely nothing to do with the review, but I was
just looking through some old newspapers and found a few ads for something
called "Midnight Plowboy". I can only assume it's some kind of adult parody of
MIDNIGHT COWBOY (or maybe not). Either way I just wanted to share.
Link to newspaper ads.]