When Joe returns home, Ratso is bedridden and feverish. The next morning, she sets up her female friend as Joe's next client and it appears that his career is finally taking off. They play Scribbage together and the resulting wordplay leads Shirley to suggest that Joe may be gay suddenly he is able to perform. He leaves the party with Shirley, a socialite who agrees to pay him $20 for spending the night, but Joe cannot perform sexually. Joe mistakes a joint for a cigarette and starts to hallucinate after taking several puffs, along with "uppers" he is offered. Joe and Ratso attend, but Ratso's poor health and hygiene attract unwanted attention from several guests. Ratso harbors hopes of moving to Miami, shown in daydreams in which he and Joe frolic carefree on a beach and are surrounded by dozens of adoring middle-aged women.Ī Warhol-like filmmaker and an outgoing female artist approach Joe in a diner, taking his Polaroid photograph and handing him an invite to a Warhol-esque art event (which also incorporates some of the Warhol superstars, including Viva, Isabelle Collin Dufresne (aka Ultra Violet), Taylor Mead, Joe Dallesandro and the Warhol-related filmmaker Paul Morrissey ). Ratso learned shoeshining from his father but considers it degrading and generally refuses to do it, although he does shine Joe's cowboy boots to help him attract clients. Ratso tells Joe his father was an illiterate Italian immigrant shoeshiner whose job led to a bad back and lung damage from long-term exposure to shoe polish. The viewer gains more information about the experience as the flashbacks accumulate. The rape affects Annie's mental stability to the point that she becomes insane and is driven away in the back of what appears to be a van taking her to a psychiatric institution. The film has successive flashbacks to an experience in which he and Annie were jumped while naked in a parked car and raped by a gang of cowboys. He also has a tragic relationship with Annie. In a flashback, Joe's grandmother raises him after his mother abandons him. As they develop a bond, Ratso's health grows steadily worse. Joe reluctantly accepts his offer, and they begin a "business relationship" as hustlers. Ratso offers to share the apartment in a condemned building where he is squatting.
The next day, Joe spots Ratso and angrily shakes him down. Joe threatens him and asks for his watch, but eventually lets him go unharmed.
#MEN IN HEAVY CHAINS GAY POR. MOVIE#
Joe tries to make money by receiving oral sex from a young man in a movie theater, but learns after the act that the young man has no money. Soon broke, he is locked out of his hotel room and his belongings are impounded. Joe spends his days wandering the city and sitting in his hotel room. After discovering that the man is actually an unhinged religious fanatic, Joe flees in pursuit of Ratso but cannot find him. Joe meets Enrico Salvatore "Ratso" Rizzo, a con man with a limp who takes $20 from him for ostensibly introducing him to a pimp. The encounter ends badly as he gives her money after she is insulted when he requests payment and it is loosely implied that she is a high class prostitute herself. Initially unsuccessful, he manages to bed a middle-aged woman, Cass, in her posh Park Avenue apartment. Joe Buck, a young Texan working as a dishwasher, quits his job and heads to New York City to become a male prostitute. In 1994, Midnight Cowboy was deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. It has since been placed 36th on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American films of all time, and 43rd on its 2007 updated version.
Midnight Cowboy is the only X-rated film ever to win Best Picture. Set in New York City, Midnight Cowboy depicts the unlikely friendship between two hustlers: naïve sex worker Joe Buck (Voight), and ailing con man Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo (Hoffman).Īt the 42nd Academy Awards, the film won three awards: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film was written by Waldo Salt, directed by John Schlesinger, and stars Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, with notable smaller roles being filled by Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Bob Balaban, Jennifer Salt, and Barnard Hughes. Midnight Cowboy is a 1969 American drama film, based on the 1965 novel of the same name by James Leo Herlihy.