Midnight Cowboy, John Schlesinger's 1969 film, was one of those films that when I was a teen in the 80s you had to watch, one of those 60s and 70s films that were required viewing and would turn up at some point late night on BBC2- along with Bonnie And Clyde, Apocalypse Now!, The Deer Hunter, Taxi Driver, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and 2001.
Midnight Cowboy is an odd couple film set in the late 60s New York seedy underbelly. Jon Voight plays Joe Buck, newly arrived in the city from Texas dressed in cowboy clothes to find work as a male prostitute. He bumps into Dustin Hoffman's Ratso, a conman and hustler, and they team up, Ratso as pimp. There are unpleasant encounters, unpaid bills, sex acts in cinemas, flashbacks to childhood trauma and Ratso's increasingly poor health. Eventually the pair end up on a Greyhound bus bound for the warmer climes of Florida. Joe abandons his cowboy clothes and hustling dreams and says that when they reach Miami he will get a regular job but by this point, as the bus heads south, it's already too late for Ratso.
The film won three Oscars and the Library Of Congress designated it as being 'culturally, historically or aesthetically significant'. Hoffman and Voigt both became stars. It's got an edge- it's gritty, and unflinching and bleak if ultimately a film about friendship. It strikes me though as a film its unlikely that today's teenagers are watching in the way we were in the mid- to- late 80s.
The soundtrack is as legendary as the film, two songs in particular songs for the ages. Harry Nilsson sang Everybody's Talkin', a 1966 Fred Neil song about escape and leaving the city for a simpler, better life. Nilsson's version, released with the film in May 1969, was the film's theme song, playing over the opening scenes and again at the close.
It wasn't until writing this piece that I remembered that Bob Dylan had been supposed to supply the film's theme song and wrote Lay Lady Lay for it but didn't complete it in time. It's impossible to imagine Midnight Cowboy without Everybody's Talkin', and with Lay Lady Lay in its place.
John Barry wrote and recorded an equally brilliant and beautiful song, the title track, a gorgeous instrumental with the best harmonica part ever recorded snaking its way through Barry's laid back track, the harmonica courtesy of Belgian jazz musician Toots Thielemans.
2 comments:
Never heard that before about Lay Lady Lay! Even though it's a great song in its own right it wouldn't have worked at all and I don't think that's just down to the familiarity of the original.
Such a great film, I just love Jon Voigt's portrayal - and soundtrack too. Never knew that about Lay Lady Lay either. As you say, can't imagine it in place of Everybody's Talkin'.
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