The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) began to rate movies in 1968 when the studios took matters into their own hands and reclaimed control of their films from the Hays Office. It was time. Long past it, actually. While some diehards still supported it, this puritanical enforcement grew from an inconvenient but semi-respected set of moral guides into outright censorship in the 1960s. Times were changing, and something had to be done about it. It wasn’t just Hollywood. Audiences were hoping for a revision as well, and they bought the tickets. A more illuminating system was introduced by the five major studios, letting moviegoers know what they could expect as far as “appropriate content” was concerned. It allowed them to make informed decisions, but it also freed filmmakers to include creative choices that in years past would not have been approved for theatrical distribution. This new system contained the familiar categories known today, from G (General Audiences) to X (now NC-17). To date, the only Best Picture officially rated G is Oliver! from that first year of 1968. Other prior winners have been given a G rating in retrospect, but they were all bound by the Hays Office’s code of ethics, passing inspection before wide release. The following year, the first and only X-rated movie won the top prize, with Midnight Cowboy. This rating was not meant to imply “pornographic,” although that’s what happened during those early years. It was supposed to indicate adult themes and situations that were inappropriate for anyone under 17. The MPAA wanted to give Midnight Cowboy an R rating at first (Restricted, no one under 17 admitted without a parent or guardian), but they reconsidered because of several homosexual situations in the story, as well as Joe Buck’s gay-for-pay encounters. Midnight Cowboy would receive an R today. In fact, the X was downgraded to R for the movie’s re-release, without a single frame altered.

The reason Midnight Cowboy is effective even now has little to do with racy content. It offers two of the finest and rawest performances from leading actors ever put on film. This is essentially a “buddy picture,” with a pair of misfit, mismatched protagonists trying to survive in New York City during one of its bleakest but most intriguing and transitional eras in history. Jon Voight as Joe Buck is a wide-eyed, ignorant, naive Texan who flees his dead-end job as a dishwasher in a diner to become a male prostitute for rich society women in Manhattan. During his bus ride north, we get glimpses of his haunted past—a domineering grandmother (Ruth White) who raised him, a tormented girlfriend (Jennifer Salt), and a traumatic incident with the police—and these flashbacks only expand and worsen throughout the film when more is revealed about what happened to Joe. We know he is running away from his past as much as he’s running toward a “golden opportunity” in the Big Apple.

Jon Voight roams the city streets as Joe Buck.

We hear the iconic theme song with its rambling guitar and bittersweet lyrics early on, and it’s repeated throughout the story. “Everybody’s Talkin'” was written by Fred Neil in 1966 and used as a temp track while singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson worked on an original composition, but director John Schlesinger liked Nilsson’s rendition of the Neil tune so much, he kept it in the film. The recording went on to be a major hit and won a Grammy Award.

Once Joe arrives in New York, he has various botched episodes with women (including Georgann Johnson and Oscar-nominee Sylvia Miles) while his eyes are opened to the seedier side of urban life. He is enthusiastic and optimistic to a fault, but he’s also a fool to the ways of the world. We begin to understand how damaged he is from his upbringing. Joe’s grandmother not only dominated him, she abused him physically and sexually when he was a child. His backseat encounters with the small-town girlfriend led to both of them getting gang-raped. She was hauled off to a mental institution after that—heavy subject matter presented in nightmarish memory-flashes as Joe struggles to move forward.

Along the way, he meets Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), a native New Yorker and two-bit con man with a lame leg who sets Joe up with a pimp (John McGiver) while weaseling him out of $20 for the favor. The man turns out to be an unhinged religious fanatic. Broke and evicted, Joe cruises movie theatres and hooks up for oral sex with a young man (Bob Balaban) who can’t pay him. Joe considers confiscating his wristwatch but lets him go. It’s clear Joe’s conscience isn’t ideal for hustling. He runs into Ratso again, who is down on his luck and has declined quite a bit since they first met. Joe is ready to thrash Ratso within an inch of his life for conning him, but Ratso offers to let him stay at his place until he gets on his feet. He then proceeds to lead Joe to an abandoned building with no electricity where he’s been squatting in one of the apartments.

Things go from bad to worse with the changing seasons as Ratso’s health continues to deteriorate and the temperature drops inside their crumbling residence. Ratso dreams of a better life in Miami where he’s certain he would recover and Joe would be a hit with the older rich ladies. Joe does what he can to make money in the meantime, including donating blood. While they are eating at a diner one night, a trendy young man and woman approach Joe, snap his picture with a Polaroid, and offer him a flyer to a party. Joe decides to take Ratso along, and the following scene is right out of Warhol’s Factory days, with a melting pot of rich and poor, young and old, famous and nameless, and all other “interesting” types mingling together. Ratso attracts unwanted attention due to his sickly appearance and poor hygiene. Joe, meanwhile, catches the eye of a young socialite (Brenda Vacaro) who offers him $20 to have sex at her place. Just as they are leaving the party, Ratso tumbles down a long flight of stairs. Crumpled and broken, he staggers away into the night while Joe goes off to make money. Happy with the cash in is pocket and a promise for more “bookings,” Joe returns to their apartment and finds Ratso shivering and unable to walk. Ratso refuses to see a doctor and instead asks Joe to help him get to the warmer weather and sunnier prospects of Miami.

Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman.

As a last resort to earn bus fare, Joe cruises a known gay-hustler district with other “midnight cowboys” and picks up a demure businessman (Barnard Hughes) who is in town visiting for a convention. They go back to the man’s hotel room where he gets cold feet. Joe demands payment anyway, and as his disgust and rage overwhelm him, he brutally beats and robs the man—the most gruesome and grotesque scene in the movie. Joe and Ratso board a bus for Miami, and it’s clear Ratso is failing. At a rest stop, Joe buys them both new clothes. He starts to feel hopeful again that things will work out, but as the bus pulls into Miami, he discovers Ratso has died in the seat next to him.

This is a sad film with a poignant ending. Despite the faults and shortcomings of these two main characters, I find myself rooting for them all the way. Hoffman and Voight are engaging and endearing. Their Ratso and Joe aren’t inherently bad people; they are victims of their respective upbringings and tragic circumstances. Still, I want them to survive and beat the odds. I hope they wise up and make better choices, but with each wrong turn, they descend further into a bohemian nightmare.

New York is a magic city. It’s my birthplace, and I moved back for a time in the mid-1980s. Things were bad then, from the late ’60s through the early ’90s, before the “Disney-fication” of Times Square and a corporate takeover of its more undesirable areas. I remember what it was like, though. It’s one of my favorite places on earth with a great deal to offer, but for every delight, there is—or at least was—an equally repellant horror. New York is the villain of this particular story. The city itself decimates these men with their naive dreams of success and simplistic thinking. It takes a lot to make it there. You have to be clever, shrewd, resourceful, and damn lucky, too. This is the sad tale of two people who gave it their all but didn’t make it.

Midnight Cowboy