IMDb > Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Midnight Cowboy
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Midnight Cowboy (1969) More at IMDbPro »

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Midnight Cowboy (1969) -- A naive male prostitute and his sickly friend struggle to survive on the streets of New York City.
Midnight Cowboy (1969) -- Sinematurk - Trailer (Flash)

Overview

User Rating:
8.0/10   31,628 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
Up 19% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Director:
Writers:
Waldo Salt (screenplay)
James Leo Herlihy (novel)
Contact:
View company contact information for Midnight Cowboy on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
16 June 1969 (Brazil) more
Genre:
Tagline:
Whatever you hear about Midnight Cowboy is true. more
Plot:
A naive male prostitute and his sickly friend struggle to survive on the streets of New York City. full summary | full synopsis
Awards:
Won 3 Oscars. Another 23 wins & 12 nominations more
NewsDesk:
(47 articles)
User Comments:
Much better than expected more (242 total)

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Dustin Hoffman ... Ratso

Jon Voight ... Joe Buck
Sylvia Miles ... Cass
John McGiver ... Mr. O'Daniel
Brenda Vaccaro ... Shirley
Barnard Hughes ... Towny
Ruth White ... Sally Buck - Texas
Jennifer Salt ... Annie - Texas
Gilman Rankin ... Woodsy Niles - Texas (as Gil Rankin)
Gary Owens ... Little Joe - Texas
T. Tom Marlow ... Little Joe - Texas
George Eppersen ... Ralph - Texas
Al Scott ... Cafeteria Manager - Texas
Linda Davis ... Mother on the Bus - Texas
J.T. Masters ... Old Cow-Hand - Texas
more
Create a character page for: ?

Additional Details

Runtime:
113 min
Country:
Language:
Aspect Ratio:
1.85 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Mono | Dolby Digital (DVD Release)
Certification:
Canada:R (Nova Scotia/Ontario) | Canada:14A (Manitoba) (DVD rating) | Canada:PA (Manitoba) (original rating) | Iceland:16 | South Korea:18 | Brazil:16 | Canada:18A (Canadian Home Video rating) | Norway:15 (TV rating) | USA:TV-MA (TV rating) | Argentina:18 | Australia:M | Canada:18+ (Quebec) | Chile:18 | Finland:K-16 | France:-12 | Netherlands:12 (re-rated) | New Zealand:R18 | Norway:18 | Portugal:M/16 | Singapore:M18 | Spain:18 | Sweden:15 | UK:18 (video rating) (1988) | UK:X (original rating) | USA:R (re-rating) (1971) | USA:X (original rating) | West Germany:16

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
During the filming of the snowstorm sequence in which Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo walk down Mercer Street and arrive at the Warhol party, the snow machines made so much noise (filming was in July) that sound recording was impossible. After filming was finished for the scene, "looping" was necessary. Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight recorded their dialog and then with a hundred or so cast and crew standing silent in 10 inches of Styrofoam snow, Bernice, the Saint Bernard tied to the railing in front of the loft building where the party was being held looped her "dialog": barking furiously at Dustin Hoffman's menacing Ratso. more
Goofs:
Crew or equipment visible: Ceilingless set and lighting equipment can be briefly seen in several shots in Cass' bedroom. more
Quotes:
[first lines]
Joe Buck: Whoopee-tee-yi-yo. Get along little dogies. It's your misfortune and none of my own.
more
Movie Connections:
Soundtrack:
Hush, Little Baby more

FAQ

This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.
49 out of 63 people found the following comment useful.
Much better than expected, 5 December 2004
10/10
Author: MovieAddict2009 from UK

I sat down to watch "Midnight Cowboy" thinking it would be another overrated '60s/'70s movie. Some of my favorite films come from the '70s, in the same vein as "Midnight Cowboy" ("Taxi Driver," "Mean Streets," "Panic in Needle Park," etc.) but there are many, many overrated ones as well that have gained strong reputations amongst critics for being groundbreaking - unfortunately a vast majority of them don't hold up as well today. I sort of feel this way about "Easy Rider." (Although it, too, is one of my favorites.)

So, I didn't expect much from "Midnight Cowboy" but got a lot back. It's a touching story, well-made and well-told with some of the best performances of all time. Dustin Hoffman, as Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, gives one of his best - it's a bit funny at times (he sounds like a cartoon character when he speaks - maybe because of the Lenny/"Simpsons" connection), but Hoffman is entirely convincing. Half of the film's budget went towards his paycheck as he was just becoming a major star in Hollywood. Opposite him is the second-billed Jon Voight as Joe Buck, the "cowboy" who travels North to the Big Apple in the hopes of becoming a male prostitute. Soon his naive ways land him in trouble and he pairs up with a crippled scam artist named "Ratso" - who offers to become Joe's "manager" for a certain percentage of profits.

The movie is quite long at two hours but never really seems very long. Some films can tend to drag, especially some of the films that were made in the '70s because (as it's been said in "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls") the directors were the stars of the movies in the 1970s and occasionally they got a bit too infatuated with their material, going on too long examining characters/scenes/etc. that aren't important. Just about the only scene I felt was a bit too long and unnecessary was the drug party - it makes the film seem extremely outdated (similar to the drug odysseys in "Easy Rider") and really harms its flow because it's not needed.

Other than that, "Midnight Cowboy" is an almost flawless motion picture. I was pleasantly surprised. It does have its flaws (flashbacks are a bit tacky and never used as well as they could have been, for instance) and some of the scenes are a bit uneasy (such as the gay movie theater sequence) but if you can handle its content "Midnight Cowboy" is a truly great motion picture, an uncompromising examination of life on the streets in the late '60s/early '70s. It's a depressing movie, yes, and by today's standards might seem a bit outdated and heavy on the liberal perspective of "life is horrible, etc."...but I still love it and particularly the extremely touching ending will stay with me for a long, long time.

Highly recommended. One of the best films of the '70s. (It was technically released in late 1969 but I'd still categorize it as a 1970s film. It also won the Best Picture Oscar, being the first - and only - X-rated motion picture to do so. It was later re-rated R on appeal.)

4.5/5

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Message Boards

Discuss this movie with other users on IMDb message board for Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Recent Posts (updated daily)User
Saw this straight after Mojave Moon ww113
Why didn't he take him to a doctor? seatowner
God, this movie sucked. kiely01
Funniest line ever eamonn_keane
MIDNIGHT COWBOY - @ the laundromat, how did Rico scam the pregnant lady? ExoticWholeMilk
Was Ratso Gay? arad747
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