How Midnight Cowboy became the only X-rated winner of the best-picture Oscar

When Midnight Cowboy came out 56 years ago this week, instantly, Hollywood’s idea or a main success overturned. A gloomy history of loneliness, sexuality and survival in New York, was promoted by the actions that defined the career of its main actors.

“I had problems with that when I see the movie now,” confessed actor Dustin Hoffman to the BBC in 1970, since he reflected on his performance as the patient “Ratso” Ratzo of New York Grifter in Midnight Cowboy. “I can see where I am inconsistent in the character.”

The film, launched in theaters on May 25, 1969, would continue to win Oscar nominations for Hoffman and his co -star Jon Voight, who plays a naive Texano young with aspirations to be a gigolo of rich woman.

Based on James Leo Herlihy’s 1965 novel, Midnight Cowboy’s Bleak Tale of Loneliness, Sexuality and Survival in New York was very different from the film in which Hoffman had his innovative role, the graduate. After having played a clean middle class, just out of college, Hoffman did not call his director John Schlesinger as the obvious option to play the street scammer of history.

“Jerry Hellman [the film’s producer] I had seen it in a play by Henry Livings, huh? Outside Broadway and said: “He is a wonderful character actor, not only passes through the graduate, it is better that you see it,” “Schlesinger told the BBC on the screen in 1994. Equing, there was absolutely the.”

But to touch the sick rizzo, which suffers from a disabled leg and tuberculosis, Hoffman felt that he needed to continue reviewing the movies while filming to ensure that his performance was consistent between the shots. “I had to try to maintain a posture, a march, a way of walking, a dialect in progress. He was very concerned about the fluctuation of that,” he told the BBC movie night in 1970, when he was interviewed in the set of his revisionist Western, Little Big. Later, the actor told Vanity Fair in 2000 that he ended up putting a stone on his shoe to make sure he would get in the camera without having to think about it.

“I think the average person will see such a job and think it is very difficult,” said Hoffman. “But My Own Feeling Is That Jon Voight’s Part Was Far the More Difficul Role in Midnight Cowboy Becouse It was to the Sub Subject A Little More Foggy, It Didn’t Seem To Really Have a Razor’s Edge To It Writt to His” Did and Hiss “Did and Hiss” Did and Hiss “Did and Hiss” “Did and Hiss and His and His,” Did and His and His and His and His and His and His and His and His and His and His and his and his and his A Han, “they did it with theirs.

Voight was also far from being a saving for the role of a disgusting scam that ends with bankruptcy and desperate in New York, and forms an unlikely link with Rizzo. The actor had the initial leg farewell by Schlesinger, who felt that he made the right appearance for the paper. “We reject Voight, and a wonderful casting director in New York in those days, Marion Dougherty, said:” You are missing something, why did you earn Jon Voight? “We said:” That face is what we were thinking, “and she said:” Know him, read a scene, “so we agreed and he entered and seemed extraordinary, so we added to the list of people.”

But the director still chose Canadian actor Michael Sarrazin for paper. Fortunately for Voight, Sarrazin was under contract with Universal Pictures, and when they tripled his price for him, Schlesinger looked at the screen tests again. Voight, who was willing to receive a payment scale, the minimum wage of the guild of screen actors, was chosen. “He had a son of Beligenence in his personality, as well as a total sweetness and innocence that I think the part needed,” Schlesinger said.

Midnight Cowboy didn’t seem an obvious contender for the success of the box office. The usual producer of Schlesinger, Joe Janni, rejected the project, warning the director that the film could ruin his career. But Schlesinger, who was Gay, told the BBC in 1994 that the history of strangers struggling to survive on the margins of society was something that could be identified. “I am not terrible interested in the species of pseudo-finals of people who walk hand in hand in sunset because I don’t think it’s true. So, most of the movies I made surion marks at the end,” he said.

Midnight Cowboy, which juxtapone flashbacks, reality and fantasy to insinuate that the motivations drive its protagonists, was edited for the cover version of Harry Nilsson of all the speakers of all. The song would become synonymous with the film, looking into wool, the lack of course and the desire of its injured characters of a better future.

“I always play music at a very early stage of the cut,” said Schlesinger. “I thought that it is not only musical and rhythmically correct, it is lyrically correct, it has a wonderful adequate lyrics, so we put it in an early cut, and we got used to the head of music of United Artists and said:” This is what it is. “” “

But an Executive of a United Artists did not do it because to use a song that has already been published and, believing that his feeling could replicate Estily, he told the filmmakers to work with a composer to invent something new. “We get used to several people from [Bob] Dylan Joni Mitchell, who wrote a song that had too many words, “said Schlesinger. Dylan would finally write Lay for the movie, but presented it too late to be used.

“When we show the movie for the first time to the distributors,” Schlesinger continued, “we made everyone spoke,” and the same man got up from the projection and said: “My God, where did you get that song? It’s so excellent.” And we said: “Well, we played it several months ago, and you said that anyone can reproduce it.” Then, he said: “Well, we have to have it.”

Because Midnight Cowboy had explicit representations of group violation, prostitution and use of drugs, he was always destined to limit himself to an adult audience when he launched. And when it was reviewed by the Picnogical Association of America, it was duly giving a restricted qualification, which means that in 1969 no one under 16 could see it with the adult.

But the head of the study, Arthur Krim, was nervous: he had consulted a psychiatrist who had the films “gay reference frame” and his “possible influence on young people.” It was Krim who decreed that the restricted rating was not enough: the midnight cowboy should be an insect with X classification, so that no one under 16 would be admitted, even if they were with an adult.

An X qualification, a category typically associated with pornography, would generally be the commercial shit of death for a conventional film. Many cinemas refused to show films with X classification, while many newspapers and television stations refused to run ads for them. But Universal Studios made the qualification a point of sale, paying for ads that announced: “Everything you hear about Midnight Cowboy is true!”

When it premiered, the film became a surprise success. He backed down his modest budget of $ 4 million (£ 3 million) and became the third highest grossing film in 1969. “He had an extraordinary reception,” Schlesinger said. “I didn’t realize that we were sitting on something that was going to be so successful.”

Midnight Cowboy was also praised by critics, winning seven Oscar nominations the following year. He would continue to win three academy awards, with Schlesinger taking home the award for the best director, and Waldo Salt for the best adapted script. The film also took the Oscar for the best film, becoming the first and only film with X classification to do so. (The MPAA replaced the X qualification with the NC-17 rating in 1990). Together with other films of the time, such as Bonnie and Clyde, the graduate and easy pilot, Midnight Cowboy helped unleash the new Hollywood cinema, which Wibrivivivivivivomomom ambiguous and innovative stylist in the 1970s. In 1994, the Library of Congress selected it for the preservation because it is “cultural or aesthetically significant.”

Despite the success of the Midnight Cowboy box office and the critical acclamation, Schlesinger told the BBC that “there was no way to be done in 1994. [Pictures] And I tried only one precious, only the dramatic points of the story. And I said: “If I brought you that, would you do it?” And he said: “Absolutely in no way, I would show you the door.” “

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