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.
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.