Midnight Cowboy 9780228017226

Table of contents :
Cover
MIDNIGHT COWBOY
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Synopsis
Credits
1 Midnight Cowboy – A Queer Film Classic?
2 MONY
3 “The Faggot on 42nd Street”
Afterword: In the Movie Theatre
References
Index

Citation preview

MIDNIGHT COWBOY

Queer Film Classics Edited by Matthew Hays and Thomas Waugh

The enduring commercial success of lgbtq2i films over recent generations offers proof of widespread interest in queer film within both pop culture and academia. Not only are recent works riding the wave of the new maturity of queer film culture, but a century of queer and proto-queer classics are in busy circulation thanks to a burgeoning online queer cinephile culture and have been brought back to life by omnipresent festivals and revivals. Meditations on individual films from queer perspectives are particularly urgent, unlocking new understandings of political as well as aesthetic and personal concerns. Queer Film Classics at McGill-Queen’s University Press emphasizes good writing, rigorous but accessible scholarship, and personal, reflective thinking about the significance of each film – writing that is true to the film, original, and enlightening and enjoyable for film buffs, scholars, and students alike. Books in the series are short – roughly 40,000 words – but well illustrated and allow for considerable depth. Exploring historical, authorial, and production contexts and drawing on filmic analysis, these open-ended essays also develop the author’s personal interests or a subjective reading of the work’s sexual identity discourses or reception. The series aims to meet the diversity, quality, and originality of classics in the queer film canon, broadly conceived, with equally compelling writing and critical insight. Books in the series have much to teach us, not only about the art of film but about the queer ways in which films can transmit our meanings, our stories, and our dreams. L’Homme blessé Robert Payne

Appropriate Behavior Maria San Filippo

Boys Don’t Cry Chase Joynt and Morgan M Page

Midnight Cowboy Jon Towlson

Orlando Russell Sheaffer

MIDNIGHT COWBOY Jon Towlson

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston

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London

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Chicago

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2023 isbn 978-0-2280-1700-4 (cloth) isbn 978-0-2280-1701-1 (paper) isbn 978-0-2280-1722-6 (epdf) isbn 978-0-2280-1723-3 (epub) Legal deposit first quarter 2023 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Midnight cowboy / Jon Towlson. Names: Towlson, Jon, 1967- author. Description: Series statement: Queer film classics | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220431825 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220431876 | isbn 9780228017004 (cloth) | isbn 9780228017011 (paper) | isbn 9780228017226 (epdf) | isbn 9780228017233 (epub) Subjects: lcsh: Midnight cowboy (Motion picture) | lcsh: Gays in motion pictures. Classification: lcc pn1997.m43686 t69 2023 | ddc 791.43/72—dc23

Contents

Acknowledgments | vii Synopsis | ix Credits | xi 1 Midnight Cowboy – A Queer Film Classic? | 3 2 mony | 41 3 “The Faggot on 42nd Street” | 69 Afterword: In the Movie Theatre | 101 References | 105 Index | 109

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank editors Matthew Hays and Thomas Waugh for inviting me to write a Queer Film Classic on Midnight Cowboy and for their support throughout. Many thanks to Jonathan Crago, Kathleen Fraser, and Kathryn Simpson at McGill-Queen’s University Press for their advice and guidance during the writing process. I am deeply grateful to the two anonymous readers for their insights, comments, and suggestions. Thanks to staff at the jb Morell Library, University of York for access to research materials. Thanks also to archive staff at the Margaret Herrick Library, Beverly Hills for granting me access to the John Schlesinger Papers, which includes a transcript of the American Film Institute Louis B. Mayer Seminar conducted with Schlesinger in 1998, quoted in this text.

Synopsis

Joe Buck (Jon Voight) takes a bus from his small town in Texas to New York City where he plans to become a gigolo to rich, lonely women. He buys a cowboy outfit to wear in New York. After checking into a hotel on Broadway, he walks Fifth Avenue trying to score a client. He is picked up by middle-aged socialite Cass (Sylvia Miles), but after having sex, she rebuffs his request for money. Retreating to a midtown bar, Joe meets Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), a sickly grifter who convinces Joe he needs personal management. Ratso takes Joe to visit Mr O’Daniel (John McGiver) who turns out to be a crazy street preacher. Realizing he has been tricked, Joe flees. Running low on money, Joe finds himself locked out of his hotel room and takes to the streets, with only his transistor radio for company. Growing desperate, he joins the male hustlers on 42nd Street, and is approached by a young student (Bob Balaban). After awkward sex in an all-night movie theatre, the student confesses he is unable to pay Joe. Joe once again encounters Ratso in a diner. After Joe tries unsuccessfully to shake him down for money, Ratso invites Joe to stay with him in his slum tenement on the Lower East Side. The two become friends. Ratso dreams of escaping to Florida to live on sunshine and coconut milk. Joe, however, presses Ratso into helping him achieve his goal of becoming a gigolo. Ratso manages to set up a date for Joe by passing him off as the employee of a male escort agency, but Joe messes it up. As winter comes, Ratso

x Synopsis

grows increasingly ill with pneumonia. Joe is forced to hock his transistor radio and to sell blood to raise meagre funds for their survival. They find themselves out on the street when Ratso’s tenement building is demolished. An invite to a “happening” offers brief respite. At the party, which is attended by New York counterculture types, Joe takes psychedelic drugs. He is picked up by Shirley (Brenda Vaccaro) who takes him back to her apartment. After rough sex, Shirley sets Joe up with one of her high-society friends. Flushed with his first real success as a gigolo, Joe returns to Ratso only to find his friend’s health rapidly deteriorating. Ratso begs Joe to take him to Florida. In need of immediate cash for the journey, Joe escorts a lonely tourist called Towny (Barnard Hughes) to his hotel room, where he robs and seriously assaults him. On the bus to Florida, Joe tells Ratso that he is going to give up his dream of becoming a gigolo in favour of a normal life. At a rest stop, Joe buys new clothes for himself and Ratso. He bins his cowboy outfit. However, Ratso dies on the bus before they reach their destination, and Joe is left cradling his dead friend in his arms.

Credits

Midnight Cowboy © 1969, US, English, 113 minutes. Colour/black and white, mono, 1.85:1 Jerome Hellman Productions/United Artists Director John Schlesinger Based on the novel by James Leo Herlihy (New York, 1965) Screenplay Waldo Salt Producer Jerome Hellman Principal cast Dustin Hoffman Jon Voight Sylvia Miles John McGiver

Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo Joe Buck Cass Mr O’Daniel

xii Credits

Brenda Vaccaro Bob Balaban Jonathan Kramer Barnard Hughes Ruth White Jennifer Salt Gil Rankin

Shirley The Young Student Jackie Towny Sally Buck Annie Woodsy Niles

Crew Adam Holender, cinematographer Hugh A. Robertson, Jim Clark (credited as Creative Consultant), editors John Robert Lloyd, production designer Ann Roth, costume design John Barry, music supervisor Michael Childers, assistant to the director Song “Everybody’s Talkin,’” written by Fred Neil, performed by Harry Nilsson Filmed at Filmways Studios, New York, and on location in New York City, Miami Beach, Florida, and Stanton and Big Spring, Texas. Produced May-September 1968; released 25 May 1969.

Credits xiii

dvd with trailer and booklet containing production notes. mgm Home Entertainment, 2000, Region 1, ntsc. Two-disc collector’s edition with commentary by Jerome Hellman and featurettes. mgm Home Entertainment, 2006, Region 1, ntsc. Blu-ray with commentary by Hellman and John Schlesinger and ThirtyFifth Anniversary documentaries. Criterion Collection, 2018, Region A. Winner of Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Schlesinger), and Best Screenplay (Salt); Directors Guild of America (dga) Award for Best Director (Schlesinger); New York Critics film prize for Best Actor (Voight).

MIDNIGHT COWBOY

Figure 1 Jon Voight, John Schlesinger, and Dustin Hoffman on location for Midnight Cowboy

Chapter 1

Midnight Cowboy – A Queer Film Classic?

Midnight Cowboy (1969) is considered by many to be a film classic. The American Film Institute lists it above The Philadelphia Story (1940), Shane (1953), and Rear Window (1954) as one of the Greatest American Films of All Time. A number of critics have, over the years, argued for its status as one of the first entries in the New Hollywood, paving the way for such directors as Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese in the 1970s. Indeed, the American Film Institute also places Midnight Cowboy above Taxi Driver (1976), The Deer Hunter (1978), m*a*s*h (1970), and even Easy Rider (1969) in the New Hollywood canon (and above that other proto-queer buddy movie “bromance” Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid [1969]). Midnight Cowboy is considered a significant film technically and aesthetically in terms of its early adoption of the Nouvelle Vague cinematography and editing techniques that would later filter into the New Hollywood. It cemented the careers of soonto-be-superstars Dustin Hoffman (following his success in The Graduate [1967]) and Jon Voight. It is also notable (notorious) for the controversy over its X-rating and subsequent Oscar. By Hollywood standards, its frank treatment of sexuality was boundary-pushing – as Glenn Frankel details in his recent book Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic. But while Midnight Cowboy is considered important to American cinema for these reasons, I feel it has yet to be given its full due as a queer film classic.

4 Midnight Cowboy

True, it is generally thought to be a film that – in the words of Molly Haskell (in a blurb on the dust jacket of Frankel’s book) – “furthered the acceptance of gay themes.” The same critic has also noted that it is a film about outsiders made by “outsiders” – a gay novelist (James Leo Herlihy) and a gay director (John Schlesinger). Indeed, Haskell is not alone in describing Midnight Cowboy – which was shooting in New York City near the time of Stonewall – as marking “a transitional moment in our cultural history.” It is even name checked in The Boys in the Band (1970), that perfectly hermetic time capsule of gay culture in the late sixties: the hustler who Emory purchases for Harold and brings to the party is named Tex and dressed vaguely like a cowboy; they call him a “midnight cowboy.” And yet relatively little is written about Midnight Cowboy’s influence on queer cinema beyond a handful of articles in academic journals and edited collections. As a proto-queer “buddy movie” it is a forerunner to such New Queer Cinema titles as My Own Private Idaho (1991), as well as later mainstream Hollywood entries such as Brokeback Mountain (2005). And while the American Film Institute catalogue lists the subject matter of Midnight Cowboy as “homosexuality” and “male prostitution,” surprisingly little has been written about these aspects of Midnight Cowboy from a queer perspective. The first part of this study considers the film’s production and reception, including its place in Schlesinger’s filmography. This section of the book also offers an adaptation study of James Leo Herlihy’s source novel. The second chapter gives a textual analysis of the film in terms of its aesthetics and representations: looking particularly at its depictions of sixties New York lgbtq+ culture, its portrait of Times Square/42nd Street, and its featuring of Warholian “superstars” Viva, Ultra Violet, International Velvet, and Paul Morrissey. This leads, in the final part of the book, to a close reading of the film’s discourse/s on male sex work, male relationships, and sexual identity, with reference to comparable works of queer cinema, such as Hustler White (1996), Johns (1996), Mandragora (1997), and Good Boys (2005).

A Queer Film Classic? 5

First, though, it is necessary to consider a question often posed by critics: as a buddy movie about two (ostensibly) straight men, to what extent can Midnight Cowboy actually be called queer? I first saw Midnight Cowboy at the age of sixteen in a repertory cinema screening at my local movie theatre. The year was 1984. I grew up in a small town in England. My experience in some ways mirrors that of the young Joe Buck. I was a lonely child, desperate for the love of an older male. I saw the film with a very close male friend, with whom I shared a platonic relationship but nevertheless he was the only male I had ever told I loved. My feelings for him, like Joe Buck’s feelings for Ratso Rizzo, were deep but not consciously sexual. We were, without doubt, very close “buddies” and weren’t afraid to express our fondness for each other, in the sense that we openly acknowledged that we cared for each other very much. But any homoerotic feelings ultimately remained beneath the surface. I think we probably recognized something of our relationship in Midnight Cowboy: both of us were young dramatists and actors and for a long time after watching the film together we would act out scenes from it. My friend did a particularly good impersonation of Dustin Hoffman’s nasal accent (“ya wanna cuppa cawffee?”). What we perhaps did not realize at the time is that much of the film’s resonance arises from its evocation of repressed homosexuality. What did that mean for us? Clearly I was afraid to explore my possible developing emotions as a young man and the confusion I may have felt at the time. Only afterwards was I able to explore this confusion, not just for me but for my friend as well, and this has helped in a world where homosexuality was a taboo. Although we had private moments, we could not articulate them at the time. In short Midnight Cowboy provided a form of therapy for me and my friend, as it has for audiences everywhere. Many critics have harped on about the question of whether Joe actually has sex with Ratso as a way of raising skepticism about the film as a queer text. Much of this, as we shall see, revolves around discourse to do with the

6 Midnight Cowboy

legitimacy of the “buddy film.” Although it is not my intention to invoke queer theory in depth – I am a film critic, not an academic – it may be fruitful to consider albeit briefly a theoretical framework within which to situation Midnight Cowboy. I am thinking primarily in terms of the film as a depiction of queer friendship. In his book, Queer Theory and Brokeback Mountain, Matthew Tinkcom offers an analysis of Foucault in relation to Ang Lee’s film that surely applies to Midnight Cowboy as well (it is difficult to imagine Brokeback Mountain existing without the earlier film, such is the kinship between them). Foucault argues that sexuality has become a central defining force in modern life, regulated by governments, institutions, and individuals, with the aim “to convince every individual that his or her liberation and self-expression of who he or she is relies upon the constant and repeated telling of one’s sexual life, be it imagined (i.e., the source of fantasy which might never be acted upon) or enacted (i.e., the manner in which one uses one’s body to say ‘who it is that one really is’)” (Tinkcom 2017, 25). Social institutions such as schools, universities, prisons, law courts, and hospitals help nurture the perception of individuals that they should and can be liberated from restraints by the process of “saying what it is that they sexually desired and how an identity – ‘the homosexual,’ ‘the pervert,’ ‘the lesbian’ – would be the name through which to make claims to free such people from social rebuke, calumny, persecution, attack, arrest, and murder” (Tinkcom 2017, 25–6). For Foucault, sexuality is produced by humans rather than being inherent in them; and the repressive hypothesis has emerged in contemporary societies “as an elegant tool with which to develop ever more refined categories and techniques for the regulation of individuals through the incitation to talk about their sexuality” (Tinkcom 2017, 31). Within this framework, then, the move by critics to define Midnight Cowboy by its apparent reluctance to identify Joe and Ratso’s relationship as sexual is essentially a repressive one that prohibits broader discussion of queer friendship. In The Celluloid Closet, Vito Russo offers a withering critique of both the seventies “buddy film,” and of Midnight Cowboy (which is considered by

A Queer Film Classic? 7

Russo and other critics to be one of the first of such films) in relation to queer cinema. Russo characterizes the seventies buddy film primarily by its “fear of legitimate relationships between men” (1987, 83). For Russo, seventies buddy movies portray homosexuality only to deny it, while endorsing homophobia and heterosexist woman-hating in the process. The films offer homoeroticism between the “buddies” but ultimately renege on the promise of physical love between them. Homosexuality is latent between the buddies, but its consummation is something that the films strain not to achieve, therefore forming a denial of its very existence. The placement of overtly gay characters as secondary players within the narrative (generally positioned as “faggots”), according to Russo, draws suspicion away from the buddies, and provides a focus for their homophobia. Meanwhile, the buddies’ equal contempt for women – used mainly as sex objects so that the buddies can prove that they are manly and straight – speaks to “the tiresome conventions of a misogynist genre” (1987, 85). In short, the project of the seventies buddy movie, in its marginalization of women and its repudiation of male homosexuality, is to “characterize the attitudes of heterosexuals toward both gays and women, whom they consider indistinguishable” (1987, 86). Russo points out ways in which Midnight Cowboy characterizes the homophobia of the genre. Not only is the relationship between Joe and Ratso “lily pure” but “their contempt for faggots and faggot behaviour is well established in the course of their growing buddyhood and justified by the behaviour of the ‘real’ homosexuals in the film” (1987, 80). They are vocally bigoted against gays throughout the film, and Joe’s desperate gay pick-ups are portrayed as “pathetic” and filled with “self-disgust” (1987, 80). Joe is presented as wholesome in contrast with his seedy surroundings, “and the film makes it clear who are the villains and who the innocent victim” (1987, 80). According to Russo, Joe’s fake cowboy image (discarded at the end of the film) defines the fear: “if there is no real difference between the cowboy hero and the faggot on Forty-Second Street, then what remains of American masculinity?” (1987, 81). Joe and Ratso’s relationship ultimately becomes a denial “that real men

8 Midnight Cowboy

could have a real romance” (1987, 82–3). Thus Ratso’s death is the only way to avoid the consummation of the love between Joe and Ratso: “if Ratso Rizzo had not died on the bus to Florida, he and Joe would have lived happily ever after – and who would stand for that?” (1987, 86). For Russo, “to preserve a shred of ‘real’ manhood becomes the goal of buddy characters, both in spite of their true feelings and because of them” (1987, 81). In his 1986 essay From Buddies to Lovers, reprinted in Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan … and Beyond (Columbia University Press, 1986, revised and expanded 2003), Robin Wood shares Russo’s perception of American gay cinema progressing toward authenticity in the nineties (the era dubbed New Queer Cinema). He also subscribes to the view that much of eighties gay cinema comes across as a vision of homosexuality tailored for heterosexuals. For Wood, although a number of eighties films depict explicitly gay protagonists and often tackle gay themes and issues, they do so in a way that “may actually be the means of their obliteration” (2003, 199). For Wood, “buddies” may have turned into lovers in the eighties, but the films are boringly orthodox in their attitudes toward monogamy and traditional family (read patriarchal) structures. Of Taxi zum Klo (1981), for example (and despite its explicit cocksucking and toilet sex), Wood memorably writes, “it is the kind of film to which your average gay bourgeois male might profitably takes his parents” (2003, 211). However, Wood significantly differs from Russo in his assessment of seventies buddy movies, which he views as progressive in their sexual ambiguity, in so far as that ambiguity could not be recuperated into the heteronormative Hollywood mainstream. It is important to note that Wood detected “certain traces of repressed bisexuality” lurking in seventies Hollywood cinema (2003, 199). Underlying Wood’s viewpoint, as he discusses in his 1978 essay, “Responsibilities of a Gay Film Critic,” is the conviction that “people might relate freely to each other … without imposing restrictions on each other’s liberty” (1978, 13). “Relating freely to each other,” for Wood, “involves potentially the whole person – including his or her sexuality, without which the relating wouldn’t be free, but not restricted to it” (1978, 14,

A Queer Film Classic? 9

emphasis in original). Those elements of seventies buddy movies that Russo condemned as homophobic and misogynist are thus viewed by Wood as ambiguous. For example, Wood points out that the marginalization of women in these films, while demeaning them, also creates an interesting corollary – “if women can be dispensed with so easily, a great deal else goes with them, including the central supports of and justification for the dominant ideology: marriage, family, home” (2003, 203). For Wood it is the absence of home – or the disintegration of the concept of home – that is the basic motivating premise of the seventies buddy film. By home Wood means “normality”: “the heterosexual romance, monogamy, the family, the perpetuation of the status quo, the Law of the Father” (2003, 205). Certainly Joe Buck is always searching for the security of “home,” and arguably only finds it at the very end of Midnight Cowboy – and where he least expects to – in the arms of the dying Ratso. For Wood, the seventies buddy films belong not only to social history but to social progress. Their popularity testifies to the male audience’s “unconscious but immensely powerful need to validate love relationships between men” (2003, 205). That they simultaneously disown the male relationship (by making sure the relationship remains unconsummated) is, for Wood, regretful but necessary: “the heterosexual male satisfaction would quickly be replaced by panic” otherwise (2003, 205). Any claim that Midnight Cowboy – essentially a buddy film – is queer cinema would therefore need careful qualification. I am not attempting to do that. Instead, I will argue the film is “a step in the right direction” toward queer cinema – more so than detractors like Russo would admit. The first image of Joe Buck is of his bare feet, soaking wet and tapping time in the shower as he drones a country-western song in a deep rumbling voice. He is only feet and a manly voice, disembodied masculine signifiers. Then the camera pans up his nude body. We are immediately given a sexualized view of him, one tailored to a possibly gay spectator. Joe is queered simply by being available to the eyes of women and men, and by the way he invites his own sexualization. When he first arrives in Manhattan and goes

10 Midnight Cowboy

out into the teeming crowds on the street, Joe has an experience that generations of self-conscious gay men have felt after coming to New York City when young, where they can just melt into the crowd and no one is watching everything they do. It’s a moment of liberation that many gay men from small towns are familiar with. Most importantly, Joe is queered by his passivity. He claims to be a hustler but he is not; he comes to realize this by the end of the movie. He completely lacks a hustler’s killer instinct or even the will to impose himself on others. He plays into Cass’s game, keeping silent while her husband is on the phone. He basically follows her lead, and she is the one who hustles him. She talks him into a corner, won’t back down, and throws a fit. She is a better hustler than he is. This motif of Joe being bullied into giving other people their way is repeated again and again: the old woman on the bus who insists on having the night light left on, the elderly bellhop who lingers in the hotel room to cadge a tip out of Joe. Elder people almost paralyze him. Shame is a huge factor in this drama. The flashback to Joe’s grandma is arguably a depiction of covert incest, which is the sexualizing of a child and the exposure of a child to sexual ideas with little to no actual sexual contact. It leaves the child feeling both used up and chastened, stigmatized. In Joe’s case he is left disordered when it comes to sexuality: he feels like his entire worth depends on being successful sexually. Schlesinger is savvy enough about hustling to recognize it as a stage or phase of modern young gay identity, a way of crossing the line while remaining straight, or with one’s gayness still an act in rehearsal only. Joe Buck crosses that line unwillingly; in the movie theatre scene we’re almost seeing a man being raped, so uncomfortable is he with the student blowing him. From Joe’s viewpoint, it is awkward but also conflated with memories of shameful and yet pleasurable sexual contact. Ratso is established from the beginning as an undesirable: Jackie, the trans girl, puts him in his place. He misgenders her as a “faggot.” Although he is coded with much of the movie’s gay energy Ratso himself is more of a crim-

A Queer Film Classic? 11

inal, and street person, and even a kind of conservative “square,” than he is a gay figure. But at the same time, among straight men, Ratso uses sexual ambiguity to take advantage of people who are stronger than he is. He disarms men by being so crippled, so defenseless, that men like Joe Buck let him get close so he can rob them; being perceived as possibly gay is a con man’s trick for him, because it throws off his marks, and makes them feel superior. It is no wonder that Joe is drawn to him. His limp is the objective correlative of his repressed homosexuality; a way for Schlesinger and Hoffman to code gayness, queerness, repression, self-hatred in the character of Ratso; just as Joe’s cowboy outfit codes queerness in his character. In the scene where Ratso and Joe first meet and are drinking mid-day in a dive bar, Schlesinger uses a Wellesian close-up to signal the importance of these two characters together but also to assert a queer reality or identity on film. Here, the Wellesian epic dramatic quality of the close-up is in discord with the greasy lumpen men in the dive who dominate that close-up. Only in a gay world would they get such attention. Midnight Cowboy is, I argue, a transitional work in queer cinema, and a transitional work for John Schlesinger – part of the progress toward authenticity. Schlesinger would achieve that authenticity (more or less) in Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) – another film, according to Schlesinger, “not about the sexuality of these people, it’s about human loneliness” (quoted in Russo 1987, 126) – but one in which (in Russo’s words) “alternative sexuality was taken for granted, something that gay activists had been asking for all along” (1987, 209). Although Schlesinger was not a closet gay, we should acknowledge that he was reluctant to admit his sexuality publicly. As Frankel notes, his official emergence did not come until 1991 when he signed a letter of support for Ian McKellen and openly identified as gay (2021a, 337). This was not because he was afraid of his gayness or unable to accept it. Instead he was afraid of discrimination within Hollywood – specifically, during the filming of Midnight Cowboy, of discrimination by his film crew. He would also express to his colleagues a fear of discrimination for being British, and later

12 Midnight Cowboy

Figure 2 John Schlesinger behind the camera with cast and crew

in his career, discrimination on account of his age. He felt himself to be an “outsider,” and this provides us with a starting point for discussing his approach to Midnight Cowboy.

Midnight Cowboy and John Schlesinger’s Filmography “What attracted me to the character of the Cowboy,” Schlesinger wrote to screenwriter Jack Gelber (whose early draft script of Midnight Cowboy he rejected), “was his basic innocence and naiveté and need for love” (cited in Mann 2004, 293–4). Schlesinger’s identification with Joe Buck no doubt stemmed from his own feelings of isolation, from growing up gay in a middle-class English family in the 1930s. According to biographer William J. Mann, Schlesinger felt he could never live up to his father, an eminent pediatrician, and spent

A Queer Film Classic? 13

much of his childhood trying to please him. At private school, by his own admission, he was “good at practically nothing,” (quoted in Mann 2004, 58) and being both Jewish and (to use Mann’s word) a “poofter,” (2004, 63) felt persecuted for being different. However, public school also enabled him to experience close relationships with other boys, and early sexual experimentation. This, according to Mann, was the only thing that made Schlesinger fit in there. Later, he would start to forge a gay identity in the British Army, as a performer in the Combined Services Entertainment Unit, staging campy shows to troops in Singapore. This, as Mann reports, was Schlesinger’s “first real exposure to a community of homosexual men” (2004, 81). Although he would eventually find a fulfilling relationship with photographer Michael Childers in the late 1960s, this would not happen until Schlesinger was forty-one years old, following a string of romantic failures with men who were bisexual or otherwise “unavailable.” According to Mann, Schlesinger was, for much of his adult life “caught up in a professed search for love,” while at the same time “afraid to love” (2004, 127); as such, he failed to return the affections of several partners who offered it to him, while he would pursue instead those who did not return his affections. He could not, in Mann’s words “see past the image of his ‘perfect man’ that he cherished in his mind” (2004, 127). In this respect it is easy to see why Schlesinger would identify with Joe Buck of the novel, who cannot see past the image of his “perfect woman” – the rich, older mother-figure (“I want me a blonde lady to fuck, and have her take care of me all my life.”) “Certain themes attract me,” Schlesinger has said of what drew him to Midnight Cowboy, “like the difficulty of finding oneself, the difficulty of finding happiness … Even though I haven’t the same sort of fantasies and illusions as Joe Buck, I could sympathize … I know what it’s like to be lonely, and to be a failure” (quoted in Mann 2004, 268). The notion of “connecting with the material” would become a mantra of the New Hollywood, and this is one of the ways in which we can see Midnight Cowboy as a prototype of the New Hollywood, where directors like Martin

14 Midnight Cowboy

Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, and Steven Spielberg would champion “personal” films over studio assignments. For Schlesinger, Midnight Cowboy was highly personal, even if he did play down its gay angle. Mann recounts how Schlesinger’s first producer, Joseph Janni – with whom Schlesinger had made A Kind of Loving (1962), Billy Liar (1963), Darling (1965), and Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) – turned down Midnight Cowboy because he felt that its homoeroticism would stigmatize Schlesinger. Schlesinger would not concede this point to Janni. As Mann notes: “he would continue to incorporate homosexual elements into his films for the rest of his career” (2004, 269). This he had started to do in Darling, in his sympathetic portrayal of Malcolm, the fashion photographer (played by Roland Curram). At the time this was seen as a breakthrough gay role: a non-sissy, non-faggot character who is kind and supportive to the protagonist, Diana (Julie Christie), during her modeling career, and who infects her with his joie de vivre during their trip to Italy. It would take Schlesinger and other directors of the Free Cinema movement to essay positive gay characters (such as Murray Melvin as Geoffrey in Tony Richardson’s A Taste of Honey [1961]) in the lead up to the decriminalization of homosexuality in Britain in 1967. (It should be noted that the British New Wave was a shelter for bi and discreet gay actors and filmmakers such as Richardson, Alan Bates, Dirk Bogarde, and Lindsay Anderson.) Of course, we might now look at Melvin’s character type as “The Gay Best Friend” to the heterosexual protagonist – precursor to the modern romantic comedy staple of the non-threatening gay relegated to a secondary role in the narrative. Equally, it is a significant departure to the implicit homophobia of 1950s films like Tea and Sympathy (1956) and Suddenly Last Summer (1959) in which the latent gay male friend needs to be kept on the heterosexual straight and narrow by the female protagonist. As Mann argues, Schlesinger would take a bold step forward for gay representation in 1971, by making the lead character of Sunday, Blood Sunday openly gay. Daniel’s story (as played by Peter Finch) is the film’s essential nar-

A Queer Film Classic? 15

rative. When asked by Gene D. Phillips in 1969 why homosexuality was becoming commonplace on the screen, Schlesinger replied: “It comes from what’s happening all around. Everybody does more or less what he wants to these days, and no one asks anything about it. Films are a reflection of that attitude, and homosexuality is just one part of the whole scene” (1969, 62). It is hard to situate an assignment and adaptation industry director such as Schlesinger as a queer auteur. This is especially difficult in the later stages of his career when he ceased initiating his own projects – he eventually became, essentially, a director-for-hire. However, Sunday Bloody Sunday remains the exception that proves the rule, a film that many consider a queer masterpiece of its kind. The film’s Wikipedia entry opens with the assertion that Sunday Bloody Sunday is significant for its time in that Finch’s homosexual character “is depicted as successful and relatively well-adjusted, and not particularly upset by his sexuality … a considerable departure from Schlesinger’s previous film Midnight Cowboy, which portrayed its gay characters as alienated and self-loathing, as well as other gay-themed films of the era, including The Boys in the Band (1970) and Some of My Best Friends Are … (1971).” We might see it, appearing as it did after Midnight Cowboy, as Schlesinger’s attempt at an earnest “coming out” film. A number of bids have been made to identify his oeuvre along similar lines: in her account of Schlesinger as a Great Director for Senses of Cinema, Béatrice Schatzmann-von Aesch describes “a lifelong preoccupation with gender relations, particularly homosexuality, a distinctive intellectual middle-class outlook, an interest in other cultures and races, and a commitment to filmmaking as entertainment” (2003). For the purposes of arguing queer authorship one might add Schlesinger’s celebration of male nudity, of which Midnight Cowboy is full (if not explicit). Add to that a whole career of working with queer icondivas and queer actors – Julie Christie and Shirley MacLaine prominent in the former category, Alan Bates and Dirk Bogarde most prominent in the latter. Others might consider Madame Sousatzka (1988) as a neglected queer pedagogy narrative.

16 Midnight Cowboy

Of his detractors, Russo was very clear in his condemnation of Schlesinger for being – if not a closeted gay – a closeted filmmaker. Further to his criticisms of Midnight Cowboy, Russo was furious regarding Marathon Man (1976), and what happened in the translation of novel to film: the Roy Scheider character (he plays Hoffman’s brother, who is a smuggler for the Nazis) is gay in the book, but his sexuality is muted (if not erased) in the film adaptation. At one point, while sitting in his hotel room, Scheider says to his male supervisor, “I miss you, get your ass over here,” a reference to the character’s sexuality inconspicuous enough that audiences invariably miss it. Russo argued this was “straight washing” of gay characters, and his anger at Schlesinger as a closeted filmmaker has not gone unnoticed by many commentators. Of course, there continued to be resistance to Schlesinger’s gay politics from the film industry, especially in the 1960s. David V. Picker at United Artists eventually championed Midnight Cowboy – but was at pains to say it was John Schlesinger that attracted him to the project rather than the material itself. Indeed, when producer Jerome Hellman took an option on the novel in 1966 and started to shop it around the studios, the response to the subject matter was ambivalent. In an article entitled “The Sixties in America,” found among clippings in John Schlesinger’s personal papers housed at The Margaret Herrick Library (original source unknown), Gene D. Phillips writes: “Schlesinger wanted to make a film of James Leo Herlihy’s 1965 novel, but when he suggested the project to ua, he found that a reader in the story department had already submitted an unfavourable report of the book. The report said that the action of the novel ‘goes steadily downhill’ from the outset, and recommended that the company not acquire the book for filming.” Schlesinger would later joke that a reader’s report “in the files of mgm” stated that “if the story could be cleaned up and some songs added it would be a splendid vehicle for Elvis Presley” (afi 1998, 3). However, beneath Schlesinger’s good humour about the studio’s perception of the novel, is recognition of the controversial aspects of the story. Schlesinger was highly conscious of the fact that Midnight Cowboy would be seen as a gay film; as Mann writes,

A Queer Film Classic? 17

“he recognized early on the homoeroticism inherent in Herlihy’s novel; he acknowledged that it was, in effect, a love story between two men. But he also saw it was far more universal than that” (2004, 269). Schlesinger had, in fact, first approached Gore Vidal to write the screenplay, knowing, no doubt, that Vidal was gay. According to Schlesinger, Vidal said to him: “‘I know why you want me to do it. I’ve done it all before, with The City and the Pillar,’ which was a very early gay novel which Gore had written” (afi 1998, 4). At the American Film Institute Louis B. Mayer Seminar conducted with Schlesinger in 1998, moderator Frank Pierson expressed surprise at the fact that by asking Vidal to write the screenplay Schlesinger was approaching Midnight Cowboy as a gay-themed piece; Schlesinger concurred with Pierson’s comment that Midnight Cowboy is not about the “gayness of that world or of those characters” (1998, 4). Schlesinger remarks to Pierson that Midnight Cowboy was received by many as a gay film (and by some as anti-gay), although it was not intended as such: “I had a friend of mine who read that I was doing it and said, ‘I cannot understand why you’re doing this thing about two boring faggots in New York’ and I said, ‘Well, you’re reading it all wrong. It isn’t like that’” (1998, 17). It seems that Schlesinger was, in fact, playing off the essential ambiguity of Herlihy’s novel. It is gay but at the same time it’s not. This, of course, contributes to the apparent reluctance of Schlesinger’s film to come out of the closet, something that also marks Herlihy’s novel – albeit to a lesser extent.

Midnight Cowboy: James Leo Herlihy’s Novel In Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic, Glenn Frankel offers a vivid account of James Leo Herlihy’s life that provides autobiographical insight into the novel. According to Frankel, Herlihy was aware of his sexuality from an early age, but was, like Joe Buck, “paralysed with self-consciousness” (cited in Frankel 2021a, 13). He hid

18 Midnight Cowboy

his sexuality from his parents, his siblings, and from the church, and grew up feeling isolated. Born into a Roman-Catholic family in Detroit, after serving in the US Navy, Herlihy enrolled at Black Mountain College, a small experimental college in North Carolina offering classes in liberal arts and science. He dropped out of Black Mountain after one year and hopped on a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles, with dreams of becoming an actor and a writer. He struggled financially, taking jobs as a dishwasher and a clerk in a bookstore. From there he went to New York in 1952, which by then, according to Frankel, was “reputedly the city with the world’s largest gay population” (2021a, 20). He slept on people’s floors and eventually managed to establish himself in literary circles. Herlihy himself characterized his salad days as lonely. “Don’t have any intimate friends here … although I’m not lonesome, I’m lonely” (cited in Frankel 2021a, 21). Some of Herlihy’s early experiences in New York would find their way directly into Midnight Cowboy: “Although Herlihy was far from naïve,” writes Frankel, “New York confronted him in ways he found rudely memorable. On one of his first days in the city, he asked a woman on the street how to get to the Statue of Liberty and got shut down immediately. ‘It’s up in Central Park taking a leak,’ was her astringent reply” (2021a, 21). If Herlihy based Joe Buck on his own emotional self, then there are elements of him in Ratso too. As Frankel recounts, for all his discomfort with his family Herlihy was proud of his working-class roots, and “seemed both fascinated and repelled by the sadly disconnected folks in his hometown and in his own family.” Frankel remarks that Herlihy had one foot in the world of his hometown and his family, and the other in New York: and at times it seemed like he “didn’t truly belong in either one” (2021a, 23). Herlihy was the middle child of five and, growing up in the Depression, knew poverty. His father was prevented from working his construction job after sustaining an injury to his leg; he would resort to stealing coal from a nearby rail yard to burn in the stove. In the novel Ratso is the thirteenth child of immigrant parents; Ratso, the

A Queer Film Classic? 19

youngest, becomes close to his bricklayer father after the death of his mother when his older siblings have drifted away from home. Eventually, when his old man dies, Ratso too is alone. But unlike Joe Ratso has known filial love and is able to foster it in Joe. In some ways we might see Herlihy’s Midnight Cowboy as a search for family and belonging. According to Frankel, it is likely that Herlihy cruised Times Square in the early 1960s. As Frankel writes: “those who knew Jim well have no doubt that he was an enthusiastic participant in the area’s seedier delights” (2021a, 69). In his book he quotes a friend of Herlihy (Jeffrey Bailey) who asserts: “I can readily picture the curious, exuberant and libidinous young actor he must once have been occasionally costuming himself in boots and bandana to go off and shoot the bull with the boys in Times Square” (2021a, 70). Like Joe Buck, Herlihy “never said no when he wanted to say yes” when it came to sex (Bailey, quoted in Frankel 2021a, 70). While Herlihy may have based Joe and Ratso’s loneliness on his own early life, chances are that he modeled the characters themselves on the hustlers and cruisers he met on 42nd Street. Frankel recounts how the Depression had attracted “scores of young men to New York from withered small towns looking for economic opportunities and social adventure, who ended up working the streets servicing a largely middle-class clientele” (2021a, 70). Like Joe, many of these hustlers and their clients did not see themselves as gay: “Many of these hustlers were ‘trade’ – neither they nor their customers thought of them as gay. In fact, their sexual ambiguity was part of their appeal” (Frankel 2021a, 70). As I discuss later, an important aspect of Midnight Cowboy is its representation of 42nd Street trade as essentially omnisexual – reflecting a fluid sexuality that not only characterizes Joe Buck but arguably the whole New York hustling scene between the 1940s and the 1960 before the homosexualheterosexual binary became entrenched. Frankel writes: “World War II brought a flood of soldiers and sailors to New York City, many of them looking for excitement before shipping off overseas … and many gay servicemen from

Afterword

In the Movie Theatre

The story of Midnight Cowboy begins in a movie theater. In the dark, Joe has his first encounter with another man; earlier we have seen an abandoned drive-in, and a young Joe clinging to a rocking horse, clinging to cultural myths through which he has attempted to define his identity, his masculinity. Similarly, Midnight Cowboy began for me in the darkness of a movie theater in 1984, seated next to a young man whom I had grown to love. He was my Ratso Rizzo. Midnight Cowboy, in 1969, represented a step forward in mainstream culture in depicting gayness that was not yet fully out of the closet. In terms of queer cinema, so much had yet to be done, but it was the start of something and that makes it an important text. It was a transition in many ways. Now people are more interested in emotions than in sexual details about relationships. Midnight Cowboy helped me to explore my developing emotions as a young man and the confusion I felt: it helped in a world where homosexuality was a taboo, and the fact that – at that time – I felt repressed to explore a part of myself because of the shame and possible rejection. In watching Midnight Cowboy with my friend I had an experience that showed me another way; and I had to digest it in terms of what it was: was it sexual, or, like Joe Buck, was I looking for someone to rely on when I was in a lonely space? Midnight Cowboy, when I first saw it with my friend, showed me that it is okay to love a man and it not be sexual, but I wonder: if that time had been

102 Midnight Cowboy

today instead of the 1980s – now the stigma has largely gone away – would the two of us have explored our feelings a little more? Might we have had that experience and decided we were not gay – and that would have been ok, too? We were, in the final analysis, too frightened to explore those emotions. What is it about men that they can’t form deep friendships with other men that last a lifetime, generally speaking? Are they – as Midnight Cowboy suggests – frightened of being seen as not masculine? Midnight Cowboy showed me as a youth that I needed love from another man; and that, to be honest, most men need that and that has been the taboo: the closeness between man and man. The “buddy movie,” of which Midnight Cowboy is a progenitor, is closet acknowledgement of men’s need to form close relationships with each other. Schlesinger’s film, while not necessarily presenting a gay perspective, is acknowledging the complex world of male relationships, and closeness that can be misconstrued. Its value, given its context in time, is in the experience of considering, even if only subconsciously, a possible relationship with a man. If it had been today when I first saw Midnight Cowboy with my friend, I would have probably have explored those questions more deeply, decided whether or not being gay was for me and taken that experience into my life. Back then I wasn’t ready to do that, but there is no doubt that Midnight Cowboy helped me process my feelings. And, finally, that is, for me, what Midnight Cowboy is really about: the search for connection with another human being. That person may be someone completely unexpected – black/white, gay/straight, man/woman/trans – Joe Buck finds it with Ratso, someone he never thought in a million years he would love.

Figure 32 Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in a publicity photo for Midnight Cowboy

References

Balio, Tino. 1987. United Artists: The Company That Changed the Film Industry. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Bergan, Ronald. 1991. Dustin Hoffman. London: Virgin Books. Blumenthal, Ralph. 1981. “A Times Square Revival?” New York Times Magazine, 27 December, 36–40. Canby, Vincent. 1969. “‘Midnight Cowboy’; Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight Are Starred.” New York Times, 26 May, 54. Collins, Donald. 2020. “That ‘Gay Cowboy Movie’: Queer People Reflect on 15 Years of ‘Brokeback Mountain’. Bitch Media, 16 December. https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/queer-roundup-fifteen-yearsbrokeback-mountain. De Villiers, Nicholas. 2017. Sexography: Sex Work in Documentary. University of Minnesota Press. Ebert, Roger. 1969. “Midnight Cowboy.” Roger Ebert.com, 6 July. https:// www.rogerebert.com/reviews/midnight-cowboy-1969. – 1994. “Midnight Cowboy.” Roger Ebert.com, 5 July. https://www.roger ebert.com/reviews/midnight-cowboy-1969-1. Floyd, Kevin. 2001. “Closing the (Heterosexual) Frontier: ‘Midnight Cowboy’ as National Allegory.” Science and Society 65, no. 1 (Spring): 99–130. Frankel, Glenn. 2021a. Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

106 References

– 2021b. “X-Rated: Inside the Myths and Legends of Midnight Cowboy.” Vanity Fair, 26 February. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/ 02/inside-the-myths-and-legends-of-midnight-cowboy. Gow, Gordon. 1969. “A Buck for Joe: An Interview with John Schlesinger.” Films and Filming 15 (11 November): 6–9. Hacker, Jonathan, and David Price. 1991. Take 10: Contemporary British Film Directors. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Herlihy, James Leo. 1965. Midnight Cowboy. New York: Simon & Schuster. Kael, Pauline. 1969. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: The Bottom of the Pit (Also Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy, Alice’s Restaurant).” New Yorker, 27 September, 127–8. Landis, Bill, and Michelle Clifford. 2002. Sleazoid Express: A Mind-Twisted Tour through the Grindhouse Cinema of Times Square. New York: Simon & Schuster. Landry, Robert. 1969. “Midnight Cowboy.” Variety, 14 May, 6. Lewis, Richard Warren. 1971. “Playboy Interview: John Wayne.” Playboy 18 (May): 75–92. Mann, William J. 2004. Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger. London: Hutchinson. McMullen, Ritchie. 1989. Enchanted Boy. London: Gay Men’s Press. – 1994. Enchanted Youth. London: Gay Men’s Press. Needham, Gary. 2010. Brokeback Mountain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. – 2018. “Hollywood Trade: Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Underground Cinema.” In The Hollywood Renaissance: Revisiting American Cinema’s Most Celebrated Era, edited by Yannis Tzioumakis and Peter Krämer, 129–48. London: Bloomsbury. Phillips, Gene D. 1969. “John Schlesinger: Social Realist.” Film Comment 5, no. 4: 58–62. Potter, Cherry. 1990. Image, Sound and Story: The Art of Telling in Film. London: Secker & Warburg.

References 107

Reay, Barry. 2010. New York Hustlers: Masculinity and Sex in Modern America. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rechy, John. 1963. City of Night. New York: Grove Press. Russo, Vito. 1987. The Celluloid Closet. New York: Harper & Row. Salerno, Roger A. 2022. Fear City Cinema: The Dark Side of New York in Film, 1965–1995. Jefferson, nc: McFarland. Sarris, Andrew. 1969. “Films.” The Village Voice, 29 May, 47–8. Schatzmann-von Aesch, Béatrice. 2003. “John Schlesinger (Great Directors).” Senses of Cinema (July). https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2003/ great-directors/schlesinger. “Sunday Bloody Sunday (film).” n.d. Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation. Accessed 20 June 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Bloody_ Sunday_(film). Tinkcom, Matthew. 2017. Queer Theory and Brokeback Mountain. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Warhol, Andy, and Pat Hackett. 1980. popism: The Warhol Sixties. New York: Harcourt Brace. Wood, Robin. 1978. “Responsibilities of a Gay Film Critic.” Film Comment (January/February): 12–17. – 2003. Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan … and Beyond. New York: Columbia University Press. Young, Greg. 2020. “Midnight Cowboy: I’m Walkin’ Here! Celebrating a Gritty New York film classic.” Bowery Boys Movie Club, 17 July. https:// www.boweryboyshistory.com/2020/07/midnight-cowboy-25-fascinatingsleazy.html.

Film American Gigolo. Paul Schrader. 1980. usa. 117 minutes. Brokeback Mountain. Ang Lee. 2005. usa. 134 minutes. Cruising. William Friedkin. 1980. usa. 102 minutes.

108 References

Darling. John Schlesinger. 1965. Great Britain. 127 minutes. Flesh. Paul Morrissey. 1968. usa. 105 minutes. Hustler White. Bruce LaBruce/Rick Castro. 1996. usa. 79 minutes. Johns. Scott Silver. 1996. usa. 96 minutes. Lonesome Cowboys. Andy Warhol. 1968. usa. 109 mins. Mandragora. Wiktor Grodecki. 1997. Czechoslovakia. 126 minutes. Mona Lisa. Neil Jordan. 1986. Great Britain. 104 minutes. My Hustler. Andy Warhol/Chuck Wein. 1965. usa. 76 minutes. My Own Private Idaho. Gus Van Sant. 1991. usa. 102 minutes. The Secret Life of an American Wife. George Axelrod. 1968. usa. 92 minutes. The Soilers. Ralph Ceder. 1923. usa. 20 minutes. Sunday Bloody Sunday. John Schlesinger. 1971. Great Britain. 110 minutes. Taxi Driver. Martin Scorsese. 1976. usa. 114 minutes. Twist. Jacob Tierney. 2003. Canada. 97 minutes. Twisted. Seth Michael Donsky. 1996. usa. 100 minutes. Yeladim Tovim (Good Boys). Yair Hochner. 2005. Israel. 75 minutes.

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Advocate (newspaper), 45, 47 After Dark (publication), 42 Altman, Robert, 3, 14 American Film Institute, 3, 4 American Gigolo (1980), 41, 44, 86, 93 American Psychiatric Association, 38 Anderson, Lindsay, 14 Arquette, David, 82 Axelrod, George, 61 Babuscio, Jack, 69 Bailey, Jeffrey, 19 Balaban, Bob, 91, 92 Balio, Tino, 38, 39 Barry, John, 61, 65 Bates, Alan, 14 Bennett, Constance, 27 Bergan, Ronald, 44, 45, 48 Big Street, The (1942), 48 Billy Liar (1963), 14 Black Mountain College, 18, 32 Blue Movie (1969), 65

Blumenthal, Ralph, 56, 57 Body without Soul (1996), 84 Bogarde, Dirk, 14, 15 Boys in the Band, The (1970), 4, 15 Breakfast at Tiffany’s (novel), 44 Brokeback Mountain (2005), 4, 6, 75 buddy film, 3–9, 40, 102 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), 3 Canby, Vincent, 44–5, 48 Capote, Truman, 44 Carroll, Jim, 81 Casalanka, Miroslav, 84 Celluloid Closet, The (book), 6 Childers, Michael, 13, 42–3, 64, 65 Christie, Julie, 14, 15 City of Night (novel), 81, 82 City and the Pillar, The (novel), 17 Clifford, Michelle, 55 Close, Joshua, 83 Coppola, Francis Ford, 3, 14 Coronet Theatre, 39 Crist, Judith, 34 Cruising (1980) 50, 78

110 Index Curram, Roland, 14 Dallesandro, Joe, 43, 49, 66–7, 74, 81 Dance (magazine), 42 Darling (1965), 14 David, Keith, 82 De Niro, Robert, 79 De Villiers, Nicholas, 85 Deer Hunter, The (1978), 3 Delany, Samuel, 81 Different Story, A (1978), 37 Donsky, Seth Michael, 83 Dyer, Richard, 69 Eastern Boys (2013), 86 Easy Rider (1969), 3 Ebert, Roger, 46 Enchanted Boy (novel), 79–80 Enchanted Youth (novel), 79–80 Entertainment Weekly (trade publication), 71 Factory, The, 42, 64–6 Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), 14 Feminine Mystique, The (book), 52 film noir, 49, 50 Films and Filming, 20 Finch, Peter, 14, 15 Fire Island Pines, 42 Flesh (1968), 49, 66–7, 81 Floyd, Kevin, 54–5, 68, 73, 75–6 Fonda, Henry, 48 Forty Deuce (1982), 85 42nd Street, representations of, 55–63 Foster, Jodie, 79 Foucault, Michel, 6 Frankel, Glenn, 3, 4, 11, 17–19, 37–8, 44, 76, 81, 91 Free Cinema, 14

Friedan, Betty, 52 Friedkin, William, 78 “From Buddies to Lovers” (essay), 8 Fruit Machine, The (1988), 86 Gelber, Jack, 12, 34 Gere, Richard, 86 Good Boys (2005), 4, 85 Gould, Elliot, 82 Graduate, The (1967), 3 Greek Pete (2009), 86 Greenwich Village, 42, 44 Grodecki, Wiktor, 84–5 Haas, Lukas, 82 Hardcore (1979), 85 Harris, Burtt, 86 Haskell, Molly, 4 Hellman, Jerome, 16, 38, 39, 41, 64, 65 Herlihy, James Leo, 4, 16, 17; life of, 18–20; and novel Midnight Cowboy, 24, 25, 27, 32–4, 40, 52, 57, 58, 63, 64, 76, 81, 89, 90, 91, 94, 96, 97, 99 Hochner, Yair, 85 Hoffman, Dustin, 2, 3, 5, 11, 16, 31, 34, 35, 36, 48, 51, 67, 74, 86, 88, 89, 93, 94, 100, 103 Holender, Adam, 62 Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan … and Beyond (book), 8 Hopper, Dennis, 72 Hoskins, Bob, 79 Howard, Terence, 82 Hud (1963), 71 Hustler White (1996), 4, 81, 82 Image, Sound and Story (book), 87 International Velvet, 4, 43

Index 111 Janni, Joseph, 14 Johns (1996), 4, 41, 82–3 Jones, Randy, 76 Kael, Pauline, 45, 48 Keep the Aspidistra Flying (novel), 41 Keitel, Harvey, 79 Kind, Richard, 82 Kind of Loving, A (1962), 14 King Cobra (2016), 86 Kovács, László, 62 Kramer, Jonathan, 73, 74 Krim, Arthur, 38 L’homme Blessé (1983), 86 LaBruce, Bruce, 81, 82 Landis, Bill, 55, 56 Laurel and Hardy, 37 Laurel, Stan, 73, 74 Lee, Ang, 6 Lonesome Cowboys (1968), 74 Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), 50 m*a*s*h (1970), 3 MacLaine, Shirley, 15 Madame Sousatzka (1988), 15 Making Love (1982), 37 Mandragora (1997), 41, 84–5 Mann, William J., 12–14, 16, 36, 41, 45, 64–5, 72–3 Marathon Man (1976), 16 Margaret Herrick Library, 16, 72 McKellen, Ian, 11 McMullen, Richie, 79, 80 Mead, Taylor, 65, Melvin, Murray, 14 mgm, 16

Midnight Cowboy (novel). See Herlihy, James Leo Midnight Cowboy: and bdsm, 76–9; as a buddy film, 5–9; and 42nd Street, 55–63; and the “gay cowboy,” 70–6; and the “hustler” narrative, 78–86; Joe Buck’s emotional journey, 87–100; as a New Hollywood film, 3; and representations of New York City, 44–55; screen adaptation of, 33–7; and sex work, 55–63, 68, 76, 78, 79; the underground party sequence of, 63–8; as an X-rated film, 37–40 Mona Lisa (1986), 79, 80 Morrissey, Paul, 4, 43, 66 Motion Picture Association of America (mpaa), 37–8, 78 Mutual of New York, 51 My Hustler (1965), 66 My Own Private Idaho (1991), 4, 80, 82 Mysterious Skin (2004), 86 Needham, Gary, 46, 65, 66, 67, 70, 75 Netflix, 75 New Hollywood, 3, 13, 49, 62, 72, 73 New Queer Cinema, 4, 8, 80 New York City, representations of in Midnight Cowboy, 19, 41–63 New York Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, 83 New York Hustlers (book), 63 New York Magazine, 34 New York Times, 44, 45 New York Times Magazine, 56 New Yorker (magazine), 45 Newman, Paul, 71 Not Angels But Angels (1994), 84, 85 Oh, Calcutta! (play), 42

112 Index Orwell, George, 41 Ottawa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, 83 Philadelphia Story, The (1940), 3 Phillips, Gene D., 15, 16 Phoenix, River, 80 Physique Pictorial (magazine), 76, 77 Picker, David V., 16 Pierson, Frank, 17 Playboy (magazine), 73 Postcards from London (2018), 86 Potter, Cherry, 87 Presley, Elvis, 16 Queer Theory and Brokeback Mountain (book), 6 Rangecroft, Angela, 49 Rear Window (1954), 3 Reay, Barry, 63 Rechy, John, 81 Red River (1948), 74 Reeves, Keanu, 80 “Responsibilities of a Gay Film Critic” (essay), 8–9 Richardson, Tony, 14 Rogers, Roy, 74 Roth, Ann, 60 Runyon, Damon, 46 Russo, Vito, 6–8, 9, 11, 16, 31, 73. See also The Celluloid Closet Salerno, Roger A., 50 Salt, Jennifer, 26 Salt, Waldo, 20, 29, 34 Sarris, Andrew, 45, 48, 53–4 Sauvage (2018), 86

Savini, Tom, 21 Schatzmann-von Aesch, Béatrice, 16 Scheider, Roy, 16 Schickel, Richard, 46–8 Schlesinger, John, 4, 10, 11; and adaptation of Midnight Cowboy, 16–17, 20, 29–31, 33–6, 38–40, 50, 58, 59, 60–70, 71, 73, 88, 91, 99; critics of, 44–5, 49; as an English filmmaker in New York, 41–4; filmography of, 12–16; and homophobia, 86; personal papers, 16, 72 Scorsese, Martin, 3, 14 Scott, George C., 85 Secret Life of an American Wife, The (1968), 61 Senses of Cinema, 15 Sergeant Ryker (1968), 62 Sexography: Sex Work in Documentary (book), 85 Shane (1953), 3 Shooting Midnight Cowboy (book), 3, 17, 81 “Sixties in America, The” (article), 16 Sleazoid Express (book), 55 Soilers, The (1923), 73–4 Soldier Blue (1970), 71 Some of My Best Friends Are … (1971), 15 Spielberg, Steven, 14 Stahl, Nick, 83 Stanwyck, Barbara, 27 Stern, Aaron, 38 Stewart, James, 48 Stonewall, 4, 43 Suddenly Last Summer (1959), 14 Sullavan, Margaret, 48 Sumner, Gabe, 39 Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), 11, 15 Svec, David, 84

Index 113 Taste of Honey, A (1961), 14 Taxi Driver (1976), 3, 5, 79, 80 Taxi zum Klo (1981), 8 Tea and Sympathy (1956), 14 Tierney, Jacob, 83 Times Square, 4, 19, 50, 54–8, 62, 73 Tinkcom, Matthew, 6 Tirado, Fran, 75 TLA Films, 83 Trevor, Claire, 27 Turin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, 83 Twist (2003), 83 Twisted (1996), 83–4 Tynan, Kenneth, 42 Tyson, Cathy, 79 Ultra Violet, 4, 43, 65 United Artists, 16, 38 United Artists: The Company That Changed the Film Industry (book), 38 Vaccaro, Brenda, 52 Van Sant, Gus, 80–1

Vanity Fair (magazine), 37, 76 Vidal, Gore, 17 Village People, 76 Village Voice (newspaper), 45 Viva, 65 Voight, Jon, 2, 3, 20, 22, 26, 28, 29, 34, 35, 36, 43, 45, 47, 48, 51, 61, 67, 72, 74, 88, 89, 94, 95, 96, 98, 100, 103 Ward, Tony, 81 Warhol, Andy, 4, 42, 46, 62–6, 74, 94 Waugh, Thomas, 69 Wayne, John, 71, 72–3, 93, 98 Wexler, Haskell, 62 Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), 81 White, Edmund, 81 Wild Bunch, The (1969), 71 Wood, Robin, 8–9, 46, 49–50, 69–70, 78, 86 Yeladim Tovim (Good Boys, 2005), 4, 85 Young, Greg, 50 Zsigmond, Vilmos, 62

Afterword

In the Movie Theatre

The story of Midnight Cowboy begins in a movie theater. In the dark, Joe has his first encounter with another man; earlier we have seen an abandoned drive-in, and a young Joe clinging to a rocking horse, clinging to cultural myths through which he has attempted to define his identity, his masculinity. Similarly, Midnight Cowboy began for me in the darkness of a movie theater in 1984, seated next to a young man whom I had grown to love. He was my Ratso Rizzo. Midnight Cowboy, in 1969, represented a step forward in mainstream culture in depicting gayness that was not yet fully out of the closet. In terms of queer cinema, so much had yet to be done, but it was the start of something and that makes it an important text. It was a transition in many ways. Now people are more interested in emotions than in sexual details about relationships. Midnight Cowboy helped me to explore my developing emotions as a young man and the confusion I felt: it helped in a world where homosexuality was a taboo, and the fact that – at that time – I felt repressed to explore a part of myself because of the shame and possible rejection. In watching Midnight Cowboy with my friend I had an experience that showed me another way; and I had to digest it in terms of what it was: was it sexual, or, like Joe Buck, was I looking for someone to rely on when I was in a lonely space? Midnight Cowboy, when I first saw it with my friend, showed me that it is okay to love a man and it not be sexual, but I wonder: if that time had been

102 Midnight Cowboy

today instead of the 1980s – now the stigma has largely gone away – would the two of us have explored our feelings a little more? Might we have had that experience and decided we were not gay – and that would have been ok, too? We were, in the final analysis, too frightened to explore those emotions. What is it about men that they can’t form deep friendships with other men that last a lifetime, generally speaking? Are they – as Midnight Cowboy suggests – frightened of being seen as not masculine? Midnight Cowboy showed me as a youth that I needed love from another man; and that, to be honest, most men need that and that has been the taboo: the closeness between man and man. The “buddy movie,” of which Midnight Cowboy is a progenitor, is closet acknowledgement of men’s need to form close relationships with each other. Schlesinger’s film, while not necessarily presenting a gay perspective, is acknowledging the complex world of male relationships, and closeness that can be misconstrued. Its value, given its context in time, is in the experience of considering, even if only subconsciously, a possible relationship with a man. If it had been today when I first saw Midnight Cowboy with my friend, I would have probably have explored those questions more deeply, decided whether or not being gay was for me and taken that experience into my life. Back then I wasn’t ready to do that, but there is no doubt that Midnight Cowboy helped me process my feelings. And, finally, that is, for me, what Midnight Cowboy is really about: the search for connection with another human being. That person may be someone completely unexpected – black/white, gay/straight, man/woman/trans – Joe Buck finds it with Ratso, someone he never thought in a million years he would love.

Figure 32 Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in a publicity photo for Midnight Cowboy

References

Balio, Tino. 1987. United Artists: The Company That Changed the Film Industry. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Bergan, Ronald. 1991. Dustin Hoffman. London: Virgin Books. Blumenthal, Ralph. 1981. “A Times Square Revival?” New York Times Magazine, 27 December, 36–40. Canby, Vincent. 1969. “‘Midnight Cowboy’; Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight Are Starred.” New York Times, 26 May, 54. Collins, Donald. 2020. “That ‘Gay Cowboy Movie’: Queer People Reflect on 15 Years of ‘Brokeback Mountain’. Bitch Media, 16 December. https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/queer-roundup-fifteen-yearsbrokeback-mountain. De Villiers, Nicholas. 2017. Sexography: Sex Work in Documentary. University of Minnesota Press. Ebert, Roger. 1969. “Midnight Cowboy.” Roger Ebert.com, 6 July. https:// www.rogerebert.com/reviews/midnight-cowboy-1969. – 1994. “Midnight Cowboy.” Roger Ebert.com, 5 July. https://www.roger ebert.com/reviews/midnight-cowboy-1969-1. Floyd, Kevin. 2001. “Closing the (Heterosexual) Frontier: ‘Midnight Cowboy’ as National Allegory.” Science and Society 65, no. 1 (Spring): 99–130. Frankel, Glenn. 2021a. Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

106 References

– 2021b. “X-Rated: Inside the Myths and Legends of Midnight Cowboy.” Vanity Fair, 26 February. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/ 02/inside-the-myths-and-legends-of-midnight-cowboy. Gow, Gordon. 1969. “A Buck for Joe: An Interview with John Schlesinger.” Films and Filming 15 (11 November): 6–9. Hacker, Jonathan, and David Price. 1991. Take 10: Contemporary British Film Directors. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Herlihy, James Leo. 1965. Midnight Cowboy. New York: Simon & Schuster. Kael, Pauline. 1969. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: The Bottom of the Pit (Also Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy, Alice’s Restaurant).” New Yorker, 27 September, 127–8. Landis, Bill, and Michelle Clifford. 2002. Sleazoid Express: A Mind-Twisted Tour through the Grindhouse Cinema of Times Square. New York: Simon & Schuster. Landry, Robert. 1969. “Midnight Cowboy.” Variety, 14 May, 6. Lewis, Richard Warren. 1971. “Playboy Interview: John Wayne.” Playboy 18 (May): 75–92. Mann, William J. 2004. Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger. London: Hutchinson. McMullen, Ritchie. 1989. Enchanted Boy. London: Gay Men’s Press. – 1994. Enchanted Youth. London: Gay Men’s Press. Needham, Gary. 2010. Brokeback Mountain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. – 2018. “Hollywood Trade: Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Underground Cinema.” In The Hollywood Renaissance: Revisiting American Cinema’s Most Celebrated Era, edited by Yannis Tzioumakis and Peter Krämer, 129–48. London: Bloomsbury. Phillips, Gene D. 1969. “John Schlesinger: Social Realist.” Film Comment 5, no. 4: 58–62. Potter, Cherry. 1990. Image, Sound and Story: The Art of Telling in Film. London: Secker & Warburg.

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Reay, Barry. 2010. New York Hustlers: Masculinity and Sex in Modern America. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rechy, John. 1963. City of Night. New York: Grove Press. Russo, Vito. 1987. The Celluloid Closet. New York: Harper & Row. Salerno, Roger A. 2022. Fear City Cinema: The Dark Side of New York in Film, 1965–1995. Jefferson, nc: McFarland. Sarris, Andrew. 1969. “Films.” The Village Voice, 29 May, 47–8. Schatzmann-von Aesch, Béatrice. 2003. “John Schlesinger (Great Directors).” Senses of Cinema (July). https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2003/ great-directors/schlesinger. “Sunday Bloody Sunday (film).” n.d. Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation. Accessed 20 June 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Bloody_ Sunday_(film). Tinkcom, Matthew. 2017. Queer Theory and Brokeback Mountain. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Warhol, Andy, and Pat Hackett. 1980. popism: The Warhol Sixties. New York: Harcourt Brace. Wood, Robin. 1978. “Responsibilities of a Gay Film Critic.” Film Comment (January/February): 12–17. – 2003. Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan … and Beyond. New York: Columbia University Press. Young, Greg. 2020. “Midnight Cowboy: I’m Walkin’ Here! Celebrating a Gritty New York film classic.” Bowery Boys Movie Club, 17 July. https:// www.boweryboyshistory.com/2020/07/midnight-cowboy-25-fascinatingsleazy.html.

Film American Gigolo. Paul Schrader. 1980. usa. 117 minutes. Brokeback Mountain. Ang Lee. 2005. usa. 134 minutes. Cruising. William Friedkin. 1980. usa. 102 minutes.

108 References

Darling. John Schlesinger. 1965. Great Britain. 127 minutes. Flesh. Paul Morrissey. 1968. usa. 105 minutes. Hustler White. Bruce LaBruce/Rick Castro. 1996. usa. 79 minutes. Johns. Scott Silver. 1996. usa. 96 minutes. Lonesome Cowboys. Andy Warhol. 1968. usa. 109 mins. Mandragora. Wiktor Grodecki. 1997. Czechoslovakia. 126 minutes. Mona Lisa. Neil Jordan. 1986. Great Britain. 104 minutes. My Hustler. Andy Warhol/Chuck Wein. 1965. usa. 76 minutes. My Own Private Idaho. Gus Van Sant. 1991. usa. 102 minutes. The Secret Life of an American Wife. George Axelrod. 1968. usa. 92 minutes. The Soilers. Ralph Ceder. 1923. usa. 20 minutes. Sunday Bloody Sunday. John Schlesinger. 1971. Great Britain. 110 minutes. Taxi Driver. Martin Scorsese. 1976. usa. 114 minutes. Twist. Jacob Tierney. 2003. Canada. 97 minutes. Twisted. Seth Michael Donsky. 1996. usa. 100 minutes. Yeladim Tovim (Good Boys). Yair Hochner. 2005. Israel. 75 minutes.

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Advocate (newspaper), 45, 47 After Dark (publication), 42 Altman, Robert, 3, 14 American Film Institute, 3, 4 American Gigolo (1980), 41, 44, 86, 93 American Psychiatric Association, 38 Anderson, Lindsay, 14 Arquette, David, 82 Axelrod, George, 61 Babuscio, Jack, 69 Bailey, Jeffrey, 19 Balaban, Bob, 91, 92 Balio, Tino, 38, 39 Barry, John, 61, 65 Bates, Alan, 14 Bennett, Constance, 27 Bergan, Ronald, 44, 45, 48 Big Street, The (1942), 48 Billy Liar (1963), 14 Black Mountain College, 18, 32 Blue Movie (1969), 65

Blumenthal, Ralph, 56, 57 Body without Soul (1996), 84 Bogarde, Dirk, 14, 15 Boys in the Band, The (1970), 4, 15 Breakfast at Tiffany’s (novel), 44 Brokeback Mountain (2005), 4, 6, 75 buddy film, 3–9, 40, 102 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), 3 Canby, Vincent, 44–5, 48 Capote, Truman, 44 Carroll, Jim, 81 Casalanka, Miroslav, 84 Celluloid Closet, The (book), 6 Childers, Michael, 13, 42–3, 64, 65 Christie, Julie, 14, 15 City of Night (novel), 81, 82 City and the Pillar, The (novel), 17 Clifford, Michelle, 55 Close, Joshua, 83 Coppola, Francis Ford, 3, 14 Coronet Theatre, 39 Crist, Judith, 34 Cruising (1980) 50, 78

110 Index Curram, Roland, 14 Dallesandro, Joe, 43, 49, 66–7, 74, 81 Dance (magazine), 42 Darling (1965), 14 David, Keith, 82 De Niro, Robert, 79 De Villiers, Nicholas, 85 Deer Hunter, The (1978), 3 Delany, Samuel, 81 Different Story, A (1978), 37 Donsky, Seth Michael, 83 Dyer, Richard, 69 Eastern Boys (2013), 86 Easy Rider (1969), 3 Ebert, Roger, 46 Enchanted Boy (novel), 79–80 Enchanted Youth (novel), 79–80 Entertainment Weekly (trade publication), 71 Factory, The, 42, 64–6 Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), 14 Feminine Mystique, The (book), 52 film noir, 49, 50 Films and Filming, 20 Finch, Peter, 14, 15 Fire Island Pines, 42 Flesh (1968), 49, 66–7, 81 Floyd, Kevin, 54–5, 68, 73, 75–6 Fonda, Henry, 48 Forty Deuce (1982), 85 42nd Street, representations of, 55–63 Foster, Jodie, 79 Foucault, Michel, 6 Frankel, Glenn, 3, 4, 11, 17–19, 37–8, 44, 76, 81, 91 Free Cinema, 14

Friedan, Betty, 52 Friedkin, William, 78 “From Buddies to Lovers” (essay), 8 Fruit Machine, The (1988), 86 Gelber, Jack, 12, 34 Gere, Richard, 86 Good Boys (2005), 4, 85 Gould, Elliot, 82 Graduate, The (1967), 3 Greek Pete (2009), 86 Greenwich Village, 42, 44 Grodecki, Wiktor, 84–5 Haas, Lukas, 82 Hardcore (1979), 85 Harris, Burtt, 86 Haskell, Molly, 4 Hellman, Jerome, 16, 38, 39, 41, 64, 65 Herlihy, James Leo, 4, 16, 17; life of, 18–20; and novel Midnight Cowboy, 24, 25, 27, 32–4, 40, 52, 57, 58, 63, 64, 76, 81, 89, 90, 91, 94, 96, 97, 99 Hochner, Yair, 85 Hoffman, Dustin, 2, 3, 5, 11, 16, 31, 34, 35, 36, 48, 51, 67, 74, 86, 88, 89, 93, 94, 100, 103 Holender, Adam, 62 Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan … and Beyond (book), 8 Hopper, Dennis, 72 Hoskins, Bob, 79 Howard, Terence, 82 Hud (1963), 71 Hustler White (1996), 4, 81, 82 Image, Sound and Story (book), 87 International Velvet, 4, 43

Index 111 Janni, Joseph, 14 Johns (1996), 4, 41, 82–3 Jones, Randy, 76 Kael, Pauline, 45, 48 Keep the Aspidistra Flying (novel), 41 Keitel, Harvey, 79 Kind, Richard, 82 Kind of Loving, A (1962), 14 King Cobra (2016), 86 Kovács, László, 62 Kramer, Jonathan, 73, 74 Krim, Arthur, 38 L’homme Blessé (1983), 86 LaBruce, Bruce, 81, 82 Landis, Bill, 55, 56 Laurel and Hardy, 37 Laurel, Stan, 73, 74 Lee, Ang, 6 Lonesome Cowboys (1968), 74 Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), 50 m*a*s*h (1970), 3 MacLaine, Shirley, 15 Madame Sousatzka (1988), 15 Making Love (1982), 37 Mandragora (1997), 41, 84–5 Mann, William J., 12–14, 16, 36, 41, 45, 64–5, 72–3 Marathon Man (1976), 16 Margaret Herrick Library, 16, 72 McKellen, Ian, 11 McMullen, Richie, 79, 80 Mead, Taylor, 65, Melvin, Murray, 14 mgm, 16

Midnight Cowboy (novel). See Herlihy, James Leo Midnight Cowboy: and bdsm, 76–9; as a buddy film, 5–9; and 42nd Street, 55–63; and the “gay cowboy,” 70–6; and the “hustler” narrative, 78–86; Joe Buck’s emotional journey, 87–100; as a New Hollywood film, 3; and representations of New York City, 44–55; screen adaptation of, 33–7; and sex work, 55–63, 68, 76, 78, 79; the underground party sequence of, 63–8; as an X-rated film, 37–40 Mona Lisa (1986), 79, 80 Morrissey, Paul, 4, 43, 66 Motion Picture Association of America (mpaa), 37–8, 78 Mutual of New York, 51 My Hustler (1965), 66 My Own Private Idaho (1991), 4, 80, 82 Mysterious Skin (2004), 86 Needham, Gary, 46, 65, 66, 67, 70, 75 Netflix, 75 New Hollywood, 3, 13, 49, 62, 72, 73 New Queer Cinema, 4, 8, 80 New York City, representations of in Midnight Cowboy, 19, 41–63 New York Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, 83 New York Hustlers (book), 63 New York Magazine, 34 New York Times, 44, 45 New York Times Magazine, 56 New Yorker (magazine), 45 Newman, Paul, 71 Not Angels But Angels (1994), 84, 85 Oh, Calcutta! (play), 42

112 Index Orwell, George, 41 Ottawa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, 83 Philadelphia Story, The (1940), 3 Phillips, Gene D., 15, 16 Phoenix, River, 80 Physique Pictorial (magazine), 76, 77 Picker, David V., 16 Pierson, Frank, 17 Playboy (magazine), 73 Postcards from London (2018), 86 Potter, Cherry, 87 Presley, Elvis, 16 Queer Theory and Brokeback Mountain (book), 6 Rangecroft, Angela, 49 Rear Window (1954), 3 Reay, Barry, 63 Rechy, John, 81 Red River (1948), 74 Reeves, Keanu, 80 “Responsibilities of a Gay Film Critic” (essay), 8–9 Richardson, Tony, 14 Rogers, Roy, 74 Roth, Ann, 60 Runyon, Damon, 46 Russo, Vito, 6–8, 9, 11, 16, 31, 73. See also The Celluloid Closet Salerno, Roger A., 50 Salt, Jennifer, 26 Salt, Waldo, 20, 29, 34 Sarris, Andrew, 45, 48, 53–4 Sauvage (2018), 86

Savini, Tom, 21 Schatzmann-von Aesch, Béatrice, 16 Scheider, Roy, 16 Schickel, Richard, 46–8 Schlesinger, John, 4, 10, 11; and adaptation of Midnight Cowboy, 16–17, 20, 29–31, 33–6, 38–40, 50, 58, 59, 60–70, 71, 73, 88, 91, 99; critics of, 44–5, 49; as an English filmmaker in New York, 41–4; filmography of, 12–16; and homophobia, 86; personal papers, 16, 72 Scorsese, Martin, 3, 14 Scott, George C., 85 Secret Life of an American Wife, The (1968), 61 Senses of Cinema, 15 Sergeant Ryker (1968), 62 Sexography: Sex Work in Documentary (book), 85 Shane (1953), 3 Shooting Midnight Cowboy (book), 3, 17, 81 “Sixties in America, The” (article), 16 Sleazoid Express (book), 55 Soilers, The (1923), 73–4 Soldier Blue (1970), 71 Some of My Best Friends Are … (1971), 15 Spielberg, Steven, 14 Stahl, Nick, 83 Stanwyck, Barbara, 27 Stern, Aaron, 38 Stewart, James, 48 Stonewall, 4, 43 Suddenly Last Summer (1959), 14 Sullavan, Margaret, 48 Sumner, Gabe, 39 Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), 11, 15 Svec, David, 84

Index 113 Taste of Honey, A (1961), 14 Taxi Driver (1976), 3, 5, 79, 80 Taxi zum Klo (1981), 8 Tea and Sympathy (1956), 14 Tierney, Jacob, 83 Times Square, 4, 19, 50, 54–8, 62, 73 Tinkcom, Matthew, 6 Tirado, Fran, 75 TLA Films, 83 Trevor, Claire, 27 Turin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, 83 Twist (2003), 83 Twisted (1996), 83–4 Tynan, Kenneth, 42 Tyson, Cathy, 79 Ultra Violet, 4, 43, 65 United Artists, 16, 38 United Artists: The Company That Changed the Film Industry (book), 38 Vaccaro, Brenda, 52 Van Sant, Gus, 80–1

Vanity Fair (magazine), 37, 76 Vidal, Gore, 17 Village People, 76 Village Voice (newspaper), 45 Viva, 65 Voight, Jon, 2, 3, 20, 22, 26, 28, 29, 34, 35, 36, 43, 45, 47, 48, 51, 61, 67, 72, 74, 88, 89, 94, 95, 96, 98, 100, 103 Ward, Tony, 81 Warhol, Andy, 4, 42, 46, 62–6, 74, 94 Waugh, Thomas, 69 Wayne, John, 71, 72–3, 93, 98 Wexler, Haskell, 62 Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), 81 White, Edmund, 81 Wild Bunch, The (1969), 71 Wood, Robin, 8–9, 46, 49–50, 69–70, 78, 86 Yeladim Tovim (Good Boys, 2005), 4, 85 Young, Greg, 50 Zsigmond, Vilmos, 62