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morebedsidebooks · 5 years

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Midnight Cowboy

Perry lay back on the bed. He took a long while adjusting himself, and when he was spread out comfortably, ankles crossed, hands behind his head, he said, “You comfortable there, Joe?”

“I’m fine,” Joe said. But suddenly he wasn’t fine at all. Something was wrong and he couldn’t put his finger on it, but it was as if some nameless threat were creeping silently into the room from under the door and through the cracks in the window and he was at a loss to stop it, or even describe it.

“Is there anything you want, Joe?”

“Oh no, no, I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. You’re not fine, Joe.”

“Huh?”

“You need help.”

“Do I?”

“Oh, yes, definitely. And I, in concert with the Cannabis sativa, am here for just that purpose: to help you find out what you want and show you how to take it.”

Joe felt as if his heart were filled with air; it might burst, and painfully, dangerously; he pressed on it with the palm of his hand. That didn’t help at all. He picked up a book of matches and began to fool with it, trying to distract himself from the anxiety he felt. The matches were very real and definitely a relief; he bent them and twisted them and put them down and picked them up. Perry was still talking:

“It’s not just tonight you don’t know what to do with.

Your whole life is a burden to you. You frown a lot, Joe. And you pick things up and put them down.” He looked pointedly at the book of matches.

“You have plans for burning down the world. But you’re losing a lot of motion, a lot of time. You’ve got to get cool. Find out what you want and rule out everything else, and then you’ll be cool as can be. Now: What have you got to do?”

“Find out what I want?”

“Correct. And then?”

“Ummrn.”

“Rule out …” Perry coached.

“Rule out everything else.”

“Right. Now again.”

“Find out what I want, and rule out everything else.”

“You’re getting tuned in, Joe. That was lesson one. Here’s exercise one: this room. What is there in it that you want? Just name it, anything at all, and I’ll see to it you get it.”

Joe started to scan the room with his eyes, and Perry said: “Look at me. Maybe that will help you, Joe. That’s it. Now I’ll ask you again: Is there anything at all you want?”

Joe studied Perry’s face, straining to find a clue in it. But he found none.

“You know, Joe, there are people and quite a few hundred of them at that who would pay out considerable sums of money to be in your position right now: locked in a room with me and being asked what they want.”

Coming at quite a point of sociopolitical upheaval and subsequently recognised for its cultural, historical and aesthetic significance, the 1969 Academy Award winning movie Midnight Cowboy is based on an American novel that otherwise wrongly may have faded from public consciousness.

At least I don’t think an Avon cover like this one was going to preserve it anyway. But while there may have been a BAD COVER or two over the years, it is quite a GOOD BOOK. Originally created by a gay writer named James Leo Herlihy in 1965, the main protagonist of Midnight Cowboy is Joe Buck (played by John Voight).

Let’s just say Joe had a somewhat confusing early life and as he got older also experienced more adversity. The movie adaptation has some differences (like the passage I chose to quote with a Houston hustler Joe is friendly with isn’t in the film) but, presents the issues of loneliness, loss, attraction, sex and rape in piecemeal flashbacks though; they may fittingly be a little difficult to make full sense of for the audience. In any event Joe gets away from Albuquerque, then Houston believing he could make it in NYC on the words of a Madam but is the poorest hustler. Eventually he finds a companion in Rizzo (played by Dustin Hoffman), a disabled thief and conman from an impoverished immigrant background.

The director of the film John Schlesinger “saw it as an oddball love story” but, wasn’t shooting for a gay movie either despite being gay himself. Of course, on my most recent rewatch a male viewing companion for the film commented during a dream sequence of Rizzo’s about living in Florida: “That’s so porny.”

I’m guessing that is some of the homoerotic psychological reasons Midnight Cowboy had an MPAA rating of X in 1969. It’s no secret anything depicting something outside “mainstream” can get harshly relegated in the name of morality and children (i.e. anxieties around innocence). But hey we got a nice history tidbit of the only X-Rated film to win the Best Picture Oscar out if it, and maybe more respect for films with sexual aspects and that door creaking open wider for LGBTQ+ ones. Eventually the film was downgraded to simply Restricted. Today despite containing its share of mature content the film probably comes off as rather tame. (Depending on the country where you are it can be suggested for viewers starting anywhere from age 12-18+.) Though, the themes are quite timeless. The story’s characters are in many ways outsiders— Joe whose body is what people value choosing to try his hand at sex work, a livelihood people are suspicious and derogatory about and Rizzo who has many skills he could use to live a non-criminal life with but, deals with internal and external disdain in an ableist society. They’re two twenty-somethings living in a grim world that come to depend on each other and form a family.

Which is why despite the heartbreak (and that word feels rather inadequate when I’ve yet to come across a person who doesn’t know the ending even if they’ve never touched a page or seen the film) Midnight Cowboy always leaves me feeling a bit more warm inside, than a tearful mess it can cause too. Here are two people that found something, understanding, support, acceptance on the fringes of an otherwise cold world, if even for a short time. How that changes you. It’s a story that has stuck with me, and many more people.

In fact, Japanese comic artist Akimi Yoshida, whose work I quite like, saw the Midnight Cowboy film when she was young and credits it as an inspiration to her. Though I suppose people can also fault the movie for some elements they might dislike or question about one of her works, Banana Fish. That story is also set primarily in NYC, also full of tragedy and also a love story. However, a good deal of contention over Banana Fish is wrapped up in agendas or, psychology and longstanding issues I’m not enthused to step into. Midnight Cowboy always brings up some debates too. Still discussing influential works across cultures and the exchange that happens is intriguing to me. I find it exciting someone might search out an older title because of it and when adaptations raise the profile of such works.

The film of Midnight Cowboy raised the novel right back into print, and it is still there today. Fortunate because such a piece of fiction despite the changes time has brought, is in my view quintessentially America. Hailed as propitious but, often dogged by the past, unsure, putting up fronts, tough, alarming, weird, arbitrary. Yet, someplace you just might find what you’re after, if you can make it.

#1960s novels #midnight cowboy #james leo herlihy #oscar winning film #beat the backlist #cw: abandonment drug use losing a family member rape sex work slurs violence

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