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Health & Fitness

Blog: Midnight Cowboy Woodcut

Loren Kantor, local woodcut artist, carves original woodcut prints inspired by his favorite cultural figures. (woodcuttingfool.blogspot.com)

The movie Midnight Cowboy marked a turning point in American cinema. It's the only X-Rated movie to ever win a Best Picture Oscar. It also signifies the moment when film shifted from studio control to an era of independent auteurs.

Dustin Hoffman plays Ratso Rizzo, a crippled, two-bit con artist suffering from consumption. He befriends a cowboy gigolo named Joe Buck (played by Jon Voight). Ratso becomes a pimp to Joe Buck's male prostitute and the two struggle to survive on New York's gritty streets. The film is dark and bleak intertwined with subtle humor.

When Producer Jerome Hellman was casting the lead roles, he came across Dustin Hoffman performing in an Off-Broadway play called Eh? Hoffman agreed to play Ratso Rizzo but it would take a year for screenwriter Waldo Salt to write the script and another year for Hellman and Director John Schlesinger to raise the funds.
During that time Hoffman starred in The Graduate and became an overnight star.

After seeing The Graduate, John Schlesinger felt Hoffman was too clean cut and collegiate to play Ratso. Hoffman asked Schlesinger to meet him at a filthy Times Square coffee shop at night. Hoffman came in character dressed in a dirty raincoat with slicked back hair and several days stubble. Hoffman begged for money, unrecognized by Schlesinger. When Hoffman finally revealed himself, Schlesinger agreed that Hoffman would "do quite well."

When casting the role of Joe Buck, the producers initially considered Warren Beatty, Michael Sarrazin, Lee Majors even Elvis Presley. They scoured Off-Broadway Theater and eventually found Jon Voight. Voight traveled to Texas to study small-town good ole boys, appropriating local wardrobe and a southern accent. Hoffman hung out in the Bowery and studied street people. He obsessed over character details like Ratso's walk and his consumptive cough. He put a stone in his shoe giving him a forced limp and he donned a stained white jacket found in a bus station dumpster.

The film's most memorable scene where Hoffman screams at a cab driver "I'm walking here" was improvised and shot without permits. The drug-fueled warehouse party scene was staged by Andy Warhol and featured prominent "Factory" personalities like Viva, Ultraviolet and Paul Morrissey. Warhol planned to act in the scene himself but shortly before filming he was shot in the stomach by Valerie Solanas.

When production on Cowboy finally ended, Schlesinger feared the film was a disaster. The newly-created Ratings Board gave the film an X-Rating due to homosexual overtones, drug use and nudity. Critic Rex Reed wrote that "the film is a collage of screaming, crawling, vomiting humanity." Roger Ebert wrote "it's a vulgar exercise in fashionable cinema." This only helped spread the buzz among the public. Ticket lines stretched around the block. Audiences gave standing ovations. Midnight Cowboy received 7 Oscar Nominations and won 3: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture. Today, the film is rightly viewed as an American Classic. (woodcuttingfool.blogspot.com)

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