Adapted from the novel Midnight Cowboy by James Leo Herlihy
Joe Buck knows he doesn't have the biggest brain, but he's very proud of his body. He's positive that if he moves to New York, he'll be able to make a killing as a hustler. However, this proves to be much harder than he anticipates, and before long Joe finds himself alone with no money. After being locked out of his hotel, Joe encounters sickly, slimy "Ratso" Rizzo, who swindled Joe earlier but now offers to let him share the condemned apartment he's living in. In their struggle to survive, the two misfits form a close friendship.
This movie's most famous line - "I'm walkin' here!" - was improvised by Dustin Hoffman, so obviously it wasn't in the book. But otherwise, most of the dialogue was either directly quoting or paraphrasing the novel. The movie cut out some of Joe's backstory, which I thought was a wise decision, since that part kind of dragged in the book. There are some confused flashbacks in the film, which I understood a lot better after having read the novel, but the movie spends most of its time focusing on Joe's life in New York, whereas a huge chunk of the book takes place beforehand. To make up for these eliminations, the movie does add a few conversations between Joe and Ratso that were not in the book, which helps develop their relationship more. I actually greatly appreciated these changes. I think the book was trying to make a point about people needing friendship and not just empty encounters with strangers, but it spent way too much time on how crappy Joe's life was before meeting Ratso, and not nearly enough on how their friendship improved his life. It seems almost sacrilegious to say this, but I feel like the movie does a better job of conveying the book's message to the audience than the book did.
As usual, the book was more explicit than the movie, although not quite as much so as one might expect. This movie was originally rated X, after all, although it was later changed to R, and I'm pretty sure I've seen PG-13 movies that were more explicit. There are quite a few sex scenes, but more is implied than shown. Joe's initial intention when he moves to New York is to have exclusively female clients, but as he becomes increasingly desperate, he has several homosexual encounters. Since I didn't remember much about the movie, when I was reading the book I was sure these were going to be omitted. While some of them were, a few actually made it into the film. True, there are a lot of homophobic slurs thrown around, but at least this movie didn't go the route of several previous winners of this award and erase homosexuality altogether, despite its presence in the source material. It's fascinating to me how much more concerned people are with censoring films than books. Anyway, this movie makes it clear that by the end of the 1960s, Hollywood had changed to the point of welcoming and awarding films that addressed previously forbidden subjects, even if they didn't do so in the best way. I'm still not a huge fan of this movie, but I have to admit that it's better than the book, so while I disagree with its Best Picture win, I think it deserved Best Adapted Screenplay.
Next, the 1970s will begin with M*A*S*H, based on the novel by Richard Hooker.
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