MIDNIGHT COWBOY

It’s a film about people left behind, the Cowboy and Rizzo, and was released in 1969 amidst counter culture street protests and sexual revolutions that Glenn Frankel backgrounds in his book, “Shooting Midnight Cowboy.”   With a bit of reluctance, some movie moguls were savvy enough to see the “writing on the subway walls” and funded “Midnight Cowboy.” Movie critic Vincent Canby of the New York Times in 1969 wrote that “it’s not a movie for the ages” but Canby was wrong; it’s a big slice of cinematic art and is listed in the Times “Book of Movies; 1,000 Films to See.”https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064665/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 

SHOOTING MIDNIGHT COWBOY: ART, SEX, LONELINESS, LIBERATION AND THE MAKING OF A DARK CLASSIC, a book by Glenn Frankel, journalist and former director of the University of Texas journalism school.  The lives and careers of the creative team involved in this 1969 film, from actor Jon Voight to the costume designer and more, are the guts of this exhaustive journalistic endeavor.  I recalled when movie goers lined up to see edgy films foreign and domestic in the 60s and 70s before super heroes and animation ruled today’s silver screens.