All language subtitles for After Midnight Reflecting On a Classic 35 Years Later

[soft rock plays]

I wanted to be part
of this world of art...

...express myself to
what was happening in the world.

[man] I can only wish there were...

...more experiences
like this in my life.

This was one of those milestones,
a kind of privilege that--

It's almost as if it was a dream.

I find it very exciting
to be around creative people.

And John Schlesinger was
tremendously creative.

[man 2] It was totally original.

It was beautifully made...

...beautifully directed,
beautifully performed.

This part, six minutes,
catapulted me.

[man 3] There weren't any
development executives.

We didn't discuss the plot line...

...or any of that crap.

Uh... We just made the movie.

You know if you're enjoying the work.
It was exciting to make that movie.

[man 4] John had just come off
of two years of working on...

...this big MGM movie,
Far From the Madding Crowd.

I mean, he really wanted
something totally different.

He wanted to work with a real gutsy
American writer...

...on some American material.

Schlesinger and I had met.

Years before that, I'd seen
A Kind of Loving and Billy Liar.

And ljust flipped for this guy's work,
and I flew to England to meet him.

A young American artist in London...

...sent John a book
by James Leo Herlihy...

...called Midnight Cowboy.

John told me about it.

And I said,
"What is this Midnight Cowboy?

Is it like a John Wayne Western
or something like that?"

He said, "Hardly. You read this."

And I did.
I came back the next day, and I said:

"Whoa. You can't-- It's great.
It's great. It's outrageous.

You can't make this movie.
It's too wild.

It's too X-rated,
and no one will ever make it.

No studio would touch it."

And he said, "Precisely. Precisely.

I've made up my mind.
I'm going to make it."

[Hellman] We'd talk maybe once or twice
over the next year.

Maybe two. And then I got a call
from him one day, and he said:

"Look, I've read a book."
He said, "You're gonna hate it, maybe.

But I really think we could make
a wonderful movie out of this book.

Would you read it?" I read the book.

And we had two or three
trans-Atlantic conversations...

...and it was clear that we were
on the same page.

We talked about
certain fundamentals...

...uncompromised, that the only way
to do Midnight Cowboy...

...was to really deal with it.

[Childers] Waldo had written some
wonderful pages...

...for a story about
a Vietnam draft dodger...

...which Jerry Hellman had found.

And John fell in love
with Waldo's work.

The style that Waldo was writing--

In this kind of staccato,
New York, interrupted, you know...

--was everything that John and I
had been talking about.

And I got a cable back from John,
saying, you know:

"Hire Waldo Salt
and start working immediately."

He started as a very young man as a
screenwriter, had a wonderful career.

And then he was blacklisted.
And it was a very big break for him.

He was well into his 50s,
and he'd had a really hard time.

This was like the phoenix
rising out of the ashes...

...in terms of a career, for him to have
this opportunity, and he knew it.

[man] John Schlesinger,
Waldo Salt and Jerry Hellman...

...worked on the screenplay...

...made a whole bunch of changes
and additions...

...reinterpreted the book,
if you will.

[Hellman] We went to work together,
mostly out in Malibu...

...in a house that John rented,
and that became our routine.

We'd meet in the morning,
we'd talk until we reached a point...

...where we'd say, "Waldo, write it."

[Salt] He was a great believer
in the notion...

...that dialogue was the last thing
to come into a scene...

...that scenes were not
about the dialogue...

...that the difficult part
of screenwriting had to do with...

...finding the image
and the action in the scene.

[Hellman] When I first
approached Dustin...

...l'd sent him the book
of Midnight Cowboy...

...because there was no script
that was worth reading at that time.

They read it, and Dustin, in effect,
said, "Yeah. Yes, I wanna play this."

All right, all right.

When people would compliment me
about the character, I would say:

"It's in the book." That character
is so delineated in the book.

He spent pages and pages
describing Enrico Rizzo.

[Hellman] Mike Nichols called and
wanted to test him for Graduate.

They called me and said:

"Would this prevent him
from doing Midnight Cowboy?"

We said, "Absolutely not." He went out,
he tested, he was a huge success.

When he came back to us,
he was on his way to being a huge star.

[Childers] Graduate was just huge.

It made Dustin
an international star overnight.

[Hoffman] It was the first place I'd met
John Schlesinger, in Times Square.

He'd seen The Graduate.
He didn't think I was right.

And, uh...

...l asked if I could meet him
at Horn & Hardart...

...which was on 42nd Street
about 3 in the morning.

In fact, had auditioned for John...

...by going, dressing up as Ratso
in a sort of seedy coat...

...and walking down 42nd Street
with John, you know...

...going into Nathan's or trying to get
into Sardi's and being thrown out.

- [woman] Where's that Joe Buck?
- Where's that Joe Buck?

- [woman] Where is that Joe Buck?
- [woman 2] Where's that Joe Buck?

- [man] Where's that Joe Buck?
- Yeah, where is that Joe Buck?

Somebody gave me the book
and said, "You should play the part."

Every young actor in town knew
this was the part of the decade.

It was a star-making part.

It was gonna go without me
because I tried to get in...

...l couldn't get in the door,
this and all this--

Finally, I called my agent up, I said,
"ls Midnight Cowboy going again?"

He said, "Yeah."
I said, "What are they doing?"

He said,
"They're screen-testing now, Jon.

They're pretty much
down to what they want."

I said, "Who's casting it?"
He said, "Marion Daugherty."

I said, "Call Marion,

tell her I'm coming into New York.
I'm leaving tonight."

She's the one who said to us finally:

"Look, you're testing six other people
for chrissakes, test Jon Voight."

[Voight] Schlesinger says,
"Well, Jon, I'll tell you what...

...you're an interesting young man.

And we've already got three boys
we're auditioning.

But...

...you know, why don't you and Waldo
go off and read the script a little bit.

And if Waldo thinks it's appropriate...

...you can come,
and we'll audition you as well."

We put each actor
in front of a white screen.

Waldo Salt pretended to be
a really nasty talk-show host.

And there was no script.

They had to deal
with this extemporaneously.

[Salt] My dad was off-screen going,
"Look at you.

Nobody buys that
dumb cowboy act anymore.

What are you standing there all--?"

You know, he would insult him
as the interviewer...

...and make Joe Buck kind of rise up
and defend himself...

...and talk about himself.

And it really revealed
a Joe Buck that is in the movie.

[Waldo Salt] What makes
you think you got something

that you can sell to women?

Because I know it.

- That's what I got.
- [Waldo Salt] What you got?

That's what I got on you.

[Hellman] I called Dustin and asked him
to come up and look at the tests.

And he did.

And, you know, he hated being
in that position, and he said that.

He didn't wanna be choosing
between actors and all that.

But he understood the question,
and we asked him:

"Okay, who's better?" [laughs]

And Dustin said:

"Look, I don't know
who's better or not.

But what I found was that...

...when the other actor was
on the screen with me...

...l was looking at myself.

When Jon Voight was on the screen
with me, I was looking at Jon Voight."

And I remember that so clearly.

And that was it.

And there you are,
you handsome devil, you.

[Voight] With Joe Buck--

There are certain things
that sparked me when I read it.

Uh, one is this humor.
I found him to be very humorous.

L was interested in the adventures
of Joe Buck.

What are you gonna do back East?

There's a lot of rich women
back there, Ralph.

- Begging for it. Paying for it too.
- Yeah?

Yeah, hell, yeah. And the men,
they're mostly tutti-fruttis.

Jon Voight and I,
we traveled around Texas together...

...out in Midland and Odessa.

[Voight] I was very taken.

And something I really liked about
the Southern gentleman.

The aspect of, "Yes, sir. No, sir."

I found that all these
young people had that.

Do you have another piece
of gum for her?

Oh, yes, ma'am, I do.

There's a sweetness in it,
and that was Joe to me.

I said, "Joe has that sweetness.
He's got it from the culture.

He's not a coarse person...

...even though he's involved
in some very bizarre stuff.

He's just a country boy, you know?"

- Whoo-hoo!
- [cheering on radio]

Excuse me, ma'am.

And there was a self-consciousness
about Joe Buck that was...

...immediately interesting to me.

The mirror images,
as you remember from the film...

...came from the inner life
of the character...

...and his own inner insecurity.

And every time we saw the mirror,
he wished he could check himself.

And sort of contrast himself
against his surroundings...

...and rehearse his actions.

You know what you
gotta do, cowboy?

He was striving
to belong somewhere.

That's what his journey was about,
you know.

He had no family,
he had no moorings.

Then there's the suspense.
What's gonna happen to Joe?

He just gave 2O here,
2O there to the other guy.

He's got no--

Oh, man. It's gonna be--
This is tough.

And then, just at the bottom...

...in comes...

...Mr. Hoffman as Ratso. [laughs]

There they are, meeting at the bar.

- I'm Joe Buck from Texas.
- Enrico Rizzo from the Bronx.

I thought Dustin brought so much
to the movie.

And I really think it's one of his
four or five greatest performances.

I remember Dusty came in,
and he had gone to this dentist...

...who he-- Got this set of teeth.

And I was so jealous
of Dusty's ugly teeth.

And his perfect limp.

I mean, that limp was like
the broken-winged bird, you know.

Like this little flip of his feet
and stuff.

And I knew I had to find
the proper walk for Joe too...

...and we actually shot a couple
little pieces very early.

I had to come up with it quick.

And they're in the film.
Those little pieces are in the film.

[Hoffman] The image
of the character to me...

...was this man who--

The limp that he had,
in following him...

...l remember a particular clay,
is he actually stopped on 42nd Street...

...to cross the street, I think,
at 7th Avenue...

...and people crowd up
at certain times of the day.

It was that kind of a day,
as I remember...

...where people kind of crowd up,
and once the signal breaks to green...

...there's kind of a race,
a New York City race...

...to get to the other side
of the street, and he won.

And lthought
that was an indication...

...of something I wanted to have
in the character.

That Ratso, with his deformity...

...would, in spite of it, come in first.

Uh, that was something
about the character.

He was such a survivor.

We rehearsed Midnight Cowboy
very much like a play is rehearsed.

[Hoffman] On The Graduate, we had had
three or four weeks rehearsal.

And lo and behold, we had
the same thing on Midnight Cowboy.

I don't know if I've ever worked
on any two films...

...that had that kind of preparation.

Delineating character work...

...and letting the director get a feel
as to how he wanted to shoot it...

...and bringing in a cinematographer
on the-- Just the room that we had...

...with marked-off tape on the ground
like you do when rehearsing a play...

He was such a survivor.

And so much of the stuff that was
discovered for Midnight Cowboy...

...came from the room.

I remember one day I was reading,
and all of a sudden I wasn't acting.

I... The switch had been made.

I said, "Oh, there it is. I got it."

Dustin, he'll do anything
to find the character.

Magnificent moments, from
my perspective, came out of that.

Pretending to fall downstairs in a room
where we didn't have any stairs...

...where Ratso falls down the stairs.

[Salt] They did these
unbelievably brilliant improvs...

...where they could
just go on and on forever.

[Hellman] Waldo was with us
every step of the way.

And if they did an interesting
improvisation that lasted, you know...

...five minutes,
he cut it down to five lines.

But the essence of it
was in the script.

Waldo Salt, the screenwriter,
sitting there...

...l think with
a Wollensak tape recorder--

No video cameras in those days.

--And taping every improvisation
that we did.

And John Schlesinger
entreating us...

...to do improvisation after
improvisation after improvisation...

...to find the... the...
real intimacy...

...as actors.

Oh, hell, I'm a hustler.
You didn't know that?

How am I supposed to know?
You gotta tell a person these things.

- I'm a hustler.
- Sh!

All right. Yeah, you're a hustler.

The greatest pleasure
for me very often...

...was to go in and watch Joe and Ratso
play these scenes together.

They were both so completely clear
about their characters.

And they both had...

...l think, magnificent sense of humor
about their characters.

Voight and I loved improvising.
We never stopped.

We did it at lunchtime.
We were the characters constantly.

Because we just enjoyed it.
It was very exciting to us to try to--

Once we hit on,
"What do these guys talk about?"

And Schlesinger would sidle over,
and he'd start laughing...

...because we were getting off.
And he was just:

"What is that?"
Then he'd put it on film.

There's a scene on a screen
that came out of him...

...overhearing us at lunch...

...where one of us says to the other--

Because it was just fun to try
to figure these guys out.

"So if you were reincarnated,
what would you come back as?"

lf I had my choice between the two,
I'd come back as a president.

I ain't that dumb.

What do you think?

Maybe you gotta think about
those things for a while.

When I read the script,
it was these two characters.

But they brought it to life in a way

that was absolutely unique.

In the moment of putting my head,
I think...

...which we found in rehearsal--
Just resting it on Voight's chest...

...the audience knows
they're seeing something...

...that the characters are not
consciously aware of.

They're seeing an intimacy...

...at its birth between these two guys.

How come you ain't scored...

...the whole time
you've been in New York?

Because I need management,
goddamnit.

[Hellman] You'd have to be brain-dead...

...not to realize that you were seeing
two superb actors just, you know...

...pushing each other
higher and higher and higher...

...and demanding more and more
of each other.

We were doing everything we could
within our techniques, imaginations...

...and within every bone of our--

You know, to get something real
to happen between us...

...to provoke real life.

Then, suddenly, there you are with
the camera, lights and everything...

...and you're falling short.
You always do.

You're just never delivering
what you wanna deliver.

And we were able to use each other.

And Jon would come up--

We sensed very early on
that we wanted--

If I'm gonna be better
in this than you...

...l'm gonna be better
with you being your best.

That was implicit somehow.

And that moves me to this moment.

And that will never leave us.

You know what you need?

You need my friend O'Daniel.
He operates the biggest stable in town.

I have to say, John Schlesinger's eye
for casting this piece...

...with people like John McGiver,
and Barnard Hughes, Bobby Balaban.

His eye was...

It was something special.

The casting director
was Marion Daugherty.

And she knew where the good
New York actors were hidden.

And she brought them in,
and we read everybody.

I'm brand-spanking-new in town...

...and I was hoping to get a look
at the Statue of Liberty.

Hoping to get a look at what?

Whoa! When Sylvia Miles came in--

They were thinking of another actress,
a very good actress...

...who could have done a very good job
with it, but was very well-known.

Here's a person that no one
would ever have seen before...

...and I liked the idea of the...

...of the audience seeing these people
as real people.

When I went and read for that part
with Jon Voight...

...l tell you, I was gonna get
that part if it killed me.

She gave that reading, and we went--
You know, I said:

"Oh, boy, this is-- We gotta get her.
She's a hot one, boy.

She brings it to the table.
She's not afraid of anything."

Mm! Knock off a couple of pounds...

...and I'd really be a gorgeous chick,
right, baby?

He was a perfect dupe, you know.

But he had that kind of confidence,
see, so he just got up there...

...and does his little
charm thing, see?

And he takes the bait and...the hook,
you know?

And the way Sylvia did it,
of course, was 50--

It was immediately
so interesting and so...

"somehow, authentic.

Beautiful, baby.

I did not do this part--

And I didn't think
it was necessary to be liked...

...to be admired, to be liked.

I had a function in a crazy way.

He's just a soft-hearted guy,
Joe, he's a sweetheart.

And he feels basically,
"It's a funny thing, you ask for money.

I was about to ask you for some."

You were gonna ask me for money?

[Voight] And there's
that beautiful moment:

"Here, you want some money?"

He just can't stand to see...
[laughs] a girl cry.

[laughs] He's a country boy,
and he says:

"Here, what you want? You want 10?"

She takes a 20. "Twenty?"

[Voight overlapping with Joe Buck]
"There you go, girl."

[Voight] Gives her a slap on the butt.

He tries to make it out
with his dignity.

I mean, it's so beautiful.
So many layers to it, aren't there?

He has to be taken by her.

She has to take him.

She got the money.
She out-hustled the hustler.

[trumpet playing jazz]

You must be Joe Buck.

[Joe] Yes, I am.

Come on in. Let's take a look at you.

[Voight] John McGiver played this wacky
evangelist in this tenement...

...in this apartment building.

And it was a crazy scene,
and a great scene.

I warn you, Joe Buck.

I'm gonna use you.

- I'm gonna run you ragged!
- Whoo!

So much in that scene.

Uh, commentary and stuff.

But the real heart of it is the energy
between these two guys.

Here. Right now.

Why not? Why not?

I've prayed in the streets.

I've prayed in the saloons.

I've prayed in the toilets.

It don't matter where,
so long as He gets that prayer.

Barnard Hughes was another
magnificent man.

I'm Townsend P. Locke, from Chicago.
Call me Towny.

I'm here on a
paper manufacturer's convention...

...and, frankly, to have
a little fun, damn it.

And Barnard Hughes--
I remember we were doing a scene...

...where I turn on him
because I'm desperate...

...and that's exactly
what he wants me to do...

...some sick part of him.

And I hit him,
and he had false teeth.

And I don't know whether it was
John that suggested or he suggested...

...maybe if he hits me,
I'd lose my teeth.

That's a... It's such a--

It's that kind of non-vanity
of the real artist.

He doesn't care what he looks like.

He was trying to do this role,
make it grotesque.

And it was so beautifully done.

[Joe] Now, look at this here, see?

There's an E in "money."
I mean, if that's your word.

I think Brenda is sly and funny
and wicked and sexy.

- [chuckles]
- [Hellman] John Schlesinger saw her

on Broadway.

And I know for certain that Marion
Daugherty was involved in that too.

Bye.

[horns honking]

[Holender] New York
in 1960's was just...

...booming, in terms of influences...

...in terms of breaking down
the barriers, social, cultural.

And...

...l cannot tell you how much
I enjoyed watching it...

...and really soaking it in.

John had always had a fascination
with America.

But this is his first big stay,
and he fell in love with it...

...with the absurdities
and the excesses.

[Barry] Being an outsider,
as John was and as I was...

...that we have
a certain observation...

...about America...

...that an American would just see
something strange happen...

...and won't think anything about it.

[Hellman] Because it was new to John...

...he saw things
that the rest of us simply didn't see.

I mean, I was born and raised
in New York.

L was so used to people falling down
or people fighting in doorways.

It didn't register for me.

Every single thing
registered for John.

He saw it, and he was, "Oh, my God!

Oh, this is insanity!
This has to be in the movie."

John Schlesinger and Adam Holender
had a very specific vision...

...of what the movie should look like.

This grittiness of New York streets...

...and a very contemporary look
for that time.

[Holender] The major goal was
to find the way to portray...

...the innocence
of the Joe Buck character.

So on one hand, it had to look real.

On the other hand,
we were trying to light him...

...in a way that would sort of
accentuate his innocence.

Jon is a tall fellow...

...so all you had to do is to throw him
on 5th Avenue and 52nd Street...

...put a 1200 millimeter lens
three blocks away...

...and have him walk
through the crowd.

And he would always pop up
from the crowd.

Go ahead, just drop it anywhere.

We had actually gone down
to a site...

...where some buildings
were being demolished...

...down in the lower Village
on the east side.

And John had originally wanted
the X flat on that location.

But there was no water, no power,
there were no toilets.

It was rat-infested.
It would have been a disaster.

Our designer, John Robert Lloyd,
who is also brilliant...

...he said, "Look, leave it to me,
I can give you this in the studio."

And, you know, we said:

"Oh, you can never get
the realism in the studio."

He said, "Trust me."
He got permission from the city.

And he tore this apartment out.

And he brought it all to the studio.

You walked into that set
with the grimy shades...

...with the X's on them
and the filth on the windows...

...and the stink of urine.

Boy, you got in there, and you thought
you were down in this tenement.

He did it absolutely brilliantly.

It was a large part
of the concept of grimy, cold...

...unpleasant life of Ratso Rizzo
in the streets of New York...

...as opposed to
imaginary sequences...

...if they score and get themselves
to Florida...

...and those two looks
played against each other.

And the basic idea was...

...to photograph scenes in New York
in a underexposed...

...cold, bluish, grayish tones.

And imaginary sequences in Florida,
for example...

...we overexposed
almost two stops...

...intercut those two looks.

I think it works well for the scenes.

It's sun, oranges, juice.
It's health, it's, "I will be healthy."

- It's a come-on.
- Yeah, you know what this is?

It's a come-on to a party,
is what it is.

One of my jobs that John Schlesinger
and Jerry Hellman gave me...

...was to, you know, bring back
all the Warhol superstars and freaks...

...and anybody I could round up
to be in that great party sequence.

We ended up on a stage...

...in a set that was almost exactly
the replica of Warhol's studio.

Warhol participated in dressing it.

He loaned us a lot of his art
and a lot of his friends.

That party sequence was
literally a party...

...that went on, I think,
for about one or two weeks.

The camera crew suddenly said:

"I think we're really just
a documentary crew."

[laughs] They just went around
shooting everybody.

[woman laughing]

Stop it!

You stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

Flashbacks were a big deal
with this film.

How do we include
this much information?

How do we get people to the table,
so that they know who Joe is...

...so they can respond with him
to the different circumstances?

How do we set the story?

And they went and shot
all these little pieces...

...to establish this background.

That was all absolutely planned
from the start.

The back-story on Joe Buck
was that he was a kid...

...who was kicked from pillar to post.

His mother went off to work
in a war factory...

...and he went to live
with Grandma Sally Buck.

[woman] There's a TV dinner
in the fridge, lover-boy.

Expect me when you see me.
I'll leave you movie money.

You could just feel everything...

...about Joe Buck
from those few moments.

She had a series of men in her life...

...mostly cowboys,
who were gentleman callers.

The cowboy images
of sex and romance...

...all being tied up
with the idea of boots and saddles.

So this was a profound influence
on this guy...

...who connected masculinity,
sexuality with cowboys.

Joe.

Annie was the first person...

...that made Joe Buck feel like
he was a lover.

He was too dumb to know
that you don't kiss the town slut.

You know, all the other guys would
take her behind the movie screen...

...and have their way with her,
but he was fool enough to kiss her.

Hell, the only one thing
I ever been good for is loving.

Women go crazy for me.
That's a really true fact.

Hell, crazy Annie,
they had to send her away.

And her feeling for him imbued him
with his own power...

...so that it's what gave him this sense
that he was somebody.

[Salt overlapping with Annie] You're
the only one, Joe. You're the only one.

That meant something to him...

...beyond what it would have meant
to a more sophisticated...

...or a more healthy soul.

[discordant rock plays]

They wanted...

...a almost subliminal feeling...

...about what went on
without showing you.

We used black-and-white film.
We mixed it with color...

...with the New York streets as well,
and subways.

And I think it gave the overall look
of the film another dimension.

If you didn't bring your brains
to the party...

...you wouldn't know
what was going on.

It'd just be a lot of images
and flashlights and all that.

It has a very unconventional
first two or three reels...

...until he meets Ratso,
and then the narrative kind of--

You know,
the progressive narrative kicks off.

Up until then, it's back and forth,
back and forth.

And I don't know if an audience is--

They're so programmed today
for linear...

...almost simplistic
storytelling, unfortunately...

...that, you know, I think it was
much more sophisticated...

...than most films today.