Original subtitles

[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.