Midnight Cowboy is a 1969 American drama film directed by John Schlesinger, adapted by Waldo Salt from the 1965 novel by James Leo Herlihy.

The film stars Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, with supporting roles played by Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Bob Balaban, Jennifer Salt and Barnard Hughes.

Set in New York City, Midnight Cowboy depicts the unlikely friendship between two hustlers: naïve prostitute Joe Buck (Voight) and ailing con man Rico Rizzo (Hoffman), referred to as "Ratso".

In 1994, Midnight Cowboy was deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress, and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

[5] Young Texan Joe Buck quits his dishwashing job, and heads by bus to New York City in cowboy attire to become a male prostitute.

Rico tells Joe his father was an illiterate Italian immigrant shoeshiner whose job yielded a bad back and lung damage from inhaling shoe polish.

A Warhol-like filmmaker and an extrovert female artist approach Joe in a diner, taking his photograph and inviting him to a Warhol-esque art event.

Back on the bus, Joe muses that there must be an easier way to make money than hustling, and tells Rico that he will get a regular job in Miami.

With tears in his eyes, Joe sits with his arm around his dead friend as the bus continues past rows of Floridian palm trees.

[7] Such advertisements, common in the Southwestern United States in the late 1960s and through the 1970s, promoted Eddie Chiles' Western Company of North America.

[12][13] Despite his portrayal of Joe Buck, a character hopelessly out of his element in New York, Jon Voight is a native New Yorker, hailing from Yonkers.

[14] Voight was paid "scale" (the Screen Actors Guild minimum wage) for his portrayal of Joe Buck, a concession he willingly made to obtain the part.

and can be heard beginning to say as such in the final film, but he ultimately changed his sentence halfway and stayed in character as he berated the driver.

However, after consulting with a psychologist, executives at United Artists were told to accept an "X" rating, due to the "homosexual frame of reference" and its "possible influence on youngsters".

As long as the focus is on this world of cafeterias and abandoned tenements, of desperate conjunctions in movie balconies and doorways, of ketchup and beans and canned heat, Midnight Cowboy is so rough and vivid that it's almost unbearable. ...

Midnight Cowboy often seems to be exploiting its material for sensational or comic effect, but it is ultimately a moving experience that captures the quality of a time and a place.

It's not a movie for the ages, but, having seen it, you won't ever again feel detached as you walk down West 42nd Street, avoiding the eyes of the drifters, stepping around the little islands of hustlers and closing your nostrils to the smell of rancid griddles.

The website's critical consensus states: "John Schlesinger's gritty, unrelentingly bleak look at the seedy underbelly of urban American life is undeniably disturbing, but Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight's performances make it difficult to turn away.

[citation needed] Although the cuts were approved by director John Schlesinger, critic Kay Gardella of the New York Daily News said the film was "hacked up pretty badly".

[51] Fred Neil's song, "Everybody's Talkin'", won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Vocal Performance, Male for Harry Nilsson.

[52] The movie's main theme, "Midnight Cowboy", features harmonica by Toots Thielemans, but the album version is played by Tommy Reilly.

The song Crazy Annie from the album Any Way That You Want Me by Evie Sands and co-written by Chip Taylor was inspired by the film.