“Midnight Cowboy” wasn’t just another Hollywood film, even though it won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1969. It was, according to this documentary, a turning point in many ways. “Midnight Cowboy” depicted New York City on screen the way it looked – or at least parts of it looked – in reality: dirty, dark, gritty, and threatening. It portrayed the city’s marginalized people, poverty, societal ills, and the social unrest of the 1960s.
To confirm her thesis, director Nancy Buirski has crafted this film, which includes clips from “Midnight Cowboy” and documentary footage from before and after the visual “revolution” created by the film and its director, John Schlesinger. We get to see fascinating archival material along with interviews with Jon Voight (one of the film’s stars; the other is Dustin Hoffman) in this affectionate tribute to “Midnight Cowboy.”
