Rant #2,379: Everybody's Talkin'

Yes, I overslept again.

I just can't get up in the morning at the time that I want to.

But here I am, better late than never.

My family and I had a pretty calm weekend, really nothing special happened.

On Saturday night, I fell asleep early only to wake up early too. It amounted to a nap, nothing more, and after taking one for nearly two hours, I was not tired anymore, so I got up from the bed, went on the computer for a while, and then went into the living room to watch some television before deciding it was time to go to sleep.

As I do in such situations, I went from channel to channel to try to find something to keep me interested, but I could find nothing until I got to some of the movie channels, and I saw that on a channel I never watch--I have no idea what channel it was to this moment, but more on that later--they were showing "Midnight Cowboy," the 1969 drama about the underbelly of Manhattan that stands as the only X-rated film to win a Best Picture award among its three Academy Awards.

This would mark the third time that I saw the film: in the mid 1970s, the local ABC affiliate here showed a heavily censored version of the film during late-night time (like 3 a.m. or so) that to me at least, made absolutely no sense, because it was so cut up (I am sure the time period further dulled my senses when I watched this film).

The second time I saw the film was in the early 1980s, when I rented it from my local video store. I found the movie to be very good, very captivating, and I was happy that I could make a summation now that I saw the full film.

So I had not seen the movie in more than 30 years when I tuned in on late Saturday night going into Sunday morning.

Oddly, as the movie opened, I saw that the film had subtitles in Spanish. I kind of thought about it for a moment, and then simply decided I would go with the flow, so to speak, as the film being shown was in English.

And that I did, and once again, for nearly two hours, the film took me to another place, another time, and another world.

And the film, directed by John Schlesinger and based on a novel by James Leo Herlihy, has plenty of historical significance, which you could basically see right away.

Taking the roughness of the New York underground film world and bringing it to Hollywood, the movie touched on themes that prior to 1968 or so could only be seen in these New York underground films, many of which could only be seen on bills with XXX-rated movies that were being produced in Manhattan during the mid to late 1960s.

These underground films, often known as "roughies," touched on many topics that Hollywood would and could never touch prior to this era, such as violence, all types of sex, homosexuality, etc.

When the Hollywood movie code was relaxed in 1968--and movies got ratings, including G, M, R, and X--filmmakers could explore areas that they never could touch earlier on, and "Midnight Cowboy" was one of the earliest films during that period to do just that.

The Manhattan profiled in the film was not glitzy and glamorous as earlier films had portrayed the Big Apple. It was dirty, unglamorous, and most importantly, unforgiving.

And that was the situation that cowboy Joe Buck, a new transplant from Texas portrayed by Jon Voigt, and Rico "Ratso" Rizzo, played by Dustin Hoffman, a fellow from the Bronx with a limp and a cough that just will not go away, found themselves in.

Buck has left plenty of baggage back home in Texas when he decided to come to New York, and Rizzo already had plenty of baggage when the two met as Rizzo hustled Buck.

The two become pals, with Buck becoming Batman and Rizzo becoming Robin, but this Gotham City dynamic duo did not fight crime, they fought hunger and desperation.

In order to survive, Buck did the only thing he knew how to do really well with both men and women, and as the picture progressed, you can see that his affection for his lame friend was growing by the minute. Rizzo needed Buck to bring in whatever money he could while he himself scrounged and stole to keep things going, while Buck needed Rizzo to keep him grounded and give him a purpose.

The two share a squalid apartment in a tenement that will soon be knocked down by the city, and Rizzo's health continues to disintegrate as the building nears demolition. Buck uses whatever money he can get from his hustling activities to buy food and medicine for Rizzo, and then the two decide to leave Manhattan for what at least Rizzo feels will be greener pastures for the two in Florida.

Although by this point, Rizzo is very sick, they somehow scrounge up enough money to travel to Florida on a bus, but the dream becomes reality in a strange sort of way, which I am not going to reveal here.

As when I originally saw the film, I found the ending unsatisfying and kind of unbelievable, but that being said, you can see how this movie was really a true groundbreaker, and to this date, it probably featured the best and most defining performances on film by both Voigt and Hoffman.

The film was X-rated back in 1969, and included sequences that back then, could be considered shocking. Not much is actually shown, but today, the movie might garner a PG or maybe a PG-13 rating.

Also in the cast and each playing sleazy characters were Brenda Vaccaro, Sylvia Miles, and John McGiver, and also one of the main stars of the film is the Manhattan of the late 1960s, in all its glory and despair.

The soundtrack is also one of the film's stars, with Harry Nilsson singing Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'" to punctuate one of the themes of the film: even in the one of the most celebrated cities in the world, not everyone's voice is being heard.

The other theme of the film is that everyone has an angle, everybody wants something from those willing to provide it, you just have to know when and where to get it.

Anyway, I watched the movie, and it was like a revelation, like I had never seen it before. It kept me going, got me to thinking, and kept me glued to the TV for nearly two hours.

When the film ended, I discovered that I was watching a Spanish language movie channel that, rather then show dubbed Hollywood features, shows these films with Spanish subtitles.

Very interesting indeed.

I would highly recommend this film, even with its still-flimsy ending.

It was a great experience, even the third time around.