Jerome Hellman (–2021)

A Texan moves to New York to become a male prostitute.

It has its moments. When its about Joe and Rico's relationship, it's pretty good. Most of the Naive Texan stuff is not particularly interesting. And I found the many dream/memory/fantasy sequences to be quite dull, and a lazy way to establish characters.

Concept: C
Story: C
Characters: A
Dialog: B
Pacing: C
Cinematography: B
Special effects/design: B
Acting: A
Music: B

Enjoyment: C plus

GPA: 2.8/4

A naive hustler travels from Texas to New York to seek personal fortune but, in the process, finds himself a new friend. (IMDb)

Midnight Cowboy is a tale about survival amidst loss, loneliness and a lack of guidance. The film is different than the novel in many important respects. Unlike the movie, Herlihy begins the story in Texas and devotes nearly the first half of the book to Joe Buck's life there. This background gives more clarity and detail to Buck's character and his decision to move to New York. And makes his failure as a gigolo (to put it kindly) both more ironic and tragic. In Herlihy's telling the other show more main character, Ratso Rizzo, is better developed -- and ambiguous. The friendship between Rizzo and Buck in the novel has a complexity and poignancy the movie doesn't capture. All this makes the end of the story, which I won't reveal on the chance it isn't familiar, even more memorable.
The film sticks closely to the last two-thirds of the book. The tight narrative gives us a view of the fact is that Joe is not all that interesting or nice a person to spend time with. Anyway the book was covered rather well in detail in the movie itself. In the movie, Joe Buck comes off as just an arrogant hayseed who has no brains. In the book, there's more to Joe than just that. Joe is a man whose life has been touched by many people who seem to really take no notice of him. The 3 Ls: loss + loneliness + lack show less