Midnight Cowboy

I love Rico so much he makes me so sad :( Midnight Cowboy is a movie about the American Dream and just how unachievable it can be. Joe goes to New York to become a Hustler, that’s his dream, and yet he is only met with struggle. In the end he is left poor and alone but luckily Rico takes Joe in, acting as almost a mother figure to him. Midnight Cowboy is also a queer story. It’s a story about queerness no matter how you look at it. Joe Schlesinger was an openly gay man and it very clearly manifests in Midnight Cowboy, from the clear love the two men share for each other to the shirtless fantasies Rico is having of him and Joe in Florida. The motherly relationship Rico has with Joe in the beginning is also evidence of him since his clear almost Freudian relationship Joe had with his grandmother. The flashbacks of his trauma are being used to tell the story of a hurt man who is full of self loathing, they’re used to contextualize Joe and Rico’s relationship. At the Andy Warhol party we see Rico turn down the advancements of women and we watch as Joe goes home with a girl, only to find he can’t get hard. That is until she starts spelling out gay, essentially calling him gay, only then can he get hard. I honestly forgot how heavy this movie is, mainly with all the flashbacks, as it has been awhile since I first watched it, but I do love this movie and I love Rico. It’s also crazy to me how much Dustin Hoffman looks like Al Pacino and Leonard Cohen