Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy

It's unfortunate when a filmmaker sets out to pay tribute to a cinematic classic yet somehow manages to mangle the effort, but, regrettably, that's precisely what happened in writer-director Nancy Buirski's attempted homage to John Schlesinger's "Midnight Cowboy" (1969), the only X-rated release ever to win the Oscar for best picture. The scattered narrative of this poorly constructed documentary seems to focus on virtually everything except the film itself, drawing upon an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to explaining what influenced this screen epic rather than what went into the making of the picture itself. While it's certainly enlightening and helpful to provide viewers with sufficient back story about the timing of a movie's production and the filmmaking influences that helped shape it, these practices nevertheless become a burdensome distraction when they dominate the documentary's content and overshadow what made its supposed subject matter so noteworthy in the first place. As a consequence, the flow of this offering is about as unwieldy as its title, jumping around from ancillary subject to ancillary subject and often providing only the most tangential connections to its alleged core material. Granted, there are a few moderately interesting anecdotes here and there, as well as a few insightful references to how "Midnight Cowboy" went on to influence a number of subsequent film productions. But even the contemporary and archive interviews with director John Schlesinger, screenwriters Waldo Salt and James Leo Herlihy, and cast members Jon Voight, Dustin Hoffman, Brenda Vaccaro, Jennifer Salt and Bob Balaban shed little meaningful new light on this highly regarded offering. Perhaps the biggest problem here is that the underlying story of this documentary turned out to be inherently thinner than the filmmaker thought it was and that she chose to pad the material to artificially extend its length (although coming up with an entirely different narrative or editing the current one down to a film short would have been better options). It's too bad this one fared as it has, as it's a release that I truly looked forward to screening. It's indeed one thing to establish a story in the context of its times and influences and to do it correctly (as was very much the case, for example, with the David Bowie documentary "Moonage Daydream" (2022)), but this offering, sadly, is a prime example of how not to do it. "Midnight Cowboy" certainly deserved better than this, and one's time would definitely be better spent watching the original than this failed attempt at honoring it.

Immense insights into the filmmaking world as it turned on a fulcrum in the heavy and turbulent days of the making of Midnight Cowboy (1969) and an explanation of how a gay British filmmaker could make a wildly successful and popular X-rated film about a bisexual cowboy hustler and his tramp friend as they battled to survive on the dirty streets of New York City. Jon Voight provides essential commentary and the chaotic zeitgeist of the late 60s is carefully explored.

Film lovers will appreciate the insider's perspective and the tales about the production and others will gain a keen sense of the volatility of American culture during those years.

The stuff about John Schlesinger was interesting and I like how director Nancy Buirski connected this great film of his with the transformation of homosexuality into gay that was occurring in western society in the 60s. I also like how she placed "Cowboy" in the underground NYC tradition of Warhol and Scorsese (although a nod to previous such works like "Shadows" and "Sweet Smell Of Success" would have been nice). However, I cannot go along with Buirski in what I take to be her belief that this film is somehow unique in its expression of 60s edginess and rebellion. I can easily think of several works with an equal claim to 60s envelope pushing personification, such as "Wild Bunch", "Easy Rider" and, especially, "Bonnie And Clyde", which goes strangely unmentioned. I also could have done with more Dustin Hoffman and less Jon Voight. That MAGA maniac from Yonkers is never more off putting than when putting on a Texas charm offensive, as he does here.

So, a mixed bag. Ultimately, my biggest positive takeaway was being introduced to the work of documentarian Buirski who I was sorry to hear had died recently, only in her late 50s. TCM's showing two of her other docs and I look forward to seeing them. B minus.

Midnight Cowboy is one of my all time favorites. I've loved it since I first saw it as a teenager, and repeat viewings have only made me appreciate it more. I've also read the novel by James Herlihy multiple times, getting something new out of it each time as age and new experiences give me new perspectives and interpretations. I was therefore disappointed with the documentary, which seems to take Midnight Cowboy as a starting point to recap the entire 1960s in a ramshackle and sloppy manner. At one point, I thought to myself, "Boy they threw in everything but the kitchen sink," and then the topic of British kitchen sink dramas was introduced! I saw the doc a few months ago but I'm reviewing it today after reading a book, Shooting Midnight Cowboy, by Glen Frankel, which I believe was the inspiration for this documentary. The book is terrific, offering exhaustive detail about the novel, the development and making of the film, casting, costuming, etc. But in a coherent, well edited format. It's interesting that a 400 page book can manage to be thorough yet succinct, while a 2 hour documentary needs to rely on a lot of padding and still missed some interesting content that was in the book. The title is pompous. There are lots of talking heads, some connected to Midnight Cowboy and others not. For instance, Lucy Sante is featured prominently and really doesn't add anything substantive. For the first hour or so, I got the feeling she didn't even know the film was based on a novel, although I think later she did mention Herlihy. I didn't get much out of a handful of "cool" people opining on their impressions of the movie and the seedier side of New York. The interviews with Jon Voight and others who were actually involved in the film were better. There was also a lot of stock footage that was at times misleading, as it appeared to be from the 70s, 80s, 50s, whatever, just to give a visual to the sledgehammered message that New York used to be sleazy and scary. The section on Michael Childers seemed tacked on at the end, and I felt it shortchanged his creative contributions, depicting him as John Schlesinger's muse/boy toy who saved him from misery in a rather cloying and condescending way. I'm also a bit tired of the solemn, American Masters approach to biography, which insists on wallowing in the artist's insecurities and character flaws. I guess John Schlesinger was tortured. Of course he was! Artists tend to be "troubled" and "tortured" people. They sublimate. It's not a tragedy! Interestingly for me, the director, Nancy Buriski, also made a very good documentary, The Loving Story. It was much more focused and reliant on original black and white footage. Some people found it boring, but I thought its lack of sensationalism gave it depth and highlighted the fact that a couple of quiet, ordinary, non-tortured people did something really extraordinary and important. There was a confidence to that documentary that this one lacked. If you're interested in the topic, read Shooting Midnight Cowboy and skip this doc.

Nancy Buirski's documentary recounts the society, making, and impact of John Schlesinger's movie.

Because it begins by assuming that the audience watching this movie has no idea that the 1960s happened, let alone what went on, I found myself annoyed at first. Yes, I remember the uproar about the the Viet Nam War. Yes, I knew that the New York City I visited once or twice a week was not the one seen in Hollywood musicals of the 1940s. So that was wasted time for me. Yet, in making this documentary, I believe Ms Buirski made a good choice. Every year, new audiences come up, more and more divorced from the 1960s.

Otherwise, it's good to put faces to names, like Jon Voigt more than half a century later, and Lucy Sante, who wrote Low Life, a great book about the City's lower classes. I don't think this is of much utility to me or people like me, but to a younger audience, or one less versed in film history, it will prove invaluable.