#jon voight

-an achingly tender look at loneliness, with two outstanding performances, and a monster of a theme song

-some of these scenes don’t really gel, at least not at how we originally look at the two characters

-like two sad mangy street kittens huddling up together in the winter, are Texas cowboy Joe Buck (Joh Voight) and dilapidated urchin Rico “Ratso” (Dustin Hoffman)

-Buck is clearly desperate for attention, and he doesn’t care how he gets it

-Ratso is kinda like those birds that pick the teeth of crocodiles; he’s resigned to his order in the world, and accepts whatever crumbs he can get

-one of the very best moments is when Buck sees Ratso a 2nd time (after he was swindled the 1st time); the look in his eyes is at first joy in recognizing a familiar face, but then anger at being conned.

+it so perfectly sums up Buck’s utter attention desperation

-it folds in nicely to Buck (previously) saying goodbye to the dishwasher at his old job; the guy is the low man on the totem pole, but Buck hangs onto his every word

-I like the fascinating edits, the jumps in time, seemingly powered by nothing but emotions

-this film contains a few highly visible tropes of the era (1960’s) such as the song interlude, when a tune plays over a bus ride, a storm, a walk etc (and also the drug psychodelic party)

+and yet it also contains the highly fractured, surface level emotions of the same time period; these emotions were in previous decades of films, but the late 60s seem to revel in their bruised rawness

-I keep thinking about how even a decade later this lack of flattering and counterweight feel good moments would be highly discouraged by pod-people; there would be a hernia in trying to make these characters (pho) “likable” or “relatable”, (reducing them to nothing)

-like we really see Ratso become trampled on (by everything) and the explosions of feelings Buck has when he desperately allows himself to be given oral sex by a man for money

-I watched this film with a bunch of people who had never seen it; this was not the motion picture they were expecting by cultural osmosis

-you really need to experience the “text”, the art, firsthand to delve into its specific waters

I asked them afterward; they thought it would be more funny, more goofy humorous moments of Ratso trying to pimp Buck out.

+That would likely happen in an mid 80s version but not here in the existential late 60’s

-indeed, it’s felt amusing how the most famous/ quoted moment (“hey, I’m walking here!”) is maybe the only time these two lash back at the world, the rest of the time they take it on the chin and endure horrible agony

-and yet the film is very delicate in giving them hope, moments of pride surviving, that it somehow bends our sympathies but never breaks our suspense of disbelief

-incidentally, is this one of the few times the rural person goes to the urban world and gets destroyed for sheer lack of survival skills? It seems the opposite so many other times in US media

+probably because storytellers have to coddle the hopelessly incurious country shitheads for their lack of success in their own pathetic lives

-I dig the part where Buck sees a kid use a plastic rat to pretend gnaw off his mother’s face. What a world

-speaking of; is it better be a dishwasher in New York than Texas? The film (wisely) never answers but I vote yes.

-but really New York City (in the film) is just an example of the American dream not working out at all for some people

-so what is Ratso and Buck’s relationship? Is it sexual? Is it attention? Is it desperation?

-another of my favorite scenes is when Ratso, down with a fever, fantasizes about Florida

+he’s in a white linen suit, surrounded by women with nose guards, but smiles most vibrantly at Buck with no shirt on

-I think this is a deeply closeted film; the love is in the closet, the emotional honesty is in the closest, and the better day are in the closet; and it won’t let out except under extreme situations of duress

-this is before the stonewall riots after all

-and yet to even obliquely hint at this, years before being gay was not considered a mental illness, shows just how willing to try anything filmmakers (and audiences) were in the late 60’s

+a sense of nerve, of curiosity, of “who knows? Let’s give this a shot!” mentality that would be really groovy to see again

-speaking of things that never go out of style; memorable, moving film themes

-John Barry (he of Bond fame) knocks it out of the park here. “Midnight Cowboy theme” is just devastating. It’s simple and hummable, so you can hear it in your head and the images explode at the oddest times

+how fucking weird is it that a film about two men broken but unbeaten by bigotry have a more memorable melody than any marvel film? What the fuck is up with that?

-what I also like is how the theme doesn’t just come at the end, when we expect it; it’s head peeks out of the water at unexpected moments in 2nd half, before rising like Godzilla at the conclusion

-I think this film can be seen on many levels, of people who lay their bodies out on the line for attention, for people who hit rock bottom mentally, for people who just don’t fit in

-yet all of that can be ignored, none of the possible subtext can be read (yeah yeah; you think the curtains are just blue) and its incredible how Hoffman and Voight pull us in for an emotional riptide

That’s just phenomenal acting, that’s morbidly fascinating behavior, that’s just an operatic roar of storytelling

Ronny Cox, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, and Burt Reynolds in Deliverance 

Cast: Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox, Ed Ramey, Billy Redden, Seamon Glass, Randall Deal, Bill McKinney, Herbert “Cowboy” Coward, James Dickey. Screenplay: James Dickey, based on his novel. Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond. Art direction: Fred Harpman. Film editing: Tom Priestley.