‘It changed the whole look of Amer­i­can film’ – Remem­ber­ing Mid­night Cowboy

In 1969 Amer­i­ca was in a state of flux. Polit­i­cal and social upheaval saw Richard Nixon sworn into the White House while the Viet­nam and Cold War con­tin­ued to rage. The sum­mer of ​’69 saw Neil Arm­strong touch down on the moon, the Stonewall Riots shake New York and Wood­stock change the face of Amer­i­can music, while the whole coun­try was rocked by the Man­son Fam­i­ly murders.

A British film­mak­er arrived in New York look­ing to cap­ture the spir­it of the city with a new film, Mid­night Cow­boy, star­ring two up-and-com­ing actors called Dustin Hoff­man and Jon Voight. The film showed New York City as a dirty, seduc­tive won­der­land, lur­ing the young and naïve to its streets with entranc­ing neon lights and the siren song of sound and fury – the kind of place that will eat you alive if you let it.

Next May will mark the 50^th anniver­sary of John Schlesinger’s ground­break­ing film, but the kind folks at Cri­te­ri­on have seen fit to bring Mid­night Cow­boy to Blu-ray this spring. To cel­e­brate the release, we spoke to two of the men who know the film best: cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Adam Holen­der, and Schlesinger’s part­ner of 30 years who served as the film’s pro­duc­tion assis­tant, Michael Childers.

Adam Holen­der: John and I were fresh­ly arrived to New York and we both respond­ed to the very excit­ing time that the City was going through. John came from a doc­u­men­tary back­ground at the BBC, I was always very fond of the real­ism in cin­e­ma in Italy and Britain dur­ing the ​’50s. We had a lot in com­mon. Both of us looked at New York with fresh eyes as peo­ple who arrived from some­where else – we absorbed the real­i­ties of the city.

Michael Childers: I was hav­ing din­ner with John in Los Ange­les, and he told me he was prep­ping the script for Mid­night Cow­boy with Wal­do Salt and Jerome Hell­man. He sort of told me the sto­ry and I said: ​“Oh, is it going to be a John Wayne west­ern?” He turned to me and said, ​“Hard­ly my dear, hard­ly”. He gave me the out­line to read, and I got back to him a day lat­er and said ​“Oh my God, this is wild. How will you make it and get it released? It’s pret­ty out there.” For that time it was X‑rated. He said, ​“I’m deter­mined to make it, and we’ll wor­ry about that lat­er.” John like a few oth­er British direc­tors who came over in the 60s and 70s like Michael Apt­ed and Rid­ley Scott, had a unique vision of Amer­i­ca. John had a direc­tion and a vision, and knew where he want­ed his char­ac­ters to go.

AH: Dustin and Jon were ter­rif­i­cal­ly able to adapt to street life in New York – they were both unknowns, so it was no prob­lem to put them on a side­walk, nobody knew who they were. We used no extras in the film to speak of, just the nor­mal crowd of pedes­tri­ans cross­ing the streets. We tried every­thing we could to make it as real­is­tic as it could be. We spent many nights on the seedy side of New York on 42^nd Street. At one point I had an idea to build a large box con­tain­ing the cam­era and the cam­era oper­a­tor, and put it on the side­walk, with a lit­tle open­ing for the lens. We were try­ing to cap­ture the real­i­ty of New York with­out the cam­era being vis­i­ble to peo­ple on the street at night. It worked for a while, but then John got ter­ri­bly anx­ious to find out how well we were doing, so he kept run­ning to the box and ask­ing the cam­era oper­a­tor, and after a while, peo­ple noticed that some­thing was not quite nor­mal about it, so it stopped working.

MC: The cast­ing in LA con­sist­ed of many read­ings, audi­tions, lunch­es, with sev­er­al actors – Don Stroud was one, Kyle Mar­tin, Michael Sar­razin, who was John’s neigh­bour in Mal­ibu. Then Mar­i­on Dougher­ty sug­gest­ed this young off-Broad­way actor called Jon Voight. One thing led to anoth­er, and then John decid­ed Michael Sar­razin would be cast. Michael was under con­tract to Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures, and there was a pre-agree­ment that if he got the part there would be a cer­tain amount of mon­ey. Well, as soon as Michael got the part, Uni­ver­sal tripled their price. It wasn’t in the bud­get, they couldn’t pay that, so we had to go back. Mar­i­on Dougher­ty said ​“You’re all total­ly wrong – Michael’s too sweet, too pret­ty, too soft.” Jon had every­thing: the anger, the charm, the pent-up ener­gy like a vol­cano. And thank God that Uni­ver­sal screwed John and Michael, and that they went with Jon Voight.

Dustin Hoff­man was found by Jer­ry Hell­man in an off-Broad­way play about a year and a half before they even start­ed mak­ing Mid­night Cow­boy. John went to see Dustin in the play and said ​“Oh my God, he’s amaz­ing – just amaz­ing”, but then there was a delay in get­ting the script ready. So Mike Nichols cast him in The Grad­u­ate, and they made that while the script for Cow­boy was being fin­ished. So when Dustin start­ed film­ing Cow­boy in New York he was unknown – with­in two weeks of The Grad­u­ate com­ing out, Dustin became a movie star instant­ly. It was lucky for Cow­boy to have a young movie star.

MC: In the book it says ​“a par­ty in a Green­wich vil­lage loft”. That’s all it said. And I said, ​“John, come have din­ner with Andy Warhol and all his super­stars – let’s turn that scene into a real New York art world par­ty, like the Warhol-style hap­pen­ings than Andy used to have at his alu­mini­um foil fac­to­ry. Let’s turn it into a hap­pen­ing.” And that’s what he did. I got to know Paul Mor­ris­sey who direct­ed films for Andy Warhol – we became friends and I met all the Andy Warhol super­stars. We cast Viva, Ultra­vi­o­let, Tay­lor Mead, Joe Dalle­san­dro. Andy was hop­ing to be in the par­ty sequence as well, but while we were in pre-pro­duc­tion, doing hair and make-up at the stu­dio, Viva took a phone call with Andy and I heard ​‘pop pop pop!’ It was a gun going off – Andy had been shot. So that’s why Andy wasn’t in Mid­night Cow­boy, but he was very glad John used all his super­stars, since he was in the hos­pi­tal for a year and they had no work.

MC: Roman [Polan­s­ki] called John up and said, ​‘You must meet my friend Adam Holen­der, who I went to Krakow Film School with. He’s very good and I think he might be good for your New York movie.’ We spoke to a cou­ple of the old warhors­es – the cam­era­men who had been work­ing for years – and they were so wrong for this. Some of the tech­niques we used in Cow­boy, with grainy film and fish­eye lens­es, in the sub­way sequence – it was way ahead of its time. These visu­al things were bor­rowed in the late ​’70s and ​’80s for music videos. Mid­night Cow­boy changed the whole look of Amer­i­can film.

AH: Clear­ly cin­e­matog­ra­phy has changed enor­mous­ly – tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment, the speed of film, dig­i­tal has made its impact. How­ev­er, the visu­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the eye, and the human brain com­bined with the eye, has not changed at all. How films look today is per­haps a bit dif­fer­ent, but sen­si­tives and aes­thet­ics of film remain the same. Peo­ple are the same.

MC: Some peo­ple were shocked. I remem­ber the first press screen­ings, I was there in the back, and I knew a lot of the edi­tors and young crit­ics, and they were so focused and total­ly wrapped up in the film. They were so moved by it and came out cry­ing. Sure we were in Hol­ly­wood, where there was a sort of right-wing old-guard reac­tionar­ies, and they were shocked that this movie could be made. Ros[alind] Rus­sell said it was filth. But at the same time, there were old guard peo­ple like Joan Craw­ford, who wrote a beau­ti­ful let­ter about how mov­ing Cow­boy was. So did Lucille Ball of all peo­ple, say­ing what an impor­tant film it was. Gre­go­ry Peck wrote a beau­ti­ful let­ter to John, and Gene Kel­ly loved it too.

AH: I wit­nessed a very seri­ous col­lab­o­ra­tion between writer and direc­tor. Wal­do Salt and John Schlesinger man­aged to cre­ate a part­ner­ship, not only dur­ing the writ­ing of the script and prepa­ra­tion, but through­out the pro­duc­tion in which Wal­do was an essen­tial con­fi­dant and sound­ing board for John and the rest of us. In some 45, 50 films I’ve shot since then, I’ve nev­er seen a bet­ter cre­ative process than the one those two estab­lished, includ­ing writer-direc­tors, who don’t have any­one to bounce their ideas off.

MC: It was a great break­through for Amer­i­ca cin­e­ma at that time and get­ting away from the Hol­ly­wood stu­dio sys­tem. There were a few key films at that time which cre­at­ed the new Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma – Five Easy Pieces, Easy Rid­er, lat­er on Com­ing Home, all these great films, and Cow­boy was at the fore­front. The old stu­dio heads were so shocked that an X‑rated film that cost so lit­tle to make would be sweep­ing around the world mak­ing so much money.

Mid­night Cow­boy is released on Blu-ray on 28 May via The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion.