Likely Stories - Midnight Cowboy by James Kendrick

Kendrick, who teaches in the Department of Film and Digital Media at Baylor, gives readers an in-depth look at Midnight Cowboy, which was released in 1969. It went on to win three Academy Awards: for best adapted screenplay; best director and best picture, beating out the heavily-favored Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for the top honor. Midnight Cowboy’s director, John Schlesinger, was so convinced that his movie wasn’t going to win anything that he didn’t even bother going to the awards ceremony.

Midnight Cowboy, which starred Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voigt, remains the only X-rated film to win an Academy Award. That fact isn’t as shocking as it sounds, Kendrick explains in the book. See, the movie rating system was put into place just a few months prior to the release of Midnight Cowboy on May 25, 1969. At the time, an X rating simply meant that no one under the age of 16 could view the film, even with a parent present. The X rating that we know of today – or, more likely, triple X – is a rating that the makers of really dirty movies apply to their own works.

Midnight Cowboy was given an X rating due to its “homosexual frame of reference and its possible influence on youngsters,” not due to any graphic content.

Kendrick’s book, as he explains in the introduction, “explores Midnight Cowboy’s production, reception, visual and thematic innovations and lasting legacy.”

In the first chapter, Kendrick examines changes in the film industry that led up to the making of Midnight Cowboy, and uses Chapter 2 to look at the actual making of the film: casting, music choice, shooting locations…all the behind-the-scenes stuff.

The third chapter – the longest, at 69 pages, breaks down the movie pretty much scene-by-scene, and talks about what takes place in each scene and why it takes place. It gets into details like the movie advertised on a theater marquee in the background as Jon Voight’s character Joe Buck is walking down a New York street. The short, final fourth chapter discusses the reception of the film after it was released on May 25, 1969.

Midnight Cowboy the book is concise, at 128 pages, informative and entertaining. I’ll use a lot of what I learned from the book in teaching my Intro to Mass Communications classes at Baylor.

Midnight Cowboy is Kendrick’s fifth book. He’s previously written about Steven Spielberg as well as violence in American films. He’s also an expert in the horror film genre.

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