DESPERATE SOULS AND THE LEGEND OF MIDNIGHT COWBOY
A half century after its release, MIDNIGHT COWBOY remains one of the most original and groundbreaking movies of the modern era. Combining beguiling performances from Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman as two loners who join forces out of desperation, blacklist survivor Waldo Salt's brilliant screenplay and John Schlesinger's fearless direction, the 1969 drama became the only X-rated film to ever win the Academy Award® for Best Picture. Its vivid and compassionate depiction of a realistic, unsanitized New York City and its inhabitants paved the way for a generation's worth of gritty movies with complex characters and adult themes. But this is not a documentary about the making of MIDNIGHT COWBOY. It is about the deeply gifted and flawed people behind a dark, difficult masterpiece; New York City in a troubled time of cultural ferment; the era that made a movie and the movie that made an era. Using extensive archival material and compelling new interviews, director Nancy Buirski's DESPERATE SOULS, DARK CITY AND THE LEGEND OF MIDNIGHT COWBOY
illuminates how one film captured the essence of a time and a place, reflecting a rapidly changing society with striking clarity. DIR/SCR/PROD Nancy Buirski, based on the book "Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic" by Glenn Frankel; PROD Simon Kilmurry, Susan Margolin. U.S., 2022, color, 101 min. NOT RATED
No AFI Member passes accepted.
In Memoriam: Nancy Buirski (1945–2023)
Click here for screenings of MIDNIGHT COWBOY, playing in our Special Engagements series Sept. 9-14.
Run Time: 101 Minutes
Opening Date: Saturday, September 09, 2023
Genre: Documentary