1969 film directed by John Schlesinger
Midnight Cowboy is a 1969 American drama film directed by John Schlesinger, adapted by Waldo Salt from the 1965 novel by James Leo Herlihy. The film stars Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, with supporting roles played by Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Bob Balaban, Jennifer Salt and Barnard Hughes. Set in New York City, Midnight Cowboy depicts the unlikely friendship between two lost and lonely hustlers: naïve prostitute Joe Buck (Voight) and ailing con man Rico Rizzo (Hoffman), referred to as "Ratso".
At the 42nd Academy Awards, the film won three awards: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Midnight Cowboy is the only X-rated film (equivalent of the current NC-17 rating) to win Best Picture and the only X-rated film ever to win an Academy Award. It placed 36th on the American Film Institute's 1998 list of the 100 greatest American films of all time, and 43rd on its 2007 updated version.
In 1994, Midnight Cowboy was deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress, and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.