Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy

1969: with Midnight Cowboy, John Schlesinger, Waldo Salt and Jerome Hellman created a classic and changed the course of movie making. The studio system was sinking under its own weight; independent filmmaking was waiting in the wings for a chance to break through, although not necessarily with a movie that dealt with prostitution, sordid crime and had a homosexual subtext. But emerging out of the protests of the ‘60s and the tragic murders of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., society was ready to face reality.

The result was the only X-rated film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture, with Oscars as well for the spirited direction by John Schlesinger – who came out as homosexual during the shooting -, and the brilliant screenplay by blacklist survivor Waldo Salt. Midnight Cowboy paved the way for a generation’s worth of gritty, New York-based movies with adult themes and complex characters, and, a half century after its release, remains one of the most original and groundbreaking movies of the modern era.

Glenn Frankel’s acclaimed book, “Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation and the Making of a Dark Classic,” is the basis for this documentary that is not about the making of Midnight Cowboy. It is about a dark and difficult masterpiece and the deeply gifted and flawed people who made it. It is about New York in a troubled era of cultural ferment and social change.

Trailer...