Midnight Cowboy

John Schlesinger's Oscar-winning film, which features brilliant performances by Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, brought an unusually gritty realism to the screen and offered a then-rare portrait of New York's street scene. Joe Buck (Voight), a male prostitute from Texas, heads to Manhattan where he hopes to find plenty of wealthy women willing to pay for the services of a handsome man. When he arrives, the naive country boy befriends Ratso Rizzo (Hoffman), a tubercular, homeless con artist who dreams of moving to Florida. As they go about trying to get the money Ratso needs, the two men see and confront all the seediness, corruption, and cruelty that flourish in the big city.