Trivia / Midnight Cowboy

• Billing Displacement: Although Jon Voight's Joe Buck is the title character and protagonist of the story, Dustin Hoffman is actually billed ahead of him. (Of course, at the time Hoffman was the much bigger name thanks to The Graduate... in which he'd been displaced in the billing by Anne Bancroft.)
• Completely Different Title: It's interesting to see how an oblique, evocative title like Midnight Cowboy was handled in translating the film. Spain went with a direct translation (Cowboy de medianoche), but in Latin America it was called Perdidos en la noche ("lost people in the night"). Many European countries used variations on "asphalt cowboy". In Italy it was Un uomo da marciapiede ("a sidewalk man").
• Deleted Scene: There was originally a scene where one of Joe's fellow bus passengers (played by M. Emmet Walsh) tells him a dirty story, but this was cut due to censorship considerations. The movie initially received an X-rating anyway.
• Gay Panic: A longtime aide to John Schlesinger reported that the director wanted to include an overt sex scene between Joe and Ratso but was overruled.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Despite his portrayal of Joe Buck, a character hopelessly out of his element in New York, Jon Voight is a native New Yorker, hailing from Yonkers. Dustin Hoffman, who played a grizzled veteran of New York's streets, is from Los Angeles.
• Method Acting: Dustin Hoffman put so much effort into Rizzo's coughing fits that he threw up on Jon Voight at one point during filming.
• Playing Against Type: This is the film that got Dustin Hoffman recognized from simply the flavor of the month star, to a master actor destined to be one of the Hollywood Greats.
• Real Song Theme Tune: While Harry Nilsson's version of "Everybody's Talkin'" will forever be associated with this film (and became a hit single thanks to its inclusion on the soundtrack), it was first released on Nilsson's Aerial Ballet album a year earlier.
• Romance on the Set: It was during the making of this film that John Schlesinger met his long-time partner, the photographer Michael Childers, whom he hired as his assistant.
• Star-Making Role: For Jon Voight.
• Throw It In!: The Signature Line of "I'm walkin' here!" was unscripted. Because of the low budget, they didn't have permits to close New York streets and had to film with hidden cameras. In that particular scene, a taxi ran the red light and almost ran over Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. Hoffman almost said "I'm actin' here" before remembering to stay in character (though does forget the accent and limp). Fortunately, this adds to the "Welcome to New York" feel of the film, and hints there's more to Ratso than it appears.
  • There is some dispute over the scene, though. Director John Schlesinger claimed that the taxi was driven by a stunt driver who was supposed to elicit such a reaction from Hoffman, while Hoffman has always maintained that the whole thing was unscripted. Since, if Hoffman is to be believed, he's ad libbed every line in every movie he's been in, his claim should probably be taken with a grain of salt. However, the fact that traffic wasn't closed and it was filmed with hidden cameras certainly gives more credibility to Hoffman than the director.
    • And considering Hoffman doesn't break character, but loses his accent and forgets his limp, it does lend to the theory that it was unscripted.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Warren Beatty, Harrison Ford, Robert Redford, Michael Sarrazin, and Elvis Presley (no, really) were all considered for the role of Joe Buck.
  • Before production started, had Sal Mineo tried but failed to buy the rights to the original novel, wanting to produce a film version with himself as Rizzo.
  • Bob Dylan wrote the song "Lay, Lady, Lay" for this film, but didn't submit it in time for inclusion in the soundtrack. It most likely would have accompanied the Scribbage-and-sex scene with Joe and Shirley.
  • Randy Newman's "Cowboy" and Harry Nilsson's "I Guess the Lord Must Live in New York City" were also written for the film but passed over for one reason or another.

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