Released to huge acclaim in 1969, Midnight Cowboy became the first (and only) X-rated film to win a Best Picture Oscar®. Jon Voight plays Joe Buck, a Texan dreamer who arrives in New York hoping to make it big as a well-paid gigolo. Things don't really go to plan however and he ends up in a squalid dump with eccentric conman Ratzo Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), and an odd couple friendship ensues. Scored by composer John Barry, Midnight Cowboy was one of the first films to use a selection of pop songs on the soundtrack, a style since copied by countless imitators. In an interview Barry once said "That movie is still shown at the cinema school in UCLA as the epitome of how songs should be used in the movies. We only bought in a couple of songs, Everybody's Talkin', sung by Harry Nilsson, and a John Lennon number, and for the rest we got young songwriters to score the scenes. The songs work because they were written for the movie."

Matt expands:

"I was quite young when I saw Midnight Cowboy for the first time and though I was initially drawn in by John Barry’s melancholic theme tune - beautifully performed on harmonica by Tools Thielemans - I found the film’s dark and gritty portrayal of New York’s underbelly mesmerising. Like many American films made between the late 1960s and late 1970s that were set in that city it revealed a side to America that had been sanitised and kept out of sight for too long. It features a stunning soundtrack, with the combined talents of John Barry, Fred Neil, Harry Nillson and others, and seems mainly set in minor keys to perfectly harmonise with the story and images unravelling on screen. It’s beautiful heartbreaking stuff. On a personal note, films like Midnight Cowboy confirmed to me I’d have to move to New York at some point to experience such gritty glamour first-hand."

Gerard and Matt Johnson will be in conversation with our cinema curator Mark Cosgrove on Sun 8 March, discussing their work, their influences and their recent collaboration on Hyena, which opens on Fri 6 March.

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