Documentary

DESPERATE SOULS, DARK CITY AND THE LEGEND OF MIDNIGHT COWBOY

2023
1 HR, 41 min
JUL 21 → AUG 3

Details

Released June 23, 2023, United States

Documentary

1 hour, 41 minutes

Zeitgeist Films

None

Starring

Bob Balaban
Michael Childers
Brian De Palma
J. Hoberman
Adam Holender
Charles Kaiser
Jennifer Salt

Director

Nancy Buirski

Film Information

A half century after its release, Midnight Cowboy remains one of the most original and groundbreaking movies of the modern era. With beguiling performances from Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman as two loners who join forces out of desperation, blacklist survivor Waldo Salt’s brilliant screenplay, and John Schlesinger’s fearless direction, the 1969 film became the only X-rated film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Its vivid and compassionate depiction of a more realistic, unsanitized New York City and its inhabitants paved the way for a generation’s worth of gritty movies with complex characters and adult themes.

But this is not a documentary about the making of Midnight Cowboy: it is about the deeply gifted and flawed people behind a dark and difficult masterpiece; New York City in a troubled time of cultural ferment; and the era that made a movie and the movie that made an era. Featuring extensive archival material and compelling new interviews, director Nancy Buirski illuminates how one film captured the essence of a time and a place, reflecting a rapidly changing society with striking clarity.

Film Stills

Full Cast

Bob Balaban

Michael Childers

Brian De Palma

J. Hoberman

Adam Holender

Charles Kaiser

Jennifer Salt

Additional Credits

Nancy Buirski Director

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Reviews

“Burski eloquently conveys the impeccable (but unpredictable) alchemy of the production by underscoring, with frequency, how much of its brilliance was an accidental confluence, how its specific magic was the right combination of people, events, and timing.”

Jason Bailey

The Playlist

“Perhaps the most explicit and emotionally intense film of the New Hollywood era — and yet in its “Odd Couple” theme and wistful sensibility a profoundly Old Hollywood film, too — “Midnight Cowboy” remains littered with contradictions. Gay and tender, its representation of sex is vile. It’s nostalgic and hopeless; a celebration of the counter-culture and, seemingly, an indictment of its decadence. All that makes Nancy Buirski’s new documentary about its production and legacy more interesting.”

Adam Solomons

indieWIRE

“Still, though, any festival or retrospective event would love to show Desperate Souls to cinephiles and anyone interested in a time — the late 1960s — when a big studio like United Artists would back a bracing, queer—themed, fiercely independent-spirited film written and directed by two closeted gay men (Schlesinger, and the writer of the book in which Midnight Cowboy was based, James Leo Herlihy).”

Fionnuala Halligan

Screen Daily