Watched: May 10 2026

Director: John Schlesinger

Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Barnard Hughes, Ruth White, Jennifer Salt

Year: 1969

Runtime: 1h 53min

Joe Buck (Voight) is coming east to be a prostitute! The naive (and a bit simple) cowboy tries to establish a career as a “hustler” but is ridiculously bad at the business side of things. Then he meets Ratso/Rizzo (Hoffman) who offers to set him up with a pimp for a cut of the proceeds. What could possibly go wrong?

“Oh my God! I’m GORGEOUS!” (IYKYK)

This could be the setup for either a comedy or a tragedy. Fortunately for the movie, but unfortunately for our mental states, it definitely lands in the latter category. Finding rich women willing to pay for sex is a harder job than Joe imagined. but at least he develops an unlikely but kind of beautiful relationship with the equally weird and lonely outsider Rizzo, who dreams of going to sunny Florida.

But for now, he’s busy walkin’ here

Joe’s past seems a Cimmerian cocktail of childhood abuse, religious trauma, sexual trauma and isolation. Homeless Rizzo is a tragic character as well, squatting in squalor (that’s fun to say ten times fast!) and trying to survive by any means necessary in an inhospitable city.

“So, I see a suave cowboy hustler.” “No, no, this is definitely a bachelor. Confirmed.”

We loved their relationship, the flashbacks and mysteries of Joe’s past, the dream sequences and the fantasies. Hansel and Gretel’s party seemed to us the quintessential ’60s New York party, and that whole sequence was exciting. Also, there’s a not-so-secret homosexual subtext here that’s really great. But we loved a lot of that in the worst way possible – this movie is just incredibly sad. That being said – it’s a classic for very good reasons and we would recommend it to everyone.

“Well Deborah, I’m not gonna pay him to lick my FACE!”

Again though Edgar, why do you make us watch these emotionally devastating movies? There have been three in a row that have gradually chipped away at our will to live. Reality is bad enough right now – we don’t need our entertainment to make things even worse…

Oh, all right, we forgive you. Mostly because these heartbreaking and depressing movies have all been very good. But also partly because you’re not actually forcing us to do this and we kind of brought it on ourselves…

What we learned: We need Jesus! More specifically, we each need a flashing Jesus statue in our bathroom.

MVP: Repression? Imagination? Friendship?

Next time: Sweet Charity (1969)

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