Because I don’t get.
We watched Midnight Cowboy last night – because we’d heard of it and thought it would be good. But I don’t get it. Are they gay or what? What disease does Dustin Hoffman have? How could he have survived the fall down the stairs? Could the movie have possibly moved any more slowly?
What is the cultural context I’m missing (having not been born yet when the movie was made)?
P.S. I feel the same way about Blue Velvet. As in,
1. What?
and
2. SLOW
My good Sally,
Midnight Cowboy was a “buddy pic” journey of the improbably offbeat Joe Buck and the equally improbably offbeat Ratso Rizzo through the turbulent cultural landscape that was the late ’60′s. If not the first such, it was one of the first, an archetype, if you will. Compare, just to pick a couple examples at random, Lonesome Dove or Thelma & Louise. What earned Midnight Cowboy an “X” rating when I saw it is of course tame by today’s standards, and from today’s perspectives it probably cannot escape being seen as impossibly quaint.
I have no clue as to what Blue Velvet was about, even today. Lynch’s works have always struck me as preciously self-important.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
I feel the same way about Blue Velvet. After watching (and loving MOST of) Twin Peaks, I watched Blue Velvet and thought….WTF?