15 Uncensored Facts About “Midnight Cowboy”

Garin Pirnia and Mental_Floss present 15 Uncensored Facts About Midnight Cowboy.  Here are three of my favorites…

4. VOIGHT WORKED FOR SCALE.
Voight was so desperate to play Joe Buck that he worked for scale: “‘Tell them I’ll do this part for nothing,’” Voight recalled to The Telegraph. “They took me at my word, and they gave me minimum for Midnight Cowboy.” At the end of the shoot, they sent him a $14.73 bill for meals on the last day of filming.

7. VOIGHT AND HOFFMAN WERE COMPETITIVE WITH EACH OTHER.
What made the chemistry between Hoffman and Voight work so well is they were constantly competing with one another. Hoffman became a movie star before Voight did, and that brought some jealousy to the set. “We were like Marvin Hagler and Sugar Ray Leonard, two fighters going at it,” Hoffman told the Los Angeles Times. “We knew the movie depended on the bond between us. All through shooting, we’d say to each other, out of the side of our mouths, like a fighter in a clinch, ‘Buddy, is that the best you can do?’”

8. HOFFMAN PLACED PEBBLES IN HIS SHOE TO ACQUIRE RATSO’S LIMP.
“Why pebbles? It’s not like you’re playing a role on Broadway for six months where you’re so used to it, limping becomes second nature,” Hoffman told Vanity Fair. “The stone makes you limp, and you don’t have to think about it.”