Plot summary (with spoilers): Joe Buck lives in Texas, works at a diner, lives a life of quiet desperation, deserves something more. Joe Buck wants out. He plans to go to New York City and become a hustler, bedding beautiful, older rich women. He dons his cowboy hat and brown leather jacket with those frilly things and his trusty boots. He's got a cowskin suitcase and a small radio and a bus ticket. He's running from his life, fast as he can, but with a smile. The bus ride is long and uncomfortable, and people are sometimes rude to him (in the middle of the night, he sits next to an old lady who has her overhead light on and he reaches up to turn it off and she snaps, "I want it on!" and I laugh so hard I have a coughing fit) but he endures it all because the good life, a life without worries or horrible memories is just around the corner.
He arrives in New York, gets a shitty hotel, unwisely overtips the bellboy, flexes shirtless in the cracked mirror, then goes out on the town. New York is scary and exciting and the chance to start over is real. After several failed attempts to hit on older women, one finally asks him up to her apartment. After sex, she asks for cab fare to get across town. Joe awkwardly says he was kind of hoping she'd be giving him money, on account of...you know...The woman bursts into tears "that's what you think of me?! I'm so ugly I'd have to pay for it?!" and Joe counters no that's not it at all, so sorry, here's cab fare, five bucks okay? Ten? Twenty? Okay, I'll be going now.
Joe goes to a local bar and sits next to an ugly, squirrelly cripple named Rico Rizzo. He tells Rizzo that he's attempting to make a living as a hustler, but has had no luck. Rizzo promises to set him up with a pimp, for a nominal fee. A scuzzy gay guy approaches and calls Rizzo "Ratso", and warns Joe that he's only after his money. Rizzo runs the guy off, complaining loudly at the faggots overrunning the city. Rizzo charges Joe twenty bucks for his services and leads him to an apartment where the pimp lives. "Hey! I'm walking here! I'm walking here!" Joe's so excited, he promises to give Rizzo a cut of his future earnings, and wants to know where Rizzo lives. Rizzo gives him the name of a hotel, then splits.
Joe goes inside the apartment, and an earnest bald man tells him he's "perfect" and they're going to achieve a lot together. So let's get on our knees! Knees?
The bald man opens his closet to reveals a gaudy, glittery crucifixion and demands Joe pray with him. Joe finally realizes he's been had, and bolts out of the apartment, but Rizzo is nowhere to be found.
The days turn into weeks and finally Joe's out of money and locked out of his hotel. He roams the streets of New York, unable to find any willing women. He looks into a public bathroom mirror and says, "you know what you have to do".
He finally puts the cowboy outfit to good use and goes trolling into the homosexual neighborhoods. Nearly immediately, a teen with dorky glasses (Bob Balaban! Wow, he's young!) gives him a nod. They go into a movie theatre. The teen nuzzles his neck and puts his arm around Joe, then lowers his head. Joe closes his eyes and thinks of Annie, his one true love and the life they once and together before everything was destroyed.
After it's over, the teen says he has no money. Enraged, Joe throws him against a mirror, threatens to beat him, then takes his watch. The kid says please don't take my watch, my parents will kill me! Joe relents, stomping out of the bathroom with a glare.
Worst. Whore. Ever.
Then one day, Joe happens to see Rizzo in a diner. He grabs him, demands his money back, but of course it's gone now, Joe agrees that Rizzo is a rat like the faggot said, Ratso is your name!
Ratso says he can come home with him, as an apology he can live with him for a while. He leads Joe to an abandoned building, behind a chain link fence. Ratso lives in a squalid, hollowed-out seedy enclave. They're no lights or windows, but there's a hot plate and a bed and Joe just really needs somewhere to sleep.
Over the weeks and months, an uneasy alliance forms. Ratso teaches Joe the fine art of low-level thievery. They pick pockets, steal food from fruit stands and the like. They barely eke out an existence that is focused entirely on the next meal, the next need. Finally, they hatch a plan for Joe to make money hustling. They stand outside an escort service, and when a man receives an assignment on a slip of paper, Ratso steals it from him and sends Joe there instead. Joe excitedly walks into the hotel where the woman is staying, and Ratso believes that this is their ticket to a better life. He imagines building a future and a life with Joe somewhere else, down south, in Florida. They'll run on the beach together, be together forever, leave all this behind. But the lady takes one look at weirdo cowboy Joe and throws him out. Back to square one.
Times get rougher. Winter comes. Ratso's cough gets worse and worse and they get hungrier and hungrier. Ratso's having more trouble walking, standing.
Some weirdos approach Joe in the diner and take his picture. They then give him a piece of paper, which is an invitation to a party in a loft that night. Ratso scoffs that "guys like us" don't get invited places, and Joe reminds him that he wasn't invited. Ratso's wounded, desperate and angrily lashes out. Joe backtracks, apologizes, says they'll go together and if the people don't like it, they'll leave together. Outside the loft, Ratso has trouble making it up the stairs. He's sweating, his hair's mussed. Joe straightens out his hair tenderly. Ratso holds him for balance. Just holds him. They gently ascend the staircase and find themselves at a crazy party filled with the assorted fruits and nuts and Andy Warhol castoffs. There are dozens of people running about snapping pics, taking drugs, looking at art, drinking and eating. Drinking and eating. There's a table out with food. Lots and lots of food. Ratso starts filling his pockets, while Joe begins to socialize. He's given a joint and hilariously doesn't puff puff give, thinking it to be a regular cigarette. Soon Joe is very high, and hits on a woman. Ratso steps in and sets up a fee for Joe's services; she wants to know if they're a couple. Joe goes home with the woman as Ratso slips and falls down the stairs he previously could barely climb. Hey fella, you fell. Ratso, are you all right? I'm fine. Go. Just go.
Joe can't get it up at first, but when she calls him gay he angrily gets the job done. She gives him twenty and sets him up with another woman on Thursday.
Joe excitedly comes home with food and medicine for Ratso and tells him things are finally taking off! Ratso's sweating and terrified. He tells Joe he can't walk. Joe says he'll get a doctor. No doctors! I need to go down South. Down to Florida! Take me to Florida. Joe complains that just when he's finally starting to make it, things fall apart again.
He goes out that night, finds an old man and they go up to a hotel room. The old man says he can't hurt his wife this way, never mind, but Joe insists that he be paid. The man offers ten bucks, but Joe screams that's not enough!. He beats the man and steals all his money.
He carries Ratso in his arms, and they board the bus together. Through tears, Ratso begs him: when we get to Florida, no one there will know my name's Ratso. No one will call me that. Please don't tell them that name. Tell them Rico. My name is Rico. Joe promises that he'll call him Rico.
They reach Florida, just a few hours away from their final stop in Miami. Joe gets off the bus, and buys some regular clothes. The shopkeeper asks him where he's from and he says New York. He throws away all his cowboy shit, and gets back on the bus.
You know, Ratso? I mean, Rico. I don't want to be a hustler anymore. I can get a regular job. We can have a good life down here.
But Rico's gone.
Joe tells the bus driver, who is less than devastated and says they might as well ride into Miami and handle it there. The other passengers gawk at Rico's body. Joe pushes his eyes closed, then puts his arm around his friend defiantly, proudly. The bus rolls on.
Review: This movie hit me on a number of levels. First, the acting is top notch, but Voight and Hoffman are amazing. Hoffman in particular is entirely sympathetic in a role that might evoke only revulsion in the audience if played wrongly. The entire story is so great! The friendship, or perhaps love, that evolves between the two is natural and organic and utterly engrossing, in part because of their drastic physical and personality differences. The movie's hard to watch a times, you want to step in a grab them and tell them to fucking shape up already, but all you can do is watch in horror and hope that somehow they figure it out. The directing was great too. Throughout the movie, we get rapid flashbacks of the horrible life Joe led, a life that led him to believe that his only real option was to go far away and sell his body for money. We see how his mother abandoned him and he grandmother had man after man in the house, and later how he and his girlfriend were caught having sex in a car and some thugs beat and raped Joe in front of her. We get glimpses And he winds up suffering so much, yet somehow is always so optimistic and hopeful. The beginning of the movie with that great theme song "Everybody's Talking At Me" intercut with depressing images of Joe's home life was a great ironic juxtaposition that set the tone for this weird, off kilter and very daring for its time movie. It's rated X, but it's really only an R by our standards. The gay content is what put it over the top back then.
And talking about that part. Though by today's standards, the movie can hardly be seen as gay friendly, I think Rizzo was pretty clearly gay and while we're meant to pity him and be disgusted by him to some degree, there's no denying his basic humanity, which was a pretty radical idea to mainstream America in 1969. Though I doubt mainstream America saw this freaky movie.
Stars: Five out of five.
Next, "Bonnie and Clyde", which I'm pretty excited about and then 1933's "King Kong", which I'm not.
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