ASC Presents: Midnight Cowboy

Director: John Schlesinger

1969 / 113min / 4K DCP

All-American hillbilly hunk Joe Buck (Jon Voight) leaves Texas for New York City in search of his big break, only to quickly find himself a flat-broke hustler whose only friend is a loudmouth, tubercular con man named Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) who’s even more on the skids than Buck is. A deeply affecting and justly celebrated actors’ duet as well as a time capsule of late-’60s Times Square and downtown bohemia that still speaks volumes about the dirty business of eking out a living in a loud, ugly city that doesn’t know you’re alive and doesn’t care if you die. The first DP credit on a feature for Polish-born cinematographer Adam Holender, whose effective distillation of the essence of down-and-out NYC in bone-chilling winter doubtlessly led to his hiring onto 1971’s Panic in Needle Park.

Q&A with cinematographer Adam Holender on Saturday, April 5th