Midnight Cowboy · reception & legacy

How Midnight Cowboy has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

A sensation on release — it won Best Picture despite (or because of) its X rating — and it's never really fallen out of the canon, though modern viewers now debate its once-shocking edginess as a time capsule of pre-cleanup Times Square. In 1971 the MPAA quietly re-rated it R without a single frame being changed.

What's debated

The perennial fan argument: does it still hit, or is it a dated New Hollywood artifact whose grimy shock value — and its handling of queer subtext — hasn't aged as well as its central performances?

Its footprint

"I'm walkin' here!" is one of the most quoted and parodied lines in American movies, echoed everywhere from Forrest Gump to countless New York jokes, and Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talkin'" is inseparable from the film.

Where it stands

A cornerstone of the New Hollywood syllabus — the 'only X-rated Best Picture winner' hook alone makes it a permanent you-must-have-seen-this.