Ep. # 80- The Best of John Schlesinger: Midnight Cowboy, Sunday Bloody Sunday, The Day of the Locust

On our 80th episode of Fabulous Film & Friends what better way to follow up a Road House podcast than by looking at the highlights of pioneering gay director John Schlesinger? We’re talking about 1969’s Midnight Cowboy starring Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Brenda Vaccaro, John McGiver, Sylvia Miles, Bob Balaban and Barnard Hughes as well as 1971’s Sunday, Bloody Sunday starring Peter Finch, Glenda Jackson, Murry Head and Dame Peggy Ashcroft topped off with 1975’s The Day of the Locust starring William Atherton, Donald Sutherland, Karen Black, Burgess Meredith, Bo Hopkins, Pepe Serna, Geraldine Paige, Richard Dysart, Lil’ Jackie Earl Haley, an even littler Billy Barty and Mrs. Lovey Howell, herself, Natalie Schaeffer. 

I’m joined this week by the reliably ab-fab crew of my kid-sister and lit major Roseanne Caputi as well as the sensitive cowhand himself, actor, photographer and snappy patter producer par excellence Gordon Alex Robertson! 

Okay, before we don the fringed suede jackets and find a spot on 43rd St., the synopses:

 In Midnight Cowboy big, dumb Texan Joe Buck quits his job as a dishwasher and hops on a Greyhound to the big town, New York City with dreams of making his fortune as a male prostitute servicing rich, bored housewives on Park Avenue. After a series of cringe-inducing misfires, Joe finds himself penniless and living in a squalid, condemned apartment with a sickly, limping con man named Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo. With Ratso serving as Joe’s manager the only place they can go is straight down. Barely surviving a New York winter, Joe’s fortunes finally start to change for the better until a dying Ratso implores Joe to get him to Florida. 

Sunday, Bloody Sunday slowly--ever so slowly-- catalogues the highs and lows of two middle-aged, upper-class Londoners, one man, Dr. Daniel Hirsch, a perennially single doctor and one woman, Alex Greville a divorcee who both find purpose and vitality in a love triangle with Bob Elkin, a young sculptor in his 20’s. The three must deal with abrupt change, loss and acceptance when Bob the sculptor moves to America. 

The Day of the Locust, based on the 1939 novel by Nathaniel West, follows the course of three, tragic dreamers who came to Hollywood with eyes toward stardom but end up victims of its cold-hearted excess: Tod Hacket, a somewhat idealistic --if a bit rapey set designer from Yale-- who is in love with Fay Greener, a beautiful but talentless day playing actress who refuses to date men that aren’t wealthy, and none other than Homer Simpson, a simple, religious and socially awkward accountant who naively takes Fay in to live with him. 

Was Mr. Schlesinger an all time great? Or a one hit wonder? 

Find out! 

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