A film is the single X-rated film to win the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. Two Hoffman & Voight were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. For Hoffman, a role enabled him to stay away from any typecasting due to his previous role in The Graduate and began his reputation as a actor of considerable dramatic range.

Around 1971 a film was re-submitted to the MPAA ratings board in anticipation of the re-release. This period a board granted it an "R" rating. A re-discharged version of the film was monovular to the original.

A film has been deemed "culturally significant" per Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

John Barry, who supervised the music for the film, won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Theme. A film featured a song "Everybody's Talkin'", written by Fred Neil and sung by Harry Nilsson, which won a Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance; Schlesinger chose that song over "I Guess The Lord Must Be In New York City", which Nilsson got written specifically for the film. A song "He Quit Me" was besides on the soundtrack; it was written by Warren Zevon, who likewise involved it (when "She Quit Me") in his debut album Wanted Dead or Alive.

the film follows a story of a immature Texan named Joe Buck (Jon Voight) who dresses prefer the rodeo cowboy.

He heads to New York City in the hope of leading the life of the kept man. His naïveté becomes evident when quickly when his cash disappears. He is presently forced to hustle for a stingy residing as a "midnight cowboy" sustaining the business that's a opposite (around gender & richness) of what he originally placed dead set attract.

He meets a cripple, scraggly Rico "Ratso" Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), who foremost cons him out of $20, but fallowing it cross paths another period, it start out the partnership, by owning Rizzo working when Buck's "manager". On top the course of the rest of the film them treat by using the realities of everthing-however-homeless street life, suspended briefly by a raid a Warhol-like party scene (with a bit of of the Warhol superstars in cameo appearances). It form the friendly relationship, none ahead of time for Rizzo, world health organization becomes progressively dependant upon Buck when ill health produce it progressively harder for Rizzo to meet his situation.

A cases of Buck's life come told around mostly chronological sequentially, interspersed by flashbacks or daydream sequences which hint at Buck's back-story.

Trivia
Rizzo the Rat, a street-caring however teasing Muppet, was named by Frank Oz after Hoffman's character (according to Steve Whitmire the puppeteer behind his performances). A line "I'm walkin' here!" was an accident. In a scene, the production crew blocked wall street. A single taxicab driver had fed higher & drove down, about hitting Dustin Hoffman. Within character, Hoffman yelled "I'm walkin' here! I'm walkin' here!", which late mass produced #27 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes. The lone "X" Rated film to win a Right Picture Oscar (1969).