Loading Events

« All Events

  • This event has passed.

Virtual Event – Glenn Frankel

March 25, 2021 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Magic City Books is proud to welcome Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Glenn Frankel for a virtual event in celebration of his new book, Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic.

By turns madcap and serious, and enriched by interviews with Hoffman, Voight, and others, Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic is not only the definitive account of the film that unleashed a new wave of innovation in American cinema, but also the story of a country–and an industry–beginning to break free from decades of cultural and sexual repression.

This free event will be hosted on the Zoom platform and Facebook Live. To register in advance for the event on Zoom, visit: https://magiccitybooks.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_VyB4QAecTEKwi-IVP75rtg.

After you register you will receive a confirmation email with details on how to join the event on Thursday March 25 at 7:00 pm CT.

Shooting Midnight Cowboy is available now, to purchase a copy you can visit https://magiccitybooks.square.site/product/shooting-midnight-cowboy/465 or call the store, 918-602-4452.

About Shooting Midnight Cowboy

Director John Schlesinger’s Darling was nominated for five Academy Awards, and introduced the world to the transcendently talented Julie Christie. Suddenly the toast of Hollywood, Schlesinger used his newfound clout to film an expensive, Panavision adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd. Expectations were huge, making the movie’s complete critical and commercial failure even more devastating, and Schlesinger suddenly found himself persona non grata in the Hollywood circles he had hoped to conquer.

Given his recent travails, Schlesinger’s next project seemed doubly daring, bordering on foolish. James Leo Herlihy’s novel Midnight Cowboy, about a Texas hustler trying to survive on the mean streets of 1960’s New York, was dark and transgressive. Perhaps something about the book’s unsparing portrait of cultural alienation resonated with him. His decision to film it began one of the unlikelier convergences in cinematic history, centered around a city that seemed, at first glance, as unwelcoming as Herlihy’s novel itself.

Glenn Frankel’s Shooting Midnight Cowboy tells the story of a modern classic that, by all accounts, should never have become one in the first place. The film’s boundary-pushing subject matter–homosexuality, prostitution, sexual assault–earned it an X rating when it first appeared in cinemas in 1969. For Midnight Cowboy, Schlesinger–who had never made a film in the United States–enlisted Jerome Hellman, a producer coming off his own recent flop and smarting from a failed marriage, and Waldo Salt, a formerly blacklisted screenwriter with a tortured past. The decision to shoot on location in New York, at a time when the city was approaching its gritty nadir, backfired when a sanitation strike filled Manhattan with garbage fires and fears of dysentery.

Much more than a history of Schlesinger’s film, Shooting Midnight Cowboy is an arresting glimpse into the world from which it emerged: a troubled city that nurtured the talents and ambitions of the pioneering Polish cinematographer Adam Holender and legendary casting director Marion Dougherty, who discovered both Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight and supported them for the roles of “Ratso” Rizzo and Joe Buck–leading to one of the most intensely moving joint performances ever to appear on screen. We follow Herlihy himself as he moves from the experimental confines of Black Mountain College to the theatres of Broadway, influenced by close relationships with Tennessee Williams and Anaïs Nin, and yet unable to find lasting literary success.

By turns madcap and serious, and enriched by interviews with Hoffman, Voight, and others, Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic is not only the definitive account of the film that unleashed a new wave of innovation in American cinema, but also the story of a country–and an industry–beginning to break free from decades of cultural and sexual repression.

Glenn Frankel worked for many years at The Washington Post, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1989. He has taught journalism at Stanford University and the University of Texas at Austin, where he directed the School of Journalism. He has won the National Jewish Book Award, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and is a Motion Picture Academy Film Scholar. He is the bestselling author of The Searchers and High Noon, and lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Details

Date:
March 25, 2021
Time:
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Venue

Magic City Books
221 E. Archer St.
Tulsa, OK 74103 United States

Organizer

Magic City Books