Midnight Cowboy is one of my all time favorites. I've loved it since I first saw it as a teenager, and repeat viewings have only made me appreciate it more. I've also read the novel by James Herlihy multiple times, getting something new out of it each time as age and new experiences give me new perspectives and interpretations. I was therefore disappointed with the documentary, which seems to take Midnight Cowboy as a starting point to recap the entire 1960s in a ramshackle and sloppy manner. At one point, I thought to myself, "Boy they threw in everything but the kitchen sink," and then the topic of British kitchen sink dramas was introduced! I saw the doc a few months ago but I'm reviewing it today after reading a book, Shooting Midnight Cowboy, by Glen Frankel, which I believe was the inspiration for this documentary. The book is terrific, offering exhaustive detail about the novel, the development and making of the film, casting, costuming, etc. But in a coherent, well edited format. It's interesting that a 400 page book can manage to be thorough yet succinct, while a 2 hour documentary needs to rely on a lot of padding and still missed some interesting content that was in the book. The title is pompous. There are lots of talking heads, some connected to Midnight Cowboy and others not. For instance, Lucy Sante is featured prominently and really doesn't add anything substantive. For the first hour or so, I got the feeling she didn't even know the film was based on a novel, although I think later she did mention Herlihy. I didn't get much out of a handful of "cool" people opining on their impressions of the movie and the seedier side of New York. The interviews with Jon Voight and others who were actually involved in the film were better. There was also a lot of stock footage that was at times misleading, as it appeared to be from the 70s, 80s, 50s, whatever, just to give a visual to the sledgehammered message that New York used to be sleazy and scary. The section on Michael Childers seemed tacked on at the end, and I felt it shortchanged his creative contributions, depicting him as John Schlesinger's muse/boy toy who saved him from misery in a rather cloying and condescending way. I'm also a bit tired of the solemn, American Masters approach to biography, which insists on wallowing in the artist's insecurities and character flaws. I guess John Schlesinger was tortured. Of course he was! Artists tend to be "troubled" and "tortured" people. They sublimate. It's not a tragedy! Interestingly for me, the director, Nancy Buriski, also made a very good documentary, The Loving Story. It was much more focused and reliant on original black and white footage. Some people found it boring, but I thought its lack of sensationalism gave it depth and highlighted the fact that a couple of quiet, ordinary, non-tortured people did something really extraordinary and important. There was a confidence to that documentary that this one lacked. If you're interested in the topic, read Shooting Midnight Cowboy and skip this doc.