Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1382552
50 C I N E M O N T A G E B O O K R E V I E W By Betsy McLane "Shooting Midnight Cowboy" is the wrong title for Glenn Frankel's absorbing new book, but the subtitle – "Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Mak- ing of a Dark Classic" -- is perfect. Of course, using "shooting" in a title that also includes the word "cowboy" must have been irresistible. This book is not, however, about shooting the film about Everybody's Talkin' A NEW BOOK LOOKS AT THE TORTURED CREATORS – AND EDITING-ROOM NIGHTMARE – BEHIND 'MIDNIGHT COWBOY' the odd friendship between a con man and a male hustler; it is about the people who conceived, executed, and marketed "Midnight Cowboy," and in the process were part of the sea change that rocked America and Hollywood in the late 1960s. The first third of the book focuses on the author of the novel "Midnight Cowboy," James Leo Herlihy. Frankel presents Herlihy as a gifted but tortured artist; the film's director John Schlesing- er is also seen as extremely talented, but self-doubting. Herlihy, the classic Mid- western American boy who goes to New York City to follow his dream of becoming a writer, was haunted by his homosexual- ity; Schlesinger, the product of cultured parents and British boys boarding school, is more comfortable with his, but both lived amid mid-20th century homopho- WALKIN' HERE: Jon Voight, left, and Dustin Hoffman in "Midnight Cowboy." P H O T O : P H O T O F E S T