In , Midnight Cowboy was deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress , and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Young Texan Joe Buck quits his dishwashing job, and heads by bus to New York City in cowboy attire to become a male prostitute. Initially unsuccessful, he finally beds a middle-aged woman, Cass, in her Park Avenue apartment. She is insulted when he requests payment, and Joe ultimately gives money to her.
After discovering that the alleged pimp is actually an unhinged religious fanatic , Joe flees and unsuccessfully searches for Rico. Joe spends his days wandering the city, listening to his Zenith portable radio and sitting in his hotel room. When his money runs out, management locks Joe out and impounds his belongings.
In an attempt to make money, Joe receives oral sex from a meek young man in a movie theater, but the man cannot pay. Joe threatens him, but releases him unharmed. The next day, Joe spots Rico at a diner, and angrily confronts him. Rico manages to calm Joe, and invites him to share his squalid, condemned apartment squat. Joe reluctantly accepts, and the two begin a "business relationship" as hustlers. Rico asks Joe to call him "Rico" instead of "Ratso", but Joe does not oblige.
They struggle with severe poverty, stealing food and failing to get work for Joe. Joe pawns his radio and sells his blood, while Rico's persistent cough worsens during a winter without heat in the freezing apartment. In intermittent flashbacks , Joe's grandmother raises him after his mother abandons him. He has a tragic relationship with Annie, disclosed through hazy flashbacks in which they are attacked and raped by a cowboy gang. Annie shows signs of mental trauma and is taken into an ambulance.
Rico tells Joe his father was an illiterate Italian immigrant shoeshiner whose job yielded a bad back and lung damage from inhaling shoe polish. Rico learned shoeshining from his father, but considers it degrading and generally refuses to do it. When he breaks into a stand and shines Joe's cowboy boots to attract clients, two police officers arrive and sit with their dirty boots next to Joe's. Rico dreams of escaping to Miami , shown in fantasies in which he and Joe frolic on a beach and are pampered at a resort, including a boy polishing Rico's boots.
