New York City in the winter of 1968 was extremely cold.
It was 2:00 am on a Tuesday, and 42nd Street was a neon-lit mess.
Steam came out violently from manhole covers, swirling around the ankles of prostitutes, junkies, and outcast people.
Above them, the marquees of the grindhouse theaters advertised titles like Violent Blondes and Maker's Lust.
Duke stood in the doorway of a shuttered electronics store, his collar turned up against the wind.
He wasn't watching the street, he was watching the battered, nondescript white van parked illegally near a fire hydrant across the avenue.
Beside him, Gary Kurtz shivered, rubbing his gloved hands together.
Kurtz looked less like a Hollywood producer and more like a longshoreman, dressed in heavy wool and a beanie pulled low over his forehead.
"Schlesinger is pushing it," Kurtz murmured, his breath clouding in the freezing air. "He's been rolling for twenty minutes. The film is going to run out."
"Let him roll," Duke said, his voice low. "If he cuts now, he loses the rhythm. Look at them."
Duke pointed a chin toward the crowd.
To the untrained eye, it was just the usual midnight chaos of Times Square. But Duke saw the two figures weaving through the group.
Dustin Hoffman was limping, dragging his limping leg as if it hurt him, his face a mask of sweaty, feverish desperation.
Dustin had even found him a few days ago to speak about his limp but Duke didnt had much pain in his leg, so he could'nt share much experience.
Beside him towered Jon Voight, the buckskin jacket looking ridiculous against the seriousness of the city.
They weren't actors in that moment. They were Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo, two men colliding in the gutter of the current American Dream.
"The cops are circling the block again," Kurtz noted, his eyes scanning the traffic. "Blue and white cruiser. Third time."
"They won't stop," Duke said. "I dropped the envelope to the guy, Evans spoke with at the precinct this morning, 'Consulting fee.' We have the street until 4:00 am as long as we behave."
This was the new reality of Ithaca Productions.
They weren't sitting in director's chairs with megaphones.
Duke had established a strict "No Interference" policy with the creative team.
Inside that white van across the street, the cinematographer Adam Holender was hunched over an Arriflex camera, shooting through a one-way mirror taped over the side window.
It was guerrilla filmmaking in its purest, most dangerous form. There were no permits for this specific shot. No extras.
The people bumping into Voight and Hoffman were real New Yorkers, angry, cold, and oblivious to the fact that they were being immortalized in what would become the Best Picture of 1969.
"Cut," a voice crackled over the walkie-talkie hidden in Kurtz's jacket pocket.
Kurtz let out a breath. "That's a wrap on the exterior."
Duke didn't move immediately. He watched Hoffman collapse against a lamppost the moment the "cut" was called.
The actor didn't drop the limp. He stayed in the pain.
"He's hurting himself for this," Kurtz whispered, watching Hoffman. "I heard he apparently put rocks in his shoe."
"He knows what's he doing," Duke said. "Come on. Let's get them some coffee before they freeze to death."
An hour later, the core team had retreated to a 24-hour diner on 8th Avenue.
The place smelled of burnt grease, cigarette smoke, and floor wax. The fluorescent lights hummed with a headache-inducing buzz, casting a sickly pallor over everyone.
They had pushed three tables together in the back. John Schlesinger sat in the corner, looking exhausted but electric.
He was a British director accustomed to more control, but he was finding a strange joy in the anarchy of New York.
Jerome Hellman, the credited producer who had originally fought the battles with United Artists, was there too.
Dustin Hoffman sat hunched over a plate of eggs he wasn't eating. His hair was greasy, his teeth stained yellow for the role.
He looked up as Duke slid into the booth across from him.
"It's too much," Hoffman mumbled, his voice raspy. "I'm thinking on the character in my head, Duke. It's too grotesque. People are going to hate me."
Duke poured black coffee from a pot.
He looked at Hoffman calmly. He remembered analyzing the twitches of Hoffman's face fifty years from now on Film Class.
"They won't hate himtoo much, Dustin," Duke said softly. "They're going to be pitying him."
Hoffman shook his head. "A rat. He's a con man. Maybe I should pull back? Just a little? Make him... I don't know, funnier?"
"No," Duke said. "Listen to me. The world outside this diner? It's changing. People know it. They don't want to be lied to anymore, honesty is the best thing your character can have."
Duke leaned in. "If you make him palatable, you kill him. But if you play him exactly like you are sweaty, desperate, dying, stealing then he becomes human."
Voight, who had been silently eating toast, looked up. His blue eyes were wide, still carrying the naive vacancy of Joe Buck. "He's right, Dustin. That's why the scenes work."
Schlesinger lit a cigarette, nodding. "The studio will hate it, of course. Evans will have an aneurysm from the stress."
"Let Evans have his aneurysm," Duke said, taking a sip of the bitter coffee. "My job is to deal with him and make sure the check clears."
Kurtz was sitting at the end of the table, organizing the shot list for the next day.
He paused, looking at Duke.
"We have the party scene coming up," Kurtz said, changing the subject. "The Warhol crowd. Viva and Ultra Violet agreed to do it."
(Isabelle Collin Dufresne known as Ultra Violet)
"Good," Duke said. "Let it get weird."
As the group fell into a tired silence, eating their food, Duke looked out the window. It was snowing again, Duke closed his eyes to rest for a second.
The next afternoon, the reality of the studio system intruded on their guerrilla production.
Duke was standing in a phone booth on the street, the receiver pressed to his ear. The connection to Los Angeles was crackly, filled with static.
"Duke? Are you there? The connection is garbage."
Robert Evans sounded like he was calling from another planet.
"I'm here, Bob," Duke said, huddled in his coat. "How is Beverly Hills?"
"Warm and expensive," Evans replied. Then his tone shifted. "I saw the first batch of dailies you flew over. The lab just finished processing."
Duke waited. He knew this conversation was coming.
"It's a little too dark, Duke," Evans said, his voice tight. "I mean, literally dark. And grainy. And... Jesus, the close-ups of Hoffman. He looks like he has leprosy."
"It's Cinema verité," Duke said calmly. "Tell him it's the European style. That's what the critics want."
"I don't know what the critics want, but I know what the exhibitors want," Evans countered.
"They want movie stars. You've got Voight looking like a moron and Hoffman looking like a corpse. United Artists is laughing at us, Duke."
"UA is laughing because they don't want to seem wrong," Duke lied.
"Bob, listen to me. Do not touch the negative. Do not send notes to Schlesinger. You promised me control."
"I promised you control," Evans snapped. "I didn't promise to let you tank the stock price."
"If this movie gets an X-rating and looking at this footage, the MPAA is just about to get founded and they're going to have to invent a new rating just for us. How do we even make money?"
Duke closed his eyes, visualizing the numbers in his head.
The budget for Midnight Cowboy was just over $3 million.
It would go on to gross over $44 million in the domestic box office alone. It was one of the most profitable films, percentage-wise, of the decade.
"Trust the process, Bob," Duke said. "Controversy is the only marketing budget we need."
"When they slap that X on the poster, every person under thirty is going to line up just to see, what is it about."
Evans was silent for a moment. Duke could hear the faint sound of a lighter clicking on the other end.
"You better be right," Evans exhaled. "Because I'm sticking my neck out. If this flops, I'm getting fired, and you're getting shelved."
"It won't flop," Duke assured him. Then, he decided to throw Evans a bone. "By the way, Bob. Stop worrying about the Cowboy and start thinking about the Kid."
"What kid?"
"The Sundance Kid," Duke said. "Ithaca just closed the deal on the Goldman script. I've got the signed contracts in my briefcase."
The change in Evans' voice was instantaneous. "You got it? Fox and Warner were having internal discussions about whether to buy it. How much did you pay?"
"Twenty-five thousand," Duke said, allowing a small smirk to touch his lips. "Total buyout."
"Twenty-five..." Evans nodded on the other side of the phone. "Great, i though it would be more expensive."
"I'm sending the script to Newman's people tomorrow," Duke said. "And I'm sending a copy to Redford."
"Focus on that, Bob. Let me and Schlesinger play in the mud for a few more weeks. You get the polish ready for the Western."
"Newman and Redford," Evans mused, the anxiety about the art film vanishing instantly at the prospect of a blockbuster. "
That's the ticket. Alright, Duke. You play in the mud. Just make sure Hoffman doesn't do too much crazy stuff."
The line went dead. Duke hung up the phone and stepped back out into the cold. He had bought them another month of freedom.
The weeks ground on.
The production moved from the streets to the interiors. The apartment set, Ratso's squat was a masterpiece of production design. It smelled of soup and stale air.
Duke spent his time in the shadows, watching.
He watched as Schlesinger coaxed the vulnerability out of Voight.
He watched as Hoffman disintegrated, physically and emotionally, into the role.
He knew Hoffman was until The Graduate became very popular a man on unemployment benefits. He wondered if that helped his perfomance on this role.
There was a moment, late in the schedule, that Duke had been waiting for. The bus scene.
They were filming the finale on a Greyhound bus headed south.
The Florida Dream. A transition from the grey world of New York to the bright sun of Miami.
The crew was cramped in the back of the bus. The air conditioning was broken, but this time, the heat was welcome.
Duke stood next to Kurtz as the camera focused on Voight's face. Hoffman was slumped against him, eyes open, lifeless.
Schlesinger called "Action."
The scene played out in a silence that was louder than the screaming traffic of Times Square.
Voight realized his friend was dead. He didn't scream. He didn't wail. He just... accepted it.
He put his arm around the small, dead body of the only person who had ever understood him.
It was devastating.
"I didn't really get the ending," Kurtz whispered, his voice cracking. "Until right now. I didn't get it."
"Get what?" Duke asked softly.
"Why we're here," Kurtz said. "I thought we were making a movie about a hustler. But we're not."
Duke nodded. "Dustin is great."
"Cut!" Schlesinger's voice was gentle this time. "Print it."
The mood on the bus didn't lift instantly. The crew moved quietly..
Duke walked over to Schlesinger. The director looked drained, emptied out.
"We have it," Schlesinger said. "That was the most important part. If the lab doesn't ruin it, we have a film."
"The lab won't ruin it," Duke promised. "We'll personally take the canisters to LA."
The production wrapped two days later.
The wrap party was a subdued affair in a dive bar in the Village.
Duke left early. He walked back to his hotel.
He entered his suite and found a telegram waiting on the desk. It had been slid under the door.
He picked it up, tearing open the yellow envelope. It was from Jeffrey in Los Angeles.
To: Duke
From: Jeffrey
Puzo delivered the final draft six hundred pages.
Duke stared at the paper.
He laughed and nodded.
In 2025, The Godfather was considered a Classic of cinema. But in 1968, it was just a bloated manuscript that nobody wanted, except for him.
He walked to the window and looked out at the New York skyline.
Somewhere out there, in Little Italy, Martin Scorsese was probably shooting a student film. Somewhere in Queens, a young Francis Ford Coppola was worrying about his next gig.
Duke took out his pen and wrote a reply on the hotel stationery to be sent in the morning.
To: Jeffrey
From: Duke
Lock it in the vault.
He set the pen down.
Midnight Cowboy was in the bag, Butch Cassidy was in pre-production and The Godfather was in the vault.
Duke lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He was tired.
His bones ached from the New York cold.
"Gary," he walked to the room next door. "Pack your bags, we're going back to Hollywood."
---
Yo. my whole family got food poisoning from a shrimp tiktok recipe my sister made, i always though it food poisoning was a myth. That's why im late
Bye