I disagree with Ebert, it was a great film. The great acting is well know, but the story is also gritty and realistic. The naive hick gets "eaten alive" by NYC, and he also discovers he is unrealistic about getting paid for sex. Good looking women can easily get paid for sex, but not good looking men(unless it is with guys maybe). "Eggs are expensive, sperm is cheap". Most men learn this when they are kids, Joe Buck is slow and uneducated, so he learns it late.
I saw the movie when it came out, and the relationship between Fatso and Joe Buck did not have gay overtones at all. Joe Buck got hit on by gays because he hung out in hustler zones, but I don’t think that is what he wanted.
Watch movies 30 years old plus and buddy flicks did not mention or imply gay, today people see it in everything.
The film was about two outcasts, pathetic in their own ways. Joe is dumb, naive and good at heart, Fatso is an ugly cripple. They are both poor.
The flashbacks are very important, and Ebert did not get them. They showed inappropriate sexual situations Joe Buck was in as a child, and it helped the audience understand why he would want to waste himself as a adult.
It is well know that many waste suffered abuse as kids, so it fit very well. It didn’t overdo it like a modern movie would, today they would probably have the adult confront the abusers in a dramatic fashion that would never happen. The abuser would be kicked in the nuts by a mannish policewomen, or the prep would be killed.
To see how these two try to "make it" in New York is very interesting, as it turns out they barely survive. Neither fit in really, and they bond like two weird kids in high school who find each other, they are too odd for everybody else so they end up together.
There are interesting movies about men, women, children whenever there is a great story to be told. Unfortunately, Hollywood writers have lost sight of this, and keep making the same movie, all like "Ransom 5" or "Taken". It’s as though they feel guilty or misogynistic if they don’t artificially insert women and children into everything.
The film was a very interesting peek into the dangerous lives of desperate people, and lucky for most of us we don’t have to live them. It is fun to pull back the curtains and peer into other worlds sometimes, and good film makers used to allow us to. . Today, new movies don’t let us look into other types of lives, they show us ideal families we would like to have, and the only peek we get is into a very synthetic world.