Texas greenhorn Joe Buck abandons his job as a dishwasher and takes his first trip to New York City. Preening himself as a real “hustler” and feeling he’ll make the big time as a male prostitute, he finds that he is the one getting “hustled” until he teams up with down-and-out but resilient outcast Ratso Rizzo. The initial “country cousin meets city cousin” relationship deepens. In their efforts to bilk a hostile world rebuffing them at every turn, this unlikely pair progress from partners in shady business to comrades as each learn the other’s life stories. Each has found his first real friend.