2002 mercury cougar

My car keeps shutting down on me. I try and restart it, and it won't start. If I let it sit for awhile, it restarts, but I have to hold the gas pedal down and it will slowly Rev up until it runs

My guess would be the fuel pump is going bad as the first thing to check based on those symptoms. Unfortunately it could be a dozen other things, so don't just buy a new fuel pump, check the pressure and operation.