Story of movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo%27s Nest Film : One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a 1975 American comedy-drama film directed by Miloš Forman, based on the 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. The film stars Jack Nicholson, and features a supporting cast of Louise Fletcher, William Redfield, Will Sampson, and Brad Dourif. The film also featured Christopher Lloyd in his film debut.
| One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | |
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Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Miloš Forman |
| Produced by |
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| Screenplay by |
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| Based on | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey |
| Starring |
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| Music by | Jack Nitzsche |
| Cinematography | Haskell Wexler |
| Edited by |
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Production company | Fantasy Films |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
Release date |
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Running time | 133 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3 million |
| Box office | $109 million (North America) |
Considered by some to be one of the greatest films ever made, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is No. 33 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movies list. The film was the second to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Actor in Lead Role, Actress in Lead Role, Director and Screenplay) following It Happened One Night in 1934, an accomplishment not repeated until 1991 with The Silence of the Lambs. It also won numerous Golden Globe and BAFTA Awards.
In 1993, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress, and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Screenplay
In 1963 Oregon, recidivist criminal Randle McMurphy is moved to a mental institution after serving a short sentence on a prison farm for statutory rape of a 15-year-old. Though not actually mentally ill, McMurphy hopes to avoid hard labor and serve the rest of his sentence in a relaxed environment. Upon arriving at the hospital, he finds the ward run by Nurse Ratched, a steely passive-aggressive tyrant who subtly intimidates her patients into doing her bidding.
The other patients include anxious, stuttering Billy Bibbit; Charlie Cheswick, who is prone to childish tantrums; delusional Martini; the well-educated, paranoid Dale Harding; belligerent Max Taber; epileptic Jim Sefelt; and "Chief" Bromden, a tall Native American believed to be deaf and mute. Ratched soon sees McMurphy’s lively, rebellious presence as a threat to her authority, confiscating the patients’ cigarettes and rationing them. During his time in the ward, McMurphy gets into a battle of wits with Ratched. He steals a hospital bus, escaping with several patients to go on a fishing trip, encouraging his friends to become more self-confident.
McMurphy learns his sentence may become indefinite and he makes plans to escape, exhorting Chief to throw a hydrotherapy cart through a window. McMurphy, Chief, and Cheswick get into a fight with the orderlies after the latter becomes agitated over his stolen cigarettes. Ratched sends them to the "shock shop", where McMurphy discovers Chief can actually speak despite feigning being deaf and mute to avoid engaging with anyone. After being subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, McMurphy returns to the ward pretending to have brain damage, although he reveals the treatment has charged him up even more. McMurphy and Chief make plans to escape, but decide to throw a secret Christmas party for their friends after Ratched leaves for the night.
McMurphy sneaks two women, Candy and Rose, into the ward, and bribes the night guard. After a night of partying, McMurphy and Chief prepare to escape, inviting Billy to come with them. Not ready to leave the hospital, he refuses. McMurphy instead convinces him to have sex with Candy. Ratched arrives in the morning to find the ward in disarray and most of the patients passed out drunk. She discovers Billy and Candy together, the former now free of his stutter, until Ratched threatens to inform his mother about his escapade. Billy is overwhelmed with fear and locks himself in the doctor’s office where he commits suicide. The enraged McMurphy chokes Ratched, before being knocked out by an orderly.
Ratched comes back with a neck brace and a scratchy voice. Rumors spread that McMurphy has escaped in order to avoid being taken "upstairs". Later that night, Chief sees McMurphy being returned to his bed. He discovers that McMurphy has lobotomy scars on his forehead, and smothers his friend with a pillow. Chief finally throws the hydrotherapy cart through the window and escapes into the night, cheered on by Taber.
- Jack Nicholson as Randle McMurphy
- Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched
- Will Sampson as "Chief" Bromden
- William Redfield as Dale Harding
- Brad Dourif as Billy Bibbit
- Sydney Lassick as Charlie Cheswick
- Christopher Lloyd as Max Taber
- Danny DeVito as Martini
- Dean Brooks as Dr. John Spivey
- William Duell as Jim Sefelt
- Vincent Schiavelli as Bruce Frederickson
- Michael Berryman as Ellis
- Nathan George as Attendant Washington
- Marya Small as Candy
- Scatman Crothers as Orderly Turkle
- Phil Roth as Woolsey
- Louisa Moritz as Rose
- Peter Brocco as Col. Matterson
Actor Kirk Douglas—who had originated the role of McMurphy in the 1963–64 Broadway stage version of the Ken Kesey novel—had purchased the film rights to the story, and tried for a decade to bring it to the big screen, but was unable to find a studio willing to make it with him. Eventually, he gave the rights to his son Michael Douglas, who succeeded in getting the film produced—but the elder Douglas, by then nearly 60, was considered too old for the McMurphy role, which ultimately went to 38-year-old Jack Nicholson. Douglas brought in Saul Zaentz as co-producer.
The film's first screenwriter, Lawrence Hauben, introduced Douglas to the work of Miloš Forman, whose 1967 Czechoslovak film The Firemen's Ball had the sort of qualities they were looking for. Forman flew to California and went through the script page by page and outlined what he would do, in contrast with other directors who had been approached who were less than forthcoming. Forman wrote in 2012: "To me, was not just literature, but real life, the life I lived in Czechoslovakia from my birth in 1932 until 1968. The Communist Party was my Nurse Ratched, telling me what I could and could not do; what I was or was not allowed to say; where I was and was not allowed to go; even who I was and was not."
Saul Zaentz, a voracious reader, felt an affinity with Kesey, and so after Hauben's first attempt he asked Kesey to write the screenplay, and promised him a piece of the action, but it did not work out and ended in a financial dispute.
Hal Ashby, who had been an early consideration for director, suggested Jack Nicholson for the role of McMurphy. Production was delayed for about six months because of Nicholson's schedule. Douglas later stated in an interview that this had been a blessing, as it allowed time "to get the ensemble right."
Casting
Danny DeVito, Douglas's oldest friend, was the first to be cast – having played one of the patients, Martini, in the 1971 off-Broadway production. Chief Bromden, played by Will Sampson, was found through the referral of a used car dealer Douglas met on an airplane flight when Douglas told him they wanted a big guy for the character. The dealer sold a lot of cars to Native Americans and six months later called Douglas to say: “the biggest sonofabitch Indian came in the other day!”
Miloš Forman had considered Shelley Duvall for the role of Candy. While screening Thieves Like Us (1974) to see if she was right for the role, he became interested in Louise Fletcher, who had a supporting role, for the role of Nurse Ratched. A mutual acquaintance, the casting director Fred Roos, had already mentioned her name as a possibility. Even so it took four or five meetings, over a year, (during which the role was offered to other actresses) for Fletcher to secure the role of Nurse Ratched. Her final audition was late in 1974, with Forman, Zaentz and Douglas. The day after Christmas, her agent called to say she was expected at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem on January 4 to begin rehearsals.
Rehearsals
Prior to commencement of filming, a week of rehearsals started on January 4, 1975, in Oregon, during which the actors watched the patients in their daily routine and at group therapy. Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher also witnessed electroconvulsive therapy being performed on a patient.
Filming
With the exception of Nicholson, the rest of the cast worked for scale, or a little above that. Fletcher worked for 11 weeks, making $10,000 before taxes.
Filming began in January 1975, and concluded approximately three months later, and was shot on location in Salem, Oregon, and the surrounding area, as well as on the Oregon coast.
The producers decided to shoot the film in the Oregon State Hospital, an actual mental hospital, as this was also the setting of the novel. The hospital’s director, Dean Brooks, was supportive of the filming and eventually ended up playing the character of Dr. John Spivey in the film. Brooks identified a patient for each of the actors to shadow, and some of the cast even slept on the wards at night. He also wanted to incorporate his patients into the crew, to which the producers agreed. Douglas recalls that it was not until later that he found out that many of them were criminally insane.
As Forman did not allow the actors to see the day's filming, this led to the cast losing confidence in him, while Nicholson also began to wonder about his performance. Douglas convinced Forman to show Nicholson something, which he did, and restored the actor's confidence.
Haskell Wexler was fired as cinematographer and replaced by Bill Butler. Wexler believed his dismissal was due to his concurrent work on the documentary Underground, in which the radical terrorist group The Weather Underground were being interviewed while hiding from the law. However, Miloš Forman said he had terminated Wexler over artistic differences. Both Wexler and Butler received Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, though Wexler said there was "only about a minute or two minutes in that film I didn't shoot".
According to Butler, Jack Nicholson refused to speak to Forman: "... never talked to Miloš at all, he only talked to me."
Filming went over the initial budget of $2m and over-schedule, but Saul Zaentz, who was personally financing the movie, was able to fund this by borrowing against his company, Fantasy Records. The movie cost in total $4.4m to make.
Critical
The film was met with heavy critical acclaim; Roger Ebert said:
| “ | Miloš Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a film so good in so many of its parts that there's a temptation to forgive it when it goes wrong. But it does go wrong, insisting on making larger points than its story really should carry, so that at the end, the human qualities of the characters get lost in the significance of it all. And yet, there are those moments of brilliance. | ” |
Ebert would later put the film on his "Great Movies" list. A.D. Murphy of Variety wrote a mixed review as well, as did Vincent Canby: Writing in The New York Times:
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