One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a 1975 American psychological comedy-drama film directed by Miloš Forman, based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey. The film stars Jack Nicholson as a new patient at a mental institution and Louise Fletcher as the abusive head nurse. Will Sampson, Danny DeVito, Sydney Lassick, William Redfield, Christopher Lloyd, and Brad Dourif play supporting roles, with the latter two making their feature-film debuts and Sampson having never acted before.
Originally announced in 1962 with Kirk Douglas starring, the film took 13 years to develop. Filming finally began in January 1975 and lasted three months, on location in Salem, Oregon, and the surrounding area, and in Depoe Bay on the north Oregon coast. The producers shot the film in the Oregon State Hospital, an actual psychiatric hospital, which is also the novel's setting. The hospital is still in operation, though the original buildings in the film have been demolished. The film was released on November 19, 1975.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest received critical acclaim and is considered by critics and audiences to be one of the greatest films ever made. It is the second of three films to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay) following It Happened One Night (1934) and preceding 1991's The Silence of the Lambs. It 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. Additionally, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was ranked number 33 on the American Film Institute's updated 100 Years... 100 Movies list in 2007.
Plot In 1963 Oregon, Randle McMurphy is incarcerated for his statutory rape of a 15-year-old girl and five previous arrests for assault. He feigns mental illness so he can be moved to a mental institution and avoid hard labor at a work farm. The medical ward is dominated by the cold, passive-aggressive Nurse Ratched, who maintains control over the patients through intimidation. Among them are young, anxious, stuttering Billy Bibbit; Charlie Cheswick, who is prone to temper tantrums; delusional, child-like Martini; the articulate and repressed homosexual Dale Harding; belligerent and profane Max Taber; epileptics Jim Sefelt and Bruce Fredrickson; quiet but violent-minded Scanlon; tall, deaf-mute Native American Chief Bromden; and several others with chronic conditions.
Ratched sees McMurphy's lively, rebellious presence as a threat to her authority, and she rations the patients' cigarettes and suspends their card-playing privileges. McMurphy bets the other inmates he can escape by hurling a hydrotherapy fountain through a locked window, but unsurprisingly is unable to lift the heavy device. He hijacks a charter bus, picks up his girlfriend Candy, and escapes with several patients to steal a recreational fishing boat, exposing them to the outside world and encouraging them to discover their abilities and find self-confidence.
Returning to the ward, an orderly explains the length of his stay in the mental institution is indefinite, something McMurphy didn't know. Chief, Taber, and McMurphy are the only nonchronic patients who have been involuntarily committed; the others have committed themselves voluntarily, but are too afraid to leave. When Cheswick throws a fit demanding his cigarettes from Ratched, McMurphy starts a fight with the orderlies, and Chief intervenes to help him.
McMurphy, Chief, and Cheswick are sent to the disturbed ward, and Chief reveals to McMurphy he was faking deaf-muteness to avoid interacting with others. The two plan to escape to Canada together. McMurphy is subjected to electroconvulsive therapy and returns to the ward pretending to be brain-damaged before revealing that the treatment has made him even more determined to defeat Ratched. McMurphy and Chief plan a secret Christmas party for their friends after Ratched and the orderlies leave for the night, before making their escape. McMurphy bribes the night orderly, Turkle, to let Candy and her friend Rose into the ward with alcohol for the party. McMurphy and Chief invite Billy to escape with them. Billy refuses, but asks for a "date" with Candy; McMurphy arranges for him to spend a night with her. McMurphy falls asleep, drunk, instead of escaping with Chief.
Ratched arrives in the morning to find most of the patients passed out. Discovering Billy and Candy in bed together, her attempts to embarrass Billy in front of the others fails when Billy overcomes his stutter and stands up to her. She threatens to tell his mother and Billy reverts to stuttering. Ratched has him locked in a separate room as punishment, where he kills himself. McMurphy punches an orderly trying to escape with Chief, and a melee ensues with the other orderlies. Ratched calls for order, but her nonchalant manner enrages McMurphy, who strangles her until he's subdued by the orderlies.
Ratched returns later in a neck brace, speaking weakly, unable to stop Harding from resuming the card games. McMurphy is absent, rumored escaped, but Chief sees McMurphy being returned to his bed that night. He's elated that McMurphy had kept his promise not to escape without him, but discovers McMurphy has been lobotomized. He tearfully embraces McMurphy, then smothers him with a pillow. He rips the heavy hydrotherapy fountain from its base and throws it through the window, as McMurphy had earlier attempted. Chief escapes, with Taber and the other inmates awakening to cheer him on as he runs into the surrounding countryside.
Cast
Production Development In 1962, Kirk Douglas's company Joel Productions announced that it had acquired the rights to make Broadway stage and film adaptations of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with Douglas starring as McMurphy in both the play and the film, Dale Wasserman writing the stageplay, and George Roy Hill directing the film based on Wasserman's play. Jack Nicholson had also tried to buy the film rights to the novel, but was outbid by Douglas. Wasserman's 1963–1964 Broadway stage adaptation successfully opened, but Douglas was unable to find a studio willing to make the film with him.
Kirk Douglas hired Miloš Forman to direct after meeting him in Prague during a tour of the Eastern Bloc. Avco-Embassy Pictures optioned the film in 1969, but Forman was prevented from directing the film by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and the beginning of the "normalization" period in which the Soviet Union forced Czechoslovakia to reverse most of its Prague Spring liberalization reforms. Forman and Douglas fell completely out of contact after the Czechoslovak StB put Forman under strict surveillance. It also intercepted a copy of the novel Douglas sent to his home in Prague, which meant he was unable to read the book.
Wasserman subsequently sold his film rights to Douglas in 1970, but then delayed the film for several more years with lawsuits. In 1971, Kirk Douglas's son Michael Douglas convinced his father to allow him to produce the film, as he was drawn to the novel's "one man against the system" plot due to his involvement with student activism at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Michael Douglas optioned the film to director Richard Rush, but Rush was unable to secure financing from major studios. In March 1973, Michael Douglas announced a new deal in which he would co-produce the film with Saul Zaentz as the first project of Fantasy Records' new film division.
Zaentz, a voracious reader, felt an affinity with Kesey, so after Hauben's first attempt, he asked Kesey to write the screenplay. Kesey participated in the early stages of script development, but withdrew after creative differences with the producers over casting and narrative point of view; ultimately, he filed suit against the production and won a settlement. Although Kesey was paid for his work, his screenplay from the first-person point of view of Chief Bromden was not used. Instead, Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman wrote a new screenplay from a third-person perspective.
Hal Ashby was hired to replace Rush as director in 1973, but he was also replaced by Forman after Forman had successfully fled to the United States. Although Michael Douglas and Zaentz were unaware that Forman had been Kirk Douglas's first choice to direct, they began considering him after Hauben showed them Forman's 1967 Czechoslovak film The Firemen's Ball. Michael Douglas later said that the film "had the sort of qualities we were looking for; it took place in one enclosed situation, with a plethora of unique characters he had the ability to juggle".
Although Forman was suffering from a mental health crisis and refused to leave his Hotel Chelsea room in New York City for months, Douglas and Zaentz sent him a copy of the novel. Although Forman was not aware that the novel was the one which Douglas's father had hired him to direct in the 1960s, he quickly decided that it was "the best material I'd come across in America" and flew to California to discuss the film further with Douglas and Zaentz. They quickly hired Forman because, in Douglas's words, "Unlike the other directors we saw, who kept their cards close to their chest, he went through the script page by page and told us what he would do." Forman wrote in 2012: "To me, [the story] 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."
Casting Although Kirk Douglas allowed his son to produce the film, he remained interested in playing McMurphy. However, Ashby and Forman felt Kirk Douglas was too old for the role and decided to recast him. This decision would strain relations between Kirk and Michael Douglas for many years, although Michael Douglas claimed it had not been his decision to recast him. Gene Hackman, James Caan, Marlon Brando, and Burt Reynolds were all considered for the role of McMurphy. Ashby wanted 37-year-old Jack Nicholson to play McMurphy, but Douglas was unsure if he was right for the role and Forman's first choice was Reynolds. All four turned down the role, which ultimately went to Nicholson. Nicholson had never played this type of role before. Production was delayed for about six months because of Nicholson's schedule. Douglas later stated in an interview, "[T]hat turned out to be a great blessing; it gave us the chance to get the ensemble right." Nicholson did extensive research for the role and even met patients in a psychiatric ward to watch electroconvulsive shock therapy to prepare for the role.
Danny DeVito was the first to be cast, reprising his role as the patient Martini from the 1971 off-Broadway production. Chief Bromden (who turns out to be the title character), played by Will Sampson, was referred by Mel Lambert (who portrayed the harbormaster in the fishing scene), a used-car dealer Douglas met on an airplane flight when Douglas told him they wanted a "big guy" to play the part. Lambert's father often sold cars to Native American customers, and six months later, Lambert called Douglas to say: "the biggest sonofabitch Indian came in the other day!" Sampson was so large that Nicholson sat in his lap on the small plane Michael Douglas and they flew on after their meeting; Douglas recalled Nicholson repeating, "It's the Chief, man, it's the Chief!"