The title comes from a nursery rhyme read to Chief Bromden as a child by his grandmother, mentioned in the book:
Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn, Apple seed and apple thorn, Wire, briar, limber lock Three geese in a flock One flew East One flew West And one flew over the cuckoo's nest.
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.[6] Wasserman's 1963–1964 Broadway stage adaptation successfully opened, but Douglas was unable to find a studio willing to make it with him.[5]
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.[5]
Wasserman subsequently sold his film rights to Douglas in 1970, but then delayed the film for several more years with lawsuits.[5] 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.[2] Douglas optioned the film to director Richard Rush, but he was unable to secure financing from major studios.[7][8] In March 1973, 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.[2][5][7]
Zaentz, a voracious reader, felt an affinity with Kesey, and so after Hauben's first attempt he asked Kesey to write the screenplay.[2] 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.[9] 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.[5]
Hal Ashby was hired to replace Rush as director in 1973, but he was also replaced by Forman after he successfully fled to the United States. Although Douglas and Zaentz were unaware that he had been his father's first choice to direct, they began considering him after Hauben showed them Forman's 1967 Czechoslovak film The Firemen's Ball.[5][2] Douglas later said 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."[2]
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 with Douglas and Zaentz further.[6] 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."[2] 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".[10]
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.[11][12] Gene Hackman,[13][14] James Caan,[15] Marlon Brando,[13][14] and Burt Reynolds[16] were all considered for the role of McMurphy. All four turned down the role. which ultimately went to 37-year-old Jack Nicholson on the suggestion of Ashby.[17] 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 that "that turned out to be a great blessing: it gave us the chance to get the ensemble right".[2] 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 called Douglas to say: "the biggest sonofabitch Indian came in the other day!"[2]
Jeanne Moreau, Angela Lansbury, Colleen Dewhurst, Geraldine Page, Ellen Burstyn, Anne Bancroft, and Jane Fonda all were considered to portray Nurse Ratched before Lily Tomlin was ultimately cast in the role.[5][6] However, Forman became interested in recasting Tomlin with Louise Fletcher, who had a supporting role in the film, after viewing her film Thieves Like Us (1974). A mutual acquaintance, the casting director Fred Roos, had already mentioned Fletcher's name as a possibility. Even so, it took four or five meetings, across one year, for Fletcher to secure the role of Nurse Ratched.[18][5] 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.[19] Tomlin subsequently left the film to replace Fletcher in Nashville (1975). In 2016, Fletcher recalled that Nicholson's salary was "enormous", while the rest of the cast worked at or close to scale. She put in 11 weeks, grossing US$10,000 (equivalent to $57,000 in 2023).[19]
Forman also considered Shelley Duvall for the role of Candy; coincidentally, she, Nicholson, and Scatman Crothers (who portrays Turkle) all later appeared as part of the main cast of The Shining. Bud Cort was considered for the role of Billy Bibbit before Brad Dourif was cast.[20]
Rehearsals
Prior to commencement of filming, a week of rehearsals started on January 4, 1975, in Oregon shortly after Nicholson concluded his previous film The Fortune (1975).[5] The cast 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.[2]
Filming
Principal photography began on January 13, 1975, and concluded approximately three months later.[5] The film was shot on location in Salem, Oregon, the surrounding area, and the coastal town of Depoe Bay, Oregon.[5][21][22]
The producers decided to shoot the film in the Oregon State Hospital, an actual mental hospital, as this is also the setting of the novel.[23] 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.[2]
For the group therapy scenes, Forman and his cinematographer Haskell Wexler used three cameras to record all shots for the scene simultaneously. Although this was unusual for the time and more expensive, it allowed Forman and Wexler to capture the actors' authentic reactions to each other.[2]
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.[2]
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 militant group the Weather Underground were being interviewed while hiding from the law. However, Forman said he had terminated Wexler's services over artistic differences. Douglas also claimed Wexler wanted to get Forman fired in order to direct the film himself, and was fueling the cast's distrust of Forman and lack of confidence in their own performances. 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".[24]
According to Butler, Nicholson refused to speak to Forman: "...[Jack] never talked to Miloš at all, he only talked to me".[25]
The production went over the initial budget of $2 million and over-schedule, but Zaentz, who was personally financing the movie, was able to come up with the difference by borrowing against his company, Fantasy Records. The total production budget came to $4.4 million.[2]
