Jack Nicholson Crazy Hospital Movie – “We shot it in a real mental hospital, and some of the patients joined the crew. We had a fireman in the art department.
‘Jack and I watched Shock Therapy at 6 a.m.’ … Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito, center and right, flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Photo: Allstar / United Artist
Jack Nicholson Crazy Hospital Movie
My father, Kirk, acquired the rights to Ken Kesey’s novel in the early 1960s and turned it into a Broadway play starring RP McMurphy. He tried to turn it into a movie for years, but it never got off the ground. Meanwhile, I was attending the University of Santa Barbara and was very politically active in the Vietnam War. I loved the book: it was a brilliantly thought-out story of a man against the system. I had never thought about producing, but I told my dad to “run with it.”
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Lawrence Hauben, our first screenwriter, introduced me to the work of Miloš Forman. His 1967 film Fireball had the qualities I was looking for: it took place in a closed-off setting, with many unique characters that he was able to juggle. At that time, Milos was living in the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Apparently, he’s broke and never left the building – rumor has it that he’ll confide in a Czech friend while he’s lying in bed, and then the friend will come out and see a psychiatrist on his behalf. But he flew to California to see us. Unlike other directors we’ve seen keep their cards close to their chest, he went through the script page by page and told us what to do.
My producing partner, Saul Zaentz, the owner of Fantasy Records and an avid reader, felt an affinity with Kesey. After Larry and I first tried, Saul asked Kesey to write the script and promised him a part of the action. But like many novelists who try to adapt their material, it didn’t work out. After that we broke up with him. This was our only long-standing, painful problem. We got into a financial argument – it was stupid, but maybe it was his way of protecting his ego.
Originally nominated to direct, Hal Ashby suggested Jack Nicholson for McMurphy. At first it was difficult to see him because he had never played someone like this before. We were about six months behind Jack’s schedule, but that was a huge blessing: it gave us a chance to get the ensemble right.
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I found Will Sampson, who plays Chief Bromden, through the second-hand dealer I sat next to on the plane.
Danny DeVito, who was my oldest friend and roommate in the late 60s, played Martini, one of the patients in a mental hospital, in a 1971 off-Broadway production, so he was the first actor. I found Will Sampson, who plays Chief Bromden, through a used car dealer from Oregon I was sitting next to on the plane. It turns out that his father was an Indian agent and sold them a lot of cars. I said we’re looking for a big guy to play boss, and six months later I got a call: “Michael, the biggest Sonofbitch Indian came in today!”
Another crazy decision Saul and I made was to film in a mental hospital in Oregon in January when it got dark around three o’clock in the afternoon. It was certainly a risk for hospital director Dean Brooks, who played Jack’s supervisor in the film. He wanted to integrate his patients into the staff. We ended up working with many of them in different departments. I didn’t realize until later that many of them were criminally insane. He worked as an incendiary in the art department. Dean assigned a patient to shadow each of the actors, and some of the cast even slept on the ward at night.
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Jack encourages everyone to bring their A-game. When you watch that baseball scene, he gathers all the patients to watch the game on TV, that’s his nature. But since Milos never allows his actors to watch the film of the day, Jack becomes interested in his performance. Actors began to lose faith in Miloš, and [Kino] Haskell Wexler, who wanted a career as a director, played a little on these doubts. “You have to show Jack something,” I told Milos. So he and everyone else knew the film was in great shape. I soon had to fire Haskell: it was either him or Milos.
We went over budget and over schedule, but Saul bravely funded it to the tune of $2 million. It cost just over $4 million. His partners accused me of taking him on a trip. But we knew we had a movie – there wasn’t a false moment. When we went to the major studios to get a distributor, they all turned down the nine-time Oscar nominee for best picture, director, actor, actress and screenplay. After that, more and more mentally ill people came out of the closet. The film allows us to see them as people.
I took a break from acting for 11 years to have a wonderful time as a mother and housewife. But I was cast in Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us. Milos asked who I was when he looked at Shelley Duvall to rate her for her role in The Cuckoo’s Nest. It took four or five meetings over the course of a year to convince her to let me play Nurse Ratched. I found out later that they offered it to other movie stars, who turned them down.
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So on January 4, 1975, I arrived in Oregon for a week of training, which was very worthwhile. We observed patients in their daily routine and participated in group therapy. Jack and I watched electroconvulsive shock therapy at 6am one morning – it was tough. Making Ratched human was no small feat. Unlike McMurphy, you know nothing about his history. I didn’t want to make him a monster – I wanted to believe him as a real person under the circumstances. I referred to abuse of office, which was a prominent issue during the time when Nixon was forced to resign. I saw very clearly how people believed that they were doing good and that they knew what was best.
I had no makeup on – just Vaseline on my lips and this crazy hairdo. I had to work within certain frameworks, but I improvised a lot. And things would only happen organically. The best part was that there were three cameras for the group therapy scenes, which was an unusual setup. Usually they would do the kick and then the backhand, but Milos did it all at once and it made a big difference. Every time Jack or another patient did something unexpected like a flower, he was caught.
Jack asked me what Ratched’s name was. I told him Mildred, I did. A few weeks later, we cut to McMurphy returning from electroconvulsive shock therapy and pretending to be a zombie. Then he looks at me and says, “Hello, Mildred.” I was so shocked that my face turned red. This is my favorite moment.
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In the end, I got tired of all the tights playing with Nurse Ratched down to her skimpy dress. I stopped communicating with the cast because it wasn’t good for the role. They had so much fun every night and I was jealous. I thought, “What can I get them as a parting gift?” So one day at lunch time I asked the photographer to meet me in the ward. In a later cut scene, McMurphy arrives for breakfast in a pair of silky black boxer shorts with a whale print on them. I put them on with nothing on, then put on my nurse’s shoes and hat and looked over my shoulder and held up the Betty Grable war poster again. I printed them all and signed them: “Mildred.”
The Oscars were awesome. I didn’t think I would win, but I wrote a speech anyway. I never told anyone to sign “thank you” to my deaf parents, but eventually I did. After a year or two, it was kind of scary: people would stop me at the airport and tell me how much they hated me. Now I’m next to Anthony Hopkins for Hannibal Lecter on the list of best villains. It is usually number 1. A convicted felon is transferred to a mental hospital for evaluation, but when his hostile antics officially get him committed, he soon realizes he’d be better off in prison.
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