The Making of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: A Journey From Broadway Flop Risk to Oscar Winning Classic

Daniel Holland
2 hours ago
9 min read

Behind-the-scenes collage of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" with actors in dramatic and candid poses. Text states film title.

There is a story that Jack Nicholson, sitting cross legged on the floor of a cramped Oregon hospital room, asked a psychiatric patient whether the electroshock therapy he received hurt. The patient replied simply, “Only at first.” Nicholson later said the moment stayed with him through every scene. The film’s creation was full of moments like that, small human details tucked behind its global success. The making of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was not just a film production but a messy, emotional, unusually intimate collaboration between actors, hospital staff, political refugees, frustrated producers, and the shadow of Cold War paranoia.

Cast of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest during early filming

What emerged was a film that came to define 1970s American cinema. Yet its path was anything but straightforward. It involved lost manuscripts, a director under surveillance, disputes with the author, a recasting that strained a father and son, and a Czech filmmaker who saw in Kesey’s story a reflection of life under authoritarianism.

This is the story behind the story.

The long road from page to screen

When One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was published in 1962, Kirk Douglas snapped up the film rights almost immediately. Douglas had starred in the Broadway version and believed in the material deeply, imagining himself immortalising Randle McMurphy on the big screen. His company, Joel Productions, announced an adaptation with Douglas as McMurphy, Dale Wasserman writing the screenplay, and George Roy Hill directing.

Colorful book cover for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey. Bold, vibrant text on a geometric background. Worn edges.

Douglas later joked that trying to get the film made in the 1960s felt as if the studios were conspiring against him. Hollywood executives, still firmly under the influence of the Production Code, saw the material as too strange, too bleak, and too political. The world of mental hospitals was a risky subject, and Douglas was simply unable to convince anyone to finance it. Meanwhile, a young Jack Nicholson quietly attempted to obtain the rights himself, but Douglas had outpaced him.

The film rights then became trapped in years of legal tangles. Wasserman sold them back to Douglas in 1970, only to delay the project further with lawsuits that slowed everything down. By then, the counterculture had fully arrived, and the novel’s themes felt more relevant than ever.

It was at this point that Michael Douglas stepped in.

A second generation steps forward

Michael Douglas, then in his twenties and involved in student activism at the University of California, Santa Barbara, understood Cuckoo’s Nest from a different angle. The idea of one rebellious individual challenging a rigid system resonated strongly with him. He convinced his father to let him produce the film instead of starring in it.

He first approached director Richard Rush. Rush loved the book but failed to secure financial backing. The studios still saw no commercial potential. Then in 1973, Douglas met Saul Zaentz, co-owner of Fantasy Records and a man known for taking bold risks. Together, Douglas and Zaentz formed a partnership and committed to making the film independently.

It was Zaentz who suggested returning to Ken Kesey for a screenplay. Kesey agreed at first, delivering a version that told the story strictly from Chief Bromden’s point of view, just as the novel had. But creative differences quickly surfaced. Kesey disliked some of the casting ideas, objected to the shift away from the Chief’s internal monologue, and eventually walked away, filing a lawsuit that he later settled. Kesey famously said he never watched the completed film.

With Kesey gone, screenwriters Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman reworked the script into a more traditionally structured story. The emotional centre remained, but now presented from the outside rather than from within Bromden’s mind.

This proved crucial for casting. Because the next step was a question that nearly derailed the entire project.

Who should play Randle P. McMurphy?

For Kirk Douglas, the answer remained obvious: himself. He had carried the role on Broadway and felt utterly connected to Kesey’s irreverent rebel. But by the early 1970s, Douglas was in his late fifties. Hal Ashby, then attached as director, and later Miloš Forman, felt he was simply too old for the part.

Michael Douglas often said that refusing his father the role was one of the hardest decisions of his entire life. The tension lingered for years.

A parade of actors were considered. Gene Hackman, Marlon Brando, James Caan, and Burt Reynolds all declined. Forman initially favoured Reynolds. Ashby wanted Nicholson, then thirty seven and rising fast. Michael Douglas hesitated, unsure whether Nicholson could embody McMurphy’s swagger and raw unpredictability.

Nicholson’s schedule also caused long delays. What had seemed a setback later proved a benefit, giving casting directors time to build an exceptional ensemble.

Danny DeVito reprised his stage role as Martini. Brad Dourif stunned everyone in his audition for Billy Bibbit. Michael Douglas admitted he never stood a chance for the part once Dourif walked into the room.

The most unexpected casting discovery was Will Sampson, a nearly unknown Native American painter and rodeo performer who stood nearly six foot seven. A used car dealer told Douglas, “The biggest Indian I’ve ever seen just walked in.” Sampson was flown to meet Nicholson, who reportedly sat on Sampson’s lap during a small plane ride and shouted, “It’s the Chief, man, it’s the Chief.”

The greatest casting challenge remained Nurse Ratched.

Nurse in white laughs in a bright, institutional room with men in hospital gowns and robes. A man holds a paper. Mood is lively.

Becoming Nurse Ratched

The role passed through a near endless list of possibilities: Jeanne Moreau, Angela Lansbury, Ellen Burstyn, Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft, and more. Lily Tomlin was even cast at one point. But director Miloš Forman kept returning to one name: Louise Fletcher.

Fletcher had left acting for over a decade to raise her children. Hers was not the obvious Hollywood comeback story. She auditioned repeatedly over the course of a year, with Forman unsure whether she could deliver both the calm composure and the deeply chilling undercurrent that Nurse Ratched demanded.

On her final audition in late 1974, she read opposite Nicholson. The next day, her agent called to tell her she was expected in Oregon in early January to begin rehearsals. She later recalled earning only about ten thousand dollars for eleven weeks of work, while Nicholson’s salary towered above everyone else’s.

Louise Fletcher’s performance became one of the most quietly terrifying in cinema history. She never raised her voice. She rarely changed expression. Yet she conveyed absolute institutional power.

Into the real asylum

The producers made an unusual choice: to shoot the film in an actual psychiatric hospital. The Oregon State Hospital in Salem agreed, under the enthusiastic supervision of its director, Dr Dean Brooks. Brooks not only allowed filming inside the active hospital but also played the fictional Dr Spivey in the film.

Brooks assigned real patients for the actors to shadow. Some cast members slept on the ward. Many only learned later that several of the patients were criminally insane.

Film set hallway with three men; one in a white outfit. A Panavision camera in the foreground. Black and white checkered floor.

The early rehearsals in January 1975 felt more like immersion therapy than preparation. The cast observed therapy sessions, shared meals with patients, and watched electroconvulsive treatment up close. Nicholson and Fletcher attended one together, and Fletcher later said the experience shaped her understanding of Ratched’s clinical detachment.

Forman wanted the group therapy scenes to feel spontaneous, overlapping, and unpolished. To achieve this, cinematographer Haskell Wexler used three cameras that ran simultaneously, capturing facial reactions and small behavioural details that would be impossible to recreate. Today, this feels normal, but in 1975 it was a radical, expensive choice.

Filming was not without turbulence. Conflicts simmered over Wexler’s approach and his involvement with the documentary Underground, about the Weather Underground. He was eventually removed from the production, replaced by Bill Butler. Nicholson, perhaps partly in protest, spoke only to Butler on set for the remainder of filming.

Forman later described the atmosphere as “controlled chaos”.

Actors and crew gather on a film set resembling a hospital ward. A director guides an actor while others sit, creating a focused ambiance.

A director shaped by political repression

What makes Cuckoo’s Nest feel so authentic is perhaps that Forman understood its themes intimately. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1932, he had lived through Nazi occupation, Stalinism, and the harsh clampdown following the Prague Spring. “The Communist Party was my Nurse Ratched,” he wrote, “telling me what I could and could not do.”

Kirk Douglas had originally offered Forman the directing job in the 1960s, but political interference in Czechoslovakia prevented Forman from receiving the novel. The package was intercepted by the StB, the state security service. Douglas believed Forman had simply ignored him. Forman believed Douglas had abandoned him. It took years for the misunderstanding to come to light.

Two men smiling, one in a dark jacket with a name tag and the other in a light shirt with text. Bright indoor setting, happy mood.

By the time Forman escaped to the United States in the early 1970s, the original opportunity had long passed. Yet fate brought him back to the project. When Douglas and Zaentz watched The Firemen’s Ball, they immediately saw the sensibility they needed: a director who understood ensembles, enclosed spaces, and the absurdity of bureaucratic systems.

Forman flew to California, read the script page by page with the producers, and secured the job.

People interact energetically in a room with chairs and tall windows. A man with a pipe watches. The mood is lively and dynamic.

Filming in Salem and the little scenes that mattered

Principal photography began in January 1975 and lasted roughly three months. The script included a fishing trip sequence filmed in Depoe Bay on the Oregon coast, which produced some of the film’s most visually memorable moments. Local fishermen watched the production with amusement, including Nicholson’s attempt to manoeuvre the boat confidently despite not knowing how to sail.

Two people outdoors near a building, one seated on a wooden chair, wearing white, and another standing, wearing a cap. Overcast sky, bare trees.

Inside the hospital, the challenge was to avoid theatricality. Forman discouraged the actors from watching playback, fearing it would make their performances self conscious. This caused tension at first. Nicholson grew anxious that his work was flat or unfocused. Michael Douglas convinced Forman to show him a few scenes, which restored Nicholson’s confidence.

The hospital environment created a blur between performance and reality. Actor Sydney Lassick, who played Charlie Cheswick, became so overwhelmed during filming that Dr Brooks ordered him off the set for a day to stabilise. Many cast members later said that the boundaries between acting and personal emotion felt unusually porous on this production.

A woman in a nurse's cap, partially dressed, smiles in a hospital ward with white beds. Sunlight filters through large windows.

Louise Fletcher later revealed that life on set sometimes blurred uncomfortably with the role she was playing. Because the other cast members bonded so tightly, she kept herself slightly apart, believing that Nurse Ratched’s cool distance should never fully disappear between takes. Yet the separation began to wear on her.

In a 2018 Vanity Fair interview she described one memorable moment when she surprised the cast by slipping out of her stiff white nurse’s uniform to reveal a simple slip and bra underneath. “It was, like, Here I am. I’m a woman. I am a woman,” she said. The gesture was not theatrical so much as a way of reminding both herself and the men around her that the soft-spoken, reserved actor beneath the uniform was not the authoritarian figure she embodied on screen.

Even the soundscape shaped the mood. Composer Jack Nitzsche built the score around unusual instruments, including a musical saw and wine glasses. The strange, slightly unsettling tone mirrored the film’s blend of humour, brutality, and quiet rebellion.

Budget overruns, scheduling chaos, and a very unlikely victory

The intended two million dollar budget soon ballooned to over four million. Zaentz risked his own company, borrowing against Fantasy Records to keep the project alive.

Then came the distribution problem. Nearly every studio turned it down. United Artists finally accepted, almost by default. Michael Douglas called it “our last choice”.

Two men relax on a cluttered sofa, one holding a cup. The setting is a messy room with scattered items. The mood is casual and laid-back.

The release on 19 November 1975 was cautious. No one expected much. Yet audiences embraced it immediately. It ended up becoming one of the highest grossing films of the decade, earning over 163 million dollars worldwide.

At the Academy Awards, it achieved something only two other films in history had done: it won the big five. Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay.

Saul Zaentz later said that the greatest joy of the evening was seeing Louise Fletcher sign to her deaf parents from the podium, telling them she loved them.

Group playing basketball outdoors, one person on another's shoulders. Black and white setting. People are wearing winter clothes, smiling.

Reception, legacy, and the afterlife of the film

The film received widespread critical acclaim, though not without some hesitation. Roger Ebert initially felt the ending leaned too heavily on symbolism, but later included the film in his Great Movies list. Some critics disliked the departure from Chief Bromden’s perspective. Others felt its critique of institutions was too blunt.

Yet audiences reacted with rare emotional intensity. Many interpreted it as a story about American society in the post Vietnam era. Others saw it through the lens of civil rights, disability rights, or the growing distrust of medical authority.

In later decades, the film also influenced debates on psychiatric care, including the movement for patient rights and deinstitutionalisation. Its cultural footprint is vast, ranging from television parodies to academic studies on power structures.

Perhaps most striking is that a film defined by institutional confinement was created by people who felt trapped in their own ways: Forman by political repression, Kesey by creative disputes, Nicholson by uncertainty about his own performance, Douglas by studio rejection, and Fletcher by years away from acting.

They each brought their own tension to the project. And it shows.