Salem Hospital “Cuckoo’s Nest”

Last week marked the 50th anniversary of the premiere of Oregon’s most consequential movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The film swept the Oscars, hastened the emptying of mental wards, and burnished the national reputation of Eugene-based author/prankster Ken Kesey (who hated it). Eight months before the movie’s debut, WW correspondent Ken Margolis drove down to Oregon State Hospital in Salem, which had become an unlikely film set.

This story first appeared in the March 17, 1975 edition of WW.

Ken Kesey’s first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, was an underground book for one summer after its publication in 1962. Now director Milos Forman is filming Cuckoo’s Nest in the Oregon State Hospital in Salem.

In his novel Kesey found by stretching the depiction of a mental hospital and putting the explosive character McMurphy at its center he had a clear image of lone individual versus authoritarian machine.

Among other things, Cuckoo’s Nest is an attack on the instruments of psychiatric treatment, including many still used at Oregon State Hospital (shock treatment, for instance). When I asked Dr. Dean Brooks, supervisor of the hospital, whether he thought Cuckoo’s Nest was an attack on mental hospitals he replied without hesitation, “It’s an attack on all institutions.”

Dr. Brooks looks forty, with an air of authority aiming from forceful, directed intelligence. He seems to be enjoying the filmmaking.

Why did Brooks give permission for the filmmaking? He says he knew and trusted the producers, Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas. He says he felt the filming could lead to healthy contacts between patients and part of the world beyond the hospital. Brooks feels things are going well and that filming has produced no problems.

Professional actors and technicians on the film seem to have no trouble relating to patients. Since they are on a twelve-hour-day six-day-week schedule, they nearly live together at the hospital, and it does give the feeling of something between a community and a battle camp.

One patient working on the cleanup crew said of the movie people, “It’s like being in the world around people again. The people are nice, a little crazy sometimes, but isn’t everybody?”

Filming is underway on the ground floor of the psychiatric security unit, one of the older buildings on the grounds. The unit is composed of four wards, a result of segregating patients by sex and by high or low security.

Like most institutional buildings of a certain age, the building which houses the psychiatric security unit at Oregon State Hospital looks like a prison built by giant, malignant ants. The surrounding lawns are as square and trim as soldiers at attention. Once inside the building, you forget there even is an outside. The interior seems to consist mostly of broad, echoing hallways, all painted green.

Opportunity to work for pay was perhaps the most important thing about the filming to most patients. The only other paying jobs for patients are in a cannery during the summer months.

There is unpaid work for patients around the hospital that the hospital calls industrial therapy.

Most patients who worked as extras express little or no interest in the content of the film. Most don’t even seem to know what it is about. This may be partly due to the fragmentary nature of movie-making. A hard day’s work might result in three minutes of finished film.

One patient working on clean up crew said in her ward there was some resentment at first that people were going to make a movie about mental patients, but that film people were so nice nobody minded any more.

One patient played an aide He said he liked it very much, “because I’m a patient.”

The soul of the picture, says everybody working on it, is Jack Nicholson, who plays McMurphy. I saw Nicholson only once, as a blur in the hall surrounded by a halo of energy. There was a lot of protecting going on: The staff were protecting the hospital, the patients were protecting themselves and everybody was protecting Jack Nicholson. For good reason, since they are all vulnerable.

Louise Fletcher plays Big Nurse Ratched. After a fairly successful career as a television actress, Fletcher took six years from work, got married and had two sons. Two years ago she started working again, playing Matte in Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us. Playing Nurse Ratched, McMurphy’s chief antagonist, she may have the female role of the year.

Louise Fletcher is a lovely woman, but when she is Nurse Ratched, her eyes harden and her face seems drained of warmth. She is probably going to make one hell of a Big Nurse.

She said of Nicholson: “Jack gets right into it. He has no fear of flying, he just takes off right on the set. He’s more real than reality.” Louise says she has broken character twice during the shooting, when Nicholson’s acting brought her to tears in spite of her character.

Of Forman: “Milos always asks. ‘Is it natural?’ He goes by the script, but he likes to get the actor’s real feelings. One of his tricks is to secretly have the cameras going during rehearsal. He likes to keep the spontaneity.” Louise says she hasn’t seen any of her work in this film because Forman doesn’t like actors to see daily rushes. Robert Altman, on the other hand, used to invite the whole cast and crew to watch the rushes every night. “In fact Bob would get a little hurt if you didn’t watch the rushes,” she said

Ken Kesey is rumored to he unhappy with the film. It may he that he and the rest of us will have reason to be unhappy—although between Milos Forman and Jack Nicholson it’s hard to see how the film could go too wrong. It will retain at least some of the mixed humor and ferocity which made the novel such an effective attack on authoritarianism.

It seems amazing that the hospital opened itself to the disruption which could result from the filming. Clearly Dr. Brooks made a courageous choice.