“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was first released in the U.S. on Nov. 19, 1975, and won all five major Academy Awards the following year. Based on the 1962 novel by Oregon writer Ken Kesey, it tells the story of a struggle against authoritarian control, embodied in the clash between free-spirited patient Randle McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, the tyrannical head nurse of an Oregon psychiatric hospital.
Eugene veteran filmmaker Katherine K’iya Wilson still remembers a private screening of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” she attended at Salem’s Elsinore Theatre in December 1975.
The film’s director, Miloš Forman, producers Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas, and actor Jack Nicholson were visibly worried that their work might offend the audience: patients and staff of the Oregon State Hospital.
When the film ended, there was a five-minute silence, said Wilson, 74, who has family ties to the Nez Perce Wallowa Band. Then something unexpected happened.
“Finally, they had a [hospital] spokesperson coming out in tears to tell the filmmakers what a beautiful film it was, and they [the audience] felt that was gonna change the world because they were being depicted as human beings — their identity was not of being disabled or mentally unstable,” Wilson said.
At the time, Wilson was a University of Oregon student serving as liaison officer to Govs. Tom McCall and Bob Straub, coordinating between the state, hospital and production crew while filming took place at the Oregon State Hospital and Depoe Bay from January to April 1975.
Wilson fondly recalls Nicholson’s playfulness on the set. Some props — including the wooden bench where he sat while portraying McMurphy — are now part of a permanent “Cuckoo’s Nest” exhibit at the Oregon State Hospital Museum of Mental Health.
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