Author left out of ‘Cuckoo’ praises

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34132, 20 April 1976, Page 4

Author left out of ‘Cuckoo’ praises

Amid all the kissing, hugging and thank-you speeches which greeted the five-Oscar victory of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (now showing in Christchurch) in Hollywood recently, nobody seemed to mention the one man who really, as they say, made the whole thing possible. Ken Kesey, author of the now classic 1962 noval, was not invited.

A legendary figure to the American young, Kesey, now 40, wrote the book in 11 months while working in the “nuthouse ward” of an Ore gon hospital. Now he is suing "Cuckoo’s” producers,

Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas, son of actor Kirk Douglas. The script he wrote for the film was thrown away and the whole emphasis of the story changed, he says. What is more, like many young writers, he signed away the film rights while still an unknown and has received only $6OOO for his discarded script. He claims that he was promised, verbally, five per cent of the gross and is claiming breach of contract, plus nearly a million dollars in damages to make a stand which may help protect other young writers. “The contract I signed at 22, even before the book came out, was 48 pages long and I didn’t read it closely. But I feel that when a book is sold and resold for even more money, the writer deserves a share.” So, while writs fly and subpoenas are being served, Kesey has refused use of his name in connection with the film (publicity, however, says “based on the novel by Ken Kesey”). “It’s an old Hollywood tradition. Screw the creator for whatever you can get.” Whatever Kesey’s feelings, Hollywood has bowed down before “Cuckoo’s Nest”, directed by Milos Forman, a 44-year old Czech who came to the United State in 1969, and starring Jack Nicholson.

The members of the academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave it the awards for best picture, best direction, best actor and ac- ' tress, best screenplay adapted from other material — the first time a film has claimed all these major prizes since “It Happened One Night” in 1934. The film was shot on location in an Oregon mental institution, using patients and staff as actors. It may finally take in some sloom at the box office. Kesey was an awardwinning wrestler at California’s Stanford University before turning writer and a guru of the psychedelic movement. His major role in promoting the spread of LSD in the early 1960’s has been deatiled in Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric KoolAid Acid Test,” a portrait of Kesey and his coterie — known as the MP, Merry Panksters — who traveled about in a painted bus, staging “hapenings”. Those days are long past, but many still think of Kesey as the McMurphy of “Cuckoo’s”, the symbolic rebel who bursts upon the ward of a mental hospital to challenge the authority of Big Nurse, played in the film by Louise Fletcher. Kesey is not short of money. Royalties are flowing in from a new paperback edition of the book (which

- has never stopped selling), > as well as his later (and bets ter, he says) “Sometimes a t Great Notion,” which has - also been filmed, more amir cably, with Paul Newman 1 in the lead. s Today, the novelist lives r on his own farm in unpol--1 luted Oregon, “scratching my athlete’s foot and watch- - ing my kids and blueberries ■ grow. 1 Of his spell in the original r cuckoo’s nest, he says: 1 “ The cry of the place

seemed to speak through me. I’m grateful and humble about that book and I won’t compromise it. “They’ve made it McMurphy’s story, Jack Nicholson’s. But it is in fact the story of the Indian who cleans the ward. The battle is in his mind. The battle between joining the rebel and cowering before the United States establishment that wants to suppress all freedom of expression ” —(O.F.N.S. Copyright).