One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest

Well it was too windy and cold to do a live at the cemetry, and still a little under the weather so we changed plans

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, busheads, Welcome to the Seventies Buzz Podcast. I'm Curtis Tucker.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
And I'm Todd Wheeler, bringing you our memories or lack thereof,
of growing up in the seventies.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
We are not a history podcast. We just want you
guys to know that sometimes we get things wrong, and
if you listen to us long enough, you're going to
be screaming at your device trying to give us the
right answers.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Listen up as we recount growing up in the Midwest
and our unique experience. Go to seventies Buzz dot com
from war Info and leave us your thoughts.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Let us know if you guys have any show ideas,
if you'd like us to get you on as an advertiser,
and don't forget please leave us reviews on your favorite
podcasting apps.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
My creator sent Donald Trump in a couple as I say,
sends me about twenty days. Thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Thanks Mike. I appreciate that because Mike listen, I believe
he does well. Hello Mike, Hello, Hello, Mine starre we going?

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Are we on? We're on me?

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Oh uh okay? So first off, full jazz, I guess
we better apologize. No Facebook live this year. We couldn't
really settle on a location that was spooky.

Speaker 4 (01:35):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
And and the weather's been kind of today's like forty
mile an hour wind.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
It would have been yucky out there.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
It had been yucky out there. And then my brain
has just been in a fog since the my illness.
I think today is my first day that I've literally
today's what a week in a day. So today I'm
finally kind of thinking clearly again. I mean that was

(02:03):
literally about a second behind on everything the last three
or four days, like even typing, and I was missing
letters and driving I'd be like, oh, better turn a
little quicker. You know, it's like this like a second slow.
I don't know, brain brain, I mean, brain fog is real.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Oh yeah, yeah yeah, so I think I had that
to brain fag.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
So anyway, we apologize for not being live and being spooky.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah maybe, oh how about that?

Speaker 1 (02:36):
There you go? Yeah, And then next year I'll even
be worse because Halloween'll be further down the road from
our episode, and I don't know, one of these nights,
we just need to have Halloween on a Tuesday night
and everything will align and we'll be in some scoopy,
spooky place and it'll it'll be real.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, but nothing ever happens when we do the spooky stuff.

Speaker 4 (03:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Unfortunately our ghost hunting efforts have been futile. Yes, so,
but appreciate you guys wanting to see us do alive.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
But not this year. Sord By that did anybody anybody
respond to the Tesla thing?

Speaker 1 (03:17):
What was the Tesla in.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
The graveyard the cemetery graveyards?

Speaker 1 (03:22):
I haven't gotten any emails from anybody.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
I almost think that's an Easter egg from Tesla.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
God, what's the difference between cemetery and a graveyard? Graveyards
at a church. Cemetery is not.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, I know, cemetery is not.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
So must be a graveyard at a church.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Let's must be?

Speaker 3 (03:45):
Or is it it may not?

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Who knows?

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Someone news someone news.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Yeah. So anyway, appreciate you guys. Souh da've called.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
They've called. Uh. He said he saw Kiss three times.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Three times, original kiss in original makeup three times.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, it was my first concert too. He didn't say
what year he went though, Yeah, it's probably about the
same time.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
I would guess mid seventy sometime in there.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Everything else was pretty much a bushead radio.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, movie stuff, so follow us over there Buzzhead Radio
for more Dave comments.

Speaker 5 (04:25):
Yeah, Steve from San Antonio, call hi, Steve, Steve. He
commented on the episode last week about Ace and we
had Christopher Todd on.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, he could feel the connection that Christopher Todd had
and thought it was a good episode for him. It
was Johnny Cash. When Johnny Cash died, that kind of
devastated him, even though he's not a musician, whereas Christopher
Todd has a deeper connection because being a musician.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
So yeah, uh, Gretchen called Gretchen, called him block. Hey, Gretchen.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
She said that Sean Cassidy was we didn't play it
up enough. He was worse than what we said. I
guess he was on a walker and could barely get
on the stage.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
Oh, I didn't see that, man. I hope he's all right.
He is getting up there, you know.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
Or did she say it was Ace that had a
bad concert? Now I can't remember.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
I'm not sure what she said.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
And she's kind of like, you know the Halloween pictures
and kind of like me, ho, come, we just didn't
do delloween pictures.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
But why didn't our parents take Halloween pictures. That is
so odd, isn't it weird? Yeah? She said that her
brother was a big Ace fan and dressed up like
kiss a lot but no picks. Hm, well so and then, uh,
the reason she turned off the movie Roller Coaster wasn't
that the movie was really that bad. It was the

(05:57):
video quality online was super bad.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
So oh, you got to watch it on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
I guess you got to watch it on YouTube. Some
of those are for some reason, I don't know why,
but whoa hey, whoo whoo what.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Was this strange noise?

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Calmed ooh scared? Yeah, Kurt Trenari has been trying to
email and I for some reason because the lives and
this and that and sickness and I kept missing him.
But anyway, he says, update, I finished the is it
geen g e I n gaen series? Uh ed ed

(06:34):
geen Yeah Gan. Now I've heard I've seen a lot
of posts about that that it's like that latest version
that you watched and that I guess he just watched
is like super over exaggerated like like stuff and it's
not even true. It's so bad.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
So well, I don't know they should pictures of like
the chair made out of human.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
Well, I think you know some of the stuff happened,
but I think I don't know from what I'm reading.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
They just like over Hollywood asked it.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yeah, like two way too much. He said, it's good,
but not great. It's about eighty percent bs made up
Hollywood nonsense. Well, he agrees lots of stuff that never
happened or wasn't true. Well, there you go. Kurt knows.
They could have condensed it down to four episodes instead
of eight in my opinion. Oh wow, I didn't know
it was eight. I'm not gonna watch it because if

(07:28):
it's not like true, I don't want to watch it.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
Well, that's yeah, I didn't see that. I didn't see
the eight. Oh I watched a different documentary.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
Oh, you watched like a real documentary. It was okay, gotcha? Okay?
He said, there's my two cents, and then he said,
have you ever seen Trick or Treat from two thousand
and seven with Sam? And it's funny because I actually
just watched it this weekend. If not, go find it
and watch it. It's hands down my favorite Halloween movie

(07:58):
in the last twenty years. Sam Heyn sam h ai
n is pronounced sort of like Salim Salim, but most
people speak it like it looks so. But yeah, trigger
treat was good.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
Yeah, I never heard of it.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
I've been trying to catch up on a lot of
my old Uh it's from twenty two thousand and seven,
so I've been trying to catch up on some of
the old. I even watched the new I know what
you did last summer? Have you seen? No?

Speaker 3 (08:31):
I think I watched the very first twenty years ago.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
I think that's the only one I saw, and then
I don't know how many they did after that. But
then now they've got like a new one, and this
new one has the people from the first one as
grown ups. Oh, but there's a whole new set of
cast of young people that are dealing with the dude
with the hook.

Speaker 4 (08:53):
Cook the hook.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
You know what?

Speaker 3 (08:56):
I finally watched the other day, What It's Done by.
It dawned on the other day that I'd never seen it,
The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah, I can't believe you have. And that's funny because
after you texted me that, I thought, oh, maybe we
should have done that instead of what we did tonight.
That would have been a good kind of halloweeny week
episode as well, but we'll do that here one of
these days.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
Yeah, I was it was interesting.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Yeah, I mean it's a musical.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
It's a musical about aliens.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
About aliens. Now, I didn't really get that out of it.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
Well, the riff Raff and Magenta, the brother and sister aliens,
and they've been actually manipulating the Rocky not Rocky Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you know the dude, the dude, the drag dude.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, they just and I just saw an interview with
him like this last week. You know, he's had a stroke,
can barely but the.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
Riff Rapp was the guy with the humpback and they're
like the caretaker dude. He actually wrote that he created
that show.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Oh the whole thing. Yeah, oh yeah. I love the
music so way back in the day, I don't know,
not like in the seventies, but in the I mean
it was good in the seventies. Yeah, but I didn't
watch it in the seventies.

Speaker 6 (10:22):
No.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
I watched it and put songs from it on my
playlist in like the two thousands, but it would have
been better to have watched in the seventies. And why
is that, mister Wheeler, because that was the greatest decade
on to man, Yes it was. But yeah, so I've
still got songs Pizza, Pizza, i still got songs from

(10:44):
the movie on my playlist, just because the music from
the movies as good as the movie, or maybe even
better than the movies.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah, it was a little confusing because you know, I'd
seen bits and pieces, you know, for years, for decades,
and then the meatloaf character come out and he kills him,
and I'm like, well, well, what I don't understand? And
then if you're not paying attention, they tie it back
and they explain it in the end.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
I never paid attention, so you're, you know, waiting too
much more about it than I do. I just watch
it for the music in the course. I don't watch
it for the dialogue and trying to figure out what
the hell they're doing.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
There's a storyline, I mean, there's a real storyline, but
he uh, and he's got this big scar across his forehead,
across the top of his his eyebrows. I'm like, I
don't understand who is this character and what's he doing?
Well he was, you know, so the the main guy,
what the hell's his name? Shoot, they're out there screaming

(11:47):
at their device. Oh yeah, anyway, Uh, he was another
person that he was working on, and he cut out
his brain and gave half the brain to the to
the new creature he invented or created. And and so
he's like franken Furter, franken Furter.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
Yeah, Tim Curry, Tim Curry.

Speaker 3 (12:10):
So Tim Curry gave meatloas half of his brain to
the new to the new guy, and that's kind of
why he was kind of goofy, not all there, but anyway,
so yeah, he kills him with a pick axe. It's
kind of I was like, whoa, it's a very weird movie.
It's a weird movie.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Not as bad as Clockwork Orange.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
But oh I can't. I can't watch that. I've tried.
I just it's just I watched it once, the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah, I got through the whole because I just I
felt like I wanted to figure out what the heck
is going on here?

Speaker 3 (12:44):
What the heck is going nothing?

Speaker 1 (12:45):
It never went anywhere. It was so weird. So instead
of going live tonight and being all scary spooky, we apologize.
We're gonna do one over the Cuckoo's nest. Oh, I
guess niece got you. Uh just kind of we've never

(13:05):
we haven't done this movie. It was a huge movie
in the seventies. Yes, you kind of do some of
the behind the scenes and little known fayats and so
did you get a chance to rewatch it?

Speaker 3 (13:20):
I didn't watch it. I didn't watch the whole thing.
I watched bits and pieces it.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
It's I meant to look and I forgot. Did you
notice how long it was? It's a long movie.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
It's one hundred and seventy three minutes.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
So it's a little okay, that's not super bad.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah, I don't know why I didn't I remember that.

Speaker 4 (13:36):
I just do.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
Uh so, yeah, I mean it's two and a half
two and two hours, and would that be not two
and a half hours something like that? Yeah, yeah, so
it wasn't on but ba you had a lot of
famous people in it.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Yeah, you know, only a few of them, you know
by name, a lot of them you know by face.

Speaker 3 (13:55):
Yeah, so, uh, what's his face?

Speaker 1 (14:02):
What's his face?

Speaker 4 (14:03):
Well?

Speaker 3 (14:03):
First, go ahead.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
The guy that wrote it started out as a book,
all right. The guy that wrote the book, his mom
used to read a nursery rhyme to him, and it
was ventury mintry, cuttery, corn, apple seed and apple thorn wire,
briar Limbert lock. Three geese in a flock. One flew east,
one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo's nest. So

(14:27):
that is where the title of the book. He used
to work at a a reel.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah, veterans. Was it a veterans mellissen? I? I think
it was a veterans mental hospital. So he had real
life experience.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
Yeah, in California, So he had experience. And and I
did kN Casey Cassy Kese k Kessy, We'll say kessi
Ken Cassey. He actually published the book in sixty two
and based on the Oregon Psycha Psychiatric Hospital.

Speaker 3 (15:05):
That's a real hospital too in the movie.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah. So actually, so basically they went and filmed it
where it was based on, which is kind of crazy.
He started writing it in nineteen fifty nine. What's so
crazy is he started writing it in fifty nine and
it didn't come out as a movie until what seventy five,

(15:28):
and just all the delays in between are just mind boggling.
You know. It's like they were wanting to do it
the whole time, but one thing or another kept delaying.
It was published in sixty two, in the midst of
the civil rights movement. The sixties began with movement towards
de institutionalization, which I can see. But then the problem

(15:53):
that we have today. So you look at one flow
of the Cuckoo's Nest and you feel sorry for the
people that are bumping into walls and standing up against
the wall in the hallway. But at least they're there,
they're in a building, it's safe from the elements and
being mostly being attacked. Now they're probably at that time
being abused by the staff, and blah blah blah. The

(16:15):
problem today is we don't really have those places anymore.
So now they're on our subways, stabbing people and murdering
people and sleeping under bridges, and they're doing the same
thing they're just now they're doing it out in the open.
So I don't know what the solution is. But I
don't know that getting rid of all those psychiatric hospitals

(16:36):
was the thing to do. It doesn't seem to have
helped a whole lot.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
Thank god they quit doing with botomies. Good lord.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yeah, there was some crazy stuff that they used to
do back then. Let's see, not only did he speak
to the patients and witnessed the workings of the institution,
he voluntarily took psychoactive drugs, including me scleen and LSD
to kind of, I guess, put him in the mindset

(17:05):
of writing the book. And did you know that the
book is narrated, is written and narrated from the point
of Chief. Oh yeah, so the whole book is like
from the viewpoint of Chief. And so Chief is the one.

(17:25):
So one flu of the cuckoo's nest is Chief. Flu
of the cuckoo's nest, Chief is one. And so that
was the big divide where finally the author didn't want
anything else to do with the movie and started suing
Michael Douglas and the people in the movie and never

(17:46):
has and I don't know if he's alive today or not,
but he's never seen the movie. And it's because they
changed the viewpoint of the movie, you know, more about
McMurphy and not about Chief. And so he didn't think
that was a wise move. So apparently he was.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
Wrong because it did really well.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
Yeah, so here's the seventies for you. Now. I haven't
read the book, but I can imagine, you know, the
language number one McMurphy maybe describing the rape or you
know why he was in the you know, I just
I can imagine some language in some of the chapters.

(18:30):
But it was one of America's most challenged and banned
novels in the seventies. Nineteen seventy four or five residents
in Strongsville, Ohio sued the local board of Education to
remove the novel from classrooms. So not only so they
didn't just like have a copy in the library, they
actually had copies in the classrooms. Really, they deemed the

(18:53):
book pornographic and said it glorifies criminal activity, has a
tendency to corrupt juveniles, and contains descriptive descriptions of beastiality,
bizarre violence and torture, dismemberment, death, and human elimination.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
Huh.

Speaker 6 (19:09):
Well.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
Seventy five Randolph in New York and Alton, Oklahoma, removed
the book from all their public schools.

Speaker 3 (19:17):
Why was it in the public schools in the first.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Place, Well, I think all I think at that point
pretty much all books were just if somebody wrote a book,
it went in the library. Seventy seven schools in Westport,
Maine removed it from the required reading list. Now, I'm
not sure why you would have one Full of the
Cuckoo's Nest as a required reading, but they did. And

(19:40):
then in seventy eight Fremont High School in Saint Anthony,
Idaho banned it and fired the teacher who assigned it,
a teacher assigned to read. I don't know, you know,
I mean, it's a book. It's like today, you know,
there's all a controversy about LGBTQ books and this that

(20:00):
it's a book, you know, so there's if it's you know,
not spot Chase the Ball.

Speaker 3 (20:08):
Sure I could see being fined like in high school
maybe junia, but not grade school. Surely, surely they weren't
putting in grades.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
You would hope not. I just can't believe it was
required reading. Yeah, I mean, I can see at least
having access to it in a library.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
But anyway, So in nineteen sixty three, Kirk Douglas bought
all the rights to it for stage and motion production,
and it did go into stage production, and Kirk Douglas
did play McMurphy and his intent was to continue and
be McMurphy in the movie, and Gene Wilder played Billy

(20:47):
Bibbott in the stage production, and then Danny DeVito played
his character in the stage.

Speaker 3 (20:53):
Part as well. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
Yeah, So problem was that was nineteen sixty three. Then
time went on and the movie didn't get made, and
the movie didn't get made, and the movie didn't get made.
So finally Kirk, well Michael Douglas got antsy and wanted
to get a hold of it and ask his dad
if he could take over it, and his dad said yeah,

(21:17):
And then I guess there was a little bit of
a riff there because he and the people that were
helping produce it didn't feel like Kirk was young enough
any longer, so he didn't get the part, and I
think he got hurt and so anyway, so now that
brings us up to the movie where they started trying
to figure out who to put in the movie.

Speaker 3 (21:40):
There were several people in the running for the part
of McMurphy, Randall, Randall, Gene Hackman.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
Well, I guess first they wanted James Kahn and James
conn I think basically just for flat out said no,
don't want to do it. So then they were thinking
Gene Hackman, Marlon Brando, and Burt Reynolds.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
I can't see Burt Reynolds doing that for traying it
being a rapist. Did they even explain while he's in
the why he I had to look it up?

Speaker 1 (22:15):
He does, he tells Nurse Ratchety. So basically, he had
sex with an underage girl. He raped her, I think,
and but she didn't she chose not to prosecute I guess,
but I guess it had been he'd had several yeah,

(22:36):
and then he'd you know, been caught doing several other things.
So basically they put him on a work farm, and
I think he realized that if he acted nuts, he
could go to the nuthouse and not have to work
as hard as on the work farm. So that's how
he ended up in the institution. But he was so
basically he went in you know, you know, your typical

(22:57):
looney but not mental illness wise, So he went in
as a normal person.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
Yeah, well he wasn't normal, well.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Not normal, but went in as a somebody that should
was it shouldn't have been there. He put himself there.
So yeah, so that's how he got in. So yeah,
it basically was rape. Yeah what they girl was like
what fifteen?

Speaker 3 (23:21):
Yeah, but he said he said he thought he was
raven an eighteen year old, Well you're still.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Still yeah, and his description of you know, yeah, I
can see why the book was banned because of his
description telling Nurse Ratchet you know, you know, you put
that in front of guy's face, and nobody's turning that down,
you know.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yeah. Anyway, Yeah, I mean he he kind of comes
off as a good guy in the movie, but he's not.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
At all, and neither she that's what's that's what's and
then she's horrible. And then what's weird too, is if yeah,
this movie's old either can't really be any spoilers, is that,
you know? And maybe that's why they didn't have Chief
narrate it, because we all thought Chief was deaf, dumb

(24:10):
and didn't know what was going on through the whole movie. Yeah,
you know, had he been narrating the whole movie, we'd
have known.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
Yeah, it'd have been totally different.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, way different. So, and I don't know in the
book if they let you know that it's Chief that's narrating,
or I wonder if they don't tell you till the
end that he's the one that was narrating. I don't
know how the book goes. But so anyway. Yeah, So
the book is set in nineteen sixty three in that

(24:40):
Oregon State facility he had so basically, McMurphy had five
previous arrests for assault. He feigned mental illness so he
could be moved to the mental institution to avoid hard labor.
The medical ward is dominated by the cold, passive aggress

(25:01):
nurse Ratched, and I guess originally the director wanted her
to be evil, like mean and evil, but she Louis
is it Louise Thatcher Fletcher Fletcher, Louise Fletcher. She wanted

(25:22):
to play the part, not mean but strict, and he
kind of saw where she was coming from, and then
I guess he kind of changed the way he directed
her because she is seen as authoritarian but not but

(25:44):
kind of in a weird, nice sort of way. I mean,
the whole movie's weird. I mean, you know, on one hand,
it's happy, one sayah, it's sad, It's yeah, it's I
think that's what makes the movie so good, is it's
so this and that. Main characters Billy Bibbitt, young, anxious, stuttering,

(26:05):
Charles Cheswick prone to temper tantrums. Danny DeVito's character was
Martini he was kind of delusional and childlike. And I
guess he was on the verge of marrying real pearlman
and was like three thousand miles from home, and so
I guess he made up his own character while he

(26:25):
was on set to kind of kip himself company and actually,
and I guess all these actors had to keep in
touch with a psychiatrist during the whole filming to make
sure they were all hanging in there mentally. Yeah. Dale
Harding was articulate and repressed. Max Taber belligerent and profane.

(26:50):
Jim Selfitt and Bruce Fredrickson were epileptics. Scanlon was a
was quiet but a violent minded guy. And then Chief
was tall, deaf, mute Native American.

Speaker 4 (27:05):
But he wouldn't but he wouldn't mute, correct.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
So anyway, so they decided on Jack Nicholson to play
the leading role, and then Louise Fletcher to play the
second leading role, and I guess before she got the part,
Jean Moreau, Angela Lansbury, Colleen Dewhurst, Geraldine Page, Ellen Burston,

(27:36):
Anne Bancroft, and Jane Fonda were all up for possibility
to play I guess it was like at the time,
it was like the female role that everybody at the
time wanted. Come to find out though, Oh and I
actually I think they hired Lily Tomlin original and I

(27:59):
think they started doing some filming with Lily Tomlin actually
and then ultimately removed her and put Louise in, and
then Louise or then Lily Tomlin I think went on
and did the movie that Louise Fletcher.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
Was supposed to do. Switched.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
Yeah, So they basically switched. Yeah, so I'd kind of
forgotten that. Now, that would have been weird to have
Lily Tomlin in that role.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
I could see Lily Tomlin and Burt Reynolds.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
Oh that Yeah, No, that definitely wouldn't have worked out.
But here's something interesting is Fletcher in twenty sixteen recalled
that Nicholas's salary was enormous. Now, his salary actually was
not enormous. He chose to take a percentage of the
profits and a smaller salary, but compared to her salary.

(28:51):
She worked on the film for eleven weeks and grossed
ten thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (28:59):
Wow, And I guess that was kind of the what
the rest of the cast got as well as kind
of a regular working Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
They call that scale or something scale. Yeah, yeah, I
mean the whole movie was I think it was three
to four million dollars, I think it.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
I think it over budgeted to about four point four
and that last million had to come out of the
the producer, the other producer guy's pocket, so he got
money back.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
Oh yeah, it grossed one hundred and sixty three million
or something like that.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
Yeah, yeah, they did all right, They did all right.
But they did end up filming in the hospital, and
I guess everybody that played a patient would spend the night.
They basically stayed in the in the hospital and slept there.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
Yeah, and there were some real patients in it too.
I'm never sure who was. Yeah, so I don't know
if they had speaking roles.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
There was actually some staff that had speaking role And
then I guessed a lot not a lot, but several
of the crew were patients, and Michael Douglas admitted that
he didn't realize until after filming that many of those
were criminally insane.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
Whoops.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Yeah, so, but there was people like a doctor John Spivey.
There actually were people that played kind of their real
characters in the movie. The film one well It was
nominated for what won two, three, four, five, six eight.

Speaker 4 (30:41):
That's an eight.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
Is nominated one five, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
No nine. I think. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards,
one for Best Picture, Best Director, one for Best Actor,
Best Actress. It was nominated for Best Support Actor. It
won for Best Screenplay. It was nominated for Best Cinematography,

(31:08):
nominated for Best Film Editing, and also nominated for Best
Original Score.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
It wasn't a lot of music in it.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
It literally was just one guy wrote the score and
that was it. And remind me, and I'll play if
you haven't seen the movie, it starts out and ends
with the same song, and I'll play that for you.

Speaker 6 (31:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:34):
They I don't think there was any music in between Mozer,
but I remember it was real quiet.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
If there was, it was like somebody playing something on
the radio or the television. It wasn't like the movie
was filled with music.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
I didn't have a soundtrack then.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah, Like I say, the soundtrack was this one guy's
score And I listened to it today and it's pretty
somber and almost creepy at times. That's kind of why
we picked this movie for this week, being close to Halloween. Yeah,
a little bit, a little bit creepy. So yeah, so

(32:11):
the ending, So like, what do you think about the ending?

Speaker 3 (32:15):
I had to remind myself what the ending was because
we were talking about I was like, I did that?
Did that end? Yeah? Yeah, it's kind of messed up. Yeah,
but I mean I'm yeah, I'm sure we're not giving
away any.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
I was gonna say, it's so old if you haven't
even if we're gonna spoil the ending, but still watch
the movie because I still watch the movie over and
over again and I know how it ends. Yeah, just
because it's it's a good ending. It's a good ending,
and it's a it's a bad ending until it's a
good ending.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
Okay, So apparently I watched one guy, oh what do
you call it? His his take on.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
The analysis of the Yeah, he said that.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
Nurse Ratchet wanted to make McMurphy get atlebotomy, and so
she drove him to the point where he, you know,
wack on and try to strangle her. But I remember
watching the movie thinking, you know, after they bring him out,
I was like, I don't see no, like where they

(33:22):
opened his head up. And so then then I learned
that back then when they would do a little bit,
and they really did this. They would go through your eye.
They would take a like a big skier, go through
your eye and scramble part of your brain. Yeah, and

(33:42):
they honestly, honestly did that. It was I think the
last one they did. There's this one doctor who was,
you know, the the one who invented the procedure. Uh,
he had done several I saw an real short clip
of a guy who was the youngest person to ever
have it done. He was twelve years old, and he

(34:05):
went on to become fairly normal and uh he was
a bus driver. But a lot I think buy and
large though it just veggiet veggie people. Yeah, I mean,
how do you know where you're going? Oh yeah, it's
kind of yeah. It was like, yeah, they go. Well,
so in the movie, when he's laying there and I
don't see any scar, it's like, well, did they give

(34:26):
him at the bottomy or not? Because they don't really
say that they did, but obviously they did, you know,
turn him into.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
They basically turned Yeah. So he attacked nurse Ratchet and
I guess strangled her enough that he did shut her
up that I think even I think I read that
and it may have just been in the book. But
when she came back, she didn't have she couldn't talk
or didn't have so she had she he basically caused

(34:53):
her to lose control of Finally she caused him to
go overboard and get the lobotomy, and then that caused
Chief to wait so fine, So unfortunately Chief waited too long. Yeah,
he at the after McMurphy came out. Then Chief was
ready to escape and to lift up the big heavy

(35:16):
thing and throw it out the window. But by then
then he realized that McMurphy had been the.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
Bottomized, and.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
Rather than leave McMurphy to suffer.

Speaker 4 (35:29):
He.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Killed him, basically suffocated him, which was nice. I mean,
as weird as that sounds, you know, put him out
of his misery. And then Chief busts out and takes off.

Speaker 3 (35:43):
Yeah, and I guess he gets away, right.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
I mean that's how it ends. So yeah, I'm assuming,
yeah he.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
Did and absolutely left. Why was he in there in
the first place? Do we ever know?

Speaker 1 (35:56):
I think I did, and I can't. Maybe it might
could be in one of my facts. I'll have to see.
I can't really remember.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
I mean, I'm sure they didn't tell why everybody was
in there. No, uh probably probably wasn't important.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
Yeah, uh so anyway, so basically that's how it ends.
When Michael Douglas was shopping it to studios, basically every
studio but the one he didn't want turned him down,
and uh.

Speaker 3 (36:31):
Well that and they wanted McMurphy to live in the end.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
Well Century twenty Fox one was interested, but they had
a catch. They wanted McMurphy to live at the end,
and of course the producers were like, no, that's a
deal breaker, which, yeah, I mean.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
They wanted him to live but with a lobotomy.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
Right, Well, I don't know either way, it wouldn't it
wouldn't have been a good ending. No, yeah, you don't.
You don't want to leave McMurphy sitting in a chair
staring out the window at.

Speaker 3 (37:02):
The end of the movie. That's not a good ending.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
Yeah. So basically that was a nil. And I guess
one of the guys, the guy that played when they
were all you know, they would sleep in the hospital
and they personalized their sleeping quarters, spent their days on
campus getting the sense of what it was like to

(37:26):
be hospitalized, and then they actually interacted with a lot
of psychiatric patients, which is kind of a little creepy,
a little creepy. Sidney Lasik, who played Charlie Cheswick, he

(37:47):
did actually emotionally start to break down during the movie,
and I guess like one of the therapists, you know,
was kind of keeping an eye on him. And I
guess at the last of the movie, and I guess
they filmed the entire movie in sequence except for the
fishing scene. And the director did not want the fishing

(38:09):
scene in the movie because he wanted the entire movie
in the institution, but somebody talked him into adding the
fishing scene, so they had to film it afterwards.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
Yeah. I also saw where Jack Nicholson's at the time
girlfriend is like an extra.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Yeah in that scene in the fishing scene.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Who was it that was, I'll get to her here
in famous, real famous.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
Yeah, I've got it here. Yeah. Anyway, back back to Charlie.
Uh well, actually the actor Sidney Lasik, I guess when
they were so basically they've been through this whole movie,
they've started to like McMurphy and all the and all
the fellow actors in the movie. And I guess in

(39:02):
the scene, the very last scene where chief realizes what's
happened to McMurphy. I guess Sidney Lasik broke down crying
and was so distraught they had to remove him from
the set wow, because they just couldn't get him to
calm down. So it did have quite an effect on him.

Speaker 3 (39:25):
It's a powerful movie.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, I guess it was a big camaraderie with all
the male co stars throughout the filming and basically when
they weren't filming, they were kind of paling around. Louise
Fletcher felt a little left out, which sometimes you hear
like maybe Louise Fletcher didn't want to be a part,

(39:48):
you know, offset maybe she didn't want to interact with
the guys because she wanted to be the authoritarian, But
that was not true. She wanted to be one of
the guys. So I guess one day she took off
her dress and said, I'll show what a real woman
is and whipped off her dress and surprised the whole

(40:11):
cast one evening.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
So it got to be a picture of that somewhere.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
You'd be kind of fun. Angelica Houston, Angela Houston, Yeah,
that's what it was there, I got it right there. Yeah,
so she is a subtle cameo during the and I
guess everybody but Jack Nicholson got sick in that scene,
the fishing scene.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
Oh sick.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
Yeah, And I guess it was super hard to film.
And I mean, watching the movie, it is. It is
a scene that they could have, you know, a whole
portion of the movie they could have done without. I
think it's kind of like watching Charlie Brown Halloween and
Snoopy goes off to do his World one one pilot thing.

(40:58):
You're like, You're like, it's kind of like two different
but yeah, so but anyway, they left it in. Initially,
Foreman was vocally opposed to Oh yeah, I already talked
about that. Arthur Kenney Kessey disapproved of the big screen

(41:20):
adaptation and basically decided he was never going to watch
the movie. But I guess one night he was flipping
through channels and ended up on it, and I guess
watched a little bit of it, not knowing what it
was until he realized what it was, and then he
switched channels. But according to legend, he never watched the

(41:43):
entire or even much of the movie, maybe just a
few minutes of it. So yeah, anyway, that's kind of
all my behind the scene news I was trying to
I didn't really have time. I'm not sure how old
that most of those guys were. Danny Devita was young.

Speaker 3 (42:04):
Twenty seven he was, okay. I saw one of those
things where they compare him now to then.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
What about Jack Nicholson? How old was he when he
did it? I don't remember, Okay.

Speaker 3 (42:17):
For some reason, I just remember Danny DeVito being twenty
seven around there, probably about the same age.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
Yeah, I bet, I bet most of those guys were.
Hold on, let's see Burt Reynold that Ashby wanted thirty
seven year old Jack Nicholson, So I guess he was
thirty seven. So there you go.

Speaker 3 (42:37):
Yeah, it was fifty years ago.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah, fifty years And it's one of
those movies that you don't see on TV very often.
You know, you'll see Shawshank and Twisters and some of
these movies like literally monthly on some random channel. But

(43:02):
one flu of the Cuckoo's nest rarely ever pops up.

Speaker 6 (43:07):
No.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
I wonder why.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
I don't know. I don't know if it's because of
the language. I mean, they bleep, you know, we can
bleep a lot of that out or the subject matter.

Speaker 4 (43:16):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (43:17):
It's a good question. I don't know, so let us
know if you guys, how are we doing on time
over there? Oh? Ok, that was weird, perfect timing.

Speaker 3 (43:29):
Anytime blipped out on us? Hey have you heard from
Christopher Todd?

Speaker 6 (43:33):
Is he?

Speaker 3 (43:34):
Oh? No, he's in Florida.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
He's in But we had talked about maybe doing it
from Hawaii.

Speaker 3 (43:39):
Yeah, but he.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
Thought we were doing live. We all thought we were
doing live tonight. So we hadn't really set anything up.
So we probably won't have Christopher Todd on. Plus he's vacationing.
Let's yeah, I don't know what.

Speaker 3 (43:51):
That he's going to be there even next Tuesday.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
So maybe maybe we'll do it next Tuesday. Yeah, try
to set up a time because I don't know what
the time differences. It's like, if it's two hours to California,
I don't know. I don't know how many hours it
is to Hawaii.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
Alexa, what time is it in Hawaii?

Speaker 1 (44:13):
In Hawaii, it's two one, two to oh one?

Speaker 3 (44:17):
Wow, so they're five hours behind. Yeah, they're five hours
behind us ahead of us, behind.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
Us, so yeah, so it'd just be an afternoon for
him yeah, he'd just be doing the show in the
middle of the afternoon. That wouldn't mean. Yeah, we'll try
to have Christopher Todd on Bushead Radio next week.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
Speaking of which, don't forget to go over to buzz
Over Radio.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
Don't forget to check it out. We got some updates there.
And I guess it's Halloween week. So hope you guys
have a fun time, are you does justin do they
pass out candy on Halloween night? Do you know?

Speaker 3 (44:54):
Or but no, not where he lives because.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
He's Oh that's right, they're kind of out there.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
You had a long driveway. It's not really you know,
he's on five acres.

Speaker 4 (45:06):
And yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
And so no, what they're going to go? I guess
we're all going to go over to her folks neighborhood.
They live. They bought a house over in Toby Keith's
golf community. So I guess we're going to take Charlie
over there.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
There you go, Well, that'll be fun.

Speaker 3 (45:25):
We'll shwinky neighborhood a little o.

Speaker 1 (45:27):
Charlie.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
Yes, his year is exactly a year ago. It's last
time I saw her.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Oh wow wow, Yeah, this.

Speaker 3 (45:33):
Came up on Facebook. You know that you know this
is what you were doing exactly a year ago.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Man, yours are flying by. Okay, we'll hope you guys
have fun passing out, handing out trick or treat candy.
Don't eat too much of it yourselves.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
Watch out for razor blades and needles.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
Yeah, check every piece. If your kids have come home
with a pillow case full of candy, snag all the
snicker bars. Let us know what what you guys did
for Halloween, and we're gonna get out of here. You're
to see you, okay, by the way, Oh yeah, and
before we get out of here, we're gonna basically leave
you guys with this, partly because of the movie, partly

(46:13):
because of Halloween.

Speaker 4 (46:15):
You guys enjoy.

Speaker 6 (46:45):
Very creepy.

Speaker 4 (47:33):
Goodbye, Chief, goodbye Chief.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
Impabon about bone Impabon about the