it seems incredible to think that in 1975 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was one of the top 10 box office money-making films of all time in fact it played in one theater in Switzerland for 11 years and it was still playing when the theater closed down in 1987. Simple Story an aggressive man gets put into a mental institution he notices how the head nurse abuses the patients and he decides to get the men to stand up to her so he organizes a basketball game takes them fishing defies the nurse makes pretend they're watching a World Series game he holds a night party with booze and girls and he tries to give men back their manhood their individuality well of course the head nurse is not just gonna sit there so she strikes back she punishes him severely and the other patients they fall apart like collateral damage and basically that is the whole story Chaos versus order Conformity versus Rebellion Yet the movie like the book it was based on became a classic it is one of the few films to win Top awards at the Academy Awards the top five best picture Best Director best writer best actor and best actress yet the writer of a novel that the movie was based on Ken keezy never saw the movie he didn't like the changes that the director made on his story so much so that whenever the movie came out on TV he changed the channel and when he passed away in 2001 he still hadn't seen it let's discuss the writer first Ken keezy grew up in the 1950s while he was a student at Stanford University he volunteered to participate in an experiment to try a new medication that was supposed to cure mental illness it was supposed to make the Mind sharper well it turned out that the people that were conducting the experiment were of the CIA and the medication they were giving out was LSD the purpose wasn't to cure mental illness it was to control you to keep you insane to break your spirit if you were being interrogated and if you think it's shocking that the United States government would use its citizens as guinea pigs look it up it was part of a project project MK Ultra Google it well Ken Casey who had never had a beer before now started taking LSD as a recreational drug he got a job in a a part-time job in a state mental institution where he stole the LSD his experiences there inspired him to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and it was published in 1962. it was banned in many high schools and this added to his appeal Time Magazine placed it among the top 100 best novels of the 20th century [Music] now in the book the protagonist was a Native American called chief bromden he was a World War II veteran who came home to see his white mother belittle his father into selling his land to the government to the white man so they could build a dam his father died of alcoholism and chief Brandon ended up hallucinating and depressed in a state hospital and there he meets Randall McMurphy a veteran of the Korean War who had helped men Break Out Of A POW Camp he was a war hero but then he got into fights and when he got involved with a girl who had lied about her age he gets arrested for statutory rape and ends up in the hospital the film never mentions that they are War veterans if it did it could have been a commentary on how the government uses up our veterans and when they suffer post-traumatic stress disorder just locks them up in the film McMurphy becomes a protagonist the movie opens and closes with the same shot nature with Native American music in the first shot a man is taken out of Nature and put into the Asylum when the film ends a man runs from the Asylum and goes back to Nature there is a shot in the film of a squirrel crawling on Barb's wire nature and machine Ken keezy wanted his story to be about the government's oppression on the individual and how industrialization had dehumanized Society but the director Milo's Foreman had other ideas by this point Ken keezy has sold the movie rights to Kirk Douglas who made it into a stage play then turned the story over to his son Michael Douglas who hired director milus Foreman to direct the movie in 1962 when the book came out there was the book mentioned industrialization and then Chief bromden talked about the combine stamping out our individuality but by 1975 that was more prevalent I mean we had the Counter Culture we had John F Kennedy being assassinated we had the Civil Rights Movement the Vietnam War women's Liberation people didn't trust the government anymore so Ken keesey's novel was no longer considered revolutionary his views were already prevalent the director saw things differently he wanted the movie to be an attack on totalitarianism you see the director milus Foreman was from Czechoslovakia where he lost his mother in the Holocaust and there lived under the Communist system Milos Foreman said that he understood what the mental patients were feeling perhaps this is why the film feels a little ambiguous a little odd it's not quite a drama not quite a comedy not really a tragedy it's more of an observation than a story and the film feels a little dated but is still irrelevant today to distrust the social mores the movie touches on the psychology of Conformity and how if you don't conform the state will consider you a deviant and lock you up the power of Conformity is so strong that people consider themselves deviants and would lock themselves up many of the patients in Cuckoo's Nest were volunteers with all their complaining and fear of nurse ratchet there is freedom in confinement and if you look closely at McMurphy during the climax of the party scene you'll see that he fell into this too he stalls when he could have easily left he realized he has been institutionalized and if he doesn't leave soon he'll never leave but he still stalls He is uncertain in the United States before 1950 there were about 50 000 lobotomies performed and many more electric shock treatments they were often performed to treat depression didn't cure anybody and kept the patients calm controlled submissive and sadly families would lock up relatives who were not insane but were overly angry or had suffered traumas or was sexually active they locked up Alzheimer's patients and many battered women who had no place to go would institutionalize themselves just to get away from their abusive husbands the film was made in the Oregon state hospital and many of the film's extras were actual patients this environment depressed Jack Nicholson so much and co-star Danny DeVito felt so lonely that he created an imaginary friend and actor Sydney Lasik suffered a breakdown the film enhances a sense of confinement by filming through a lot of bars and glass windows and in the beginning we see nurse ratchet walking toward us through barred doors much like a prisoner herself now many ask is McMurphy insane but the real question is is Nurse ratchet insane she believes in what she is doing but what's her story what does she like when she goes home does she control the ward so excessively because she can't control her life on the outside why is she so cold so unempathetic is she a sociopath did she suffer a trauma was she abused was she raped we don't know first thing in the morning before they even brush their teeth the patients are given medication to keep them sedated while they are in a stupor they listen to music played loudly to keep them from talking too loud this mental ward represents Society it's even more evident today one anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa sold two billion dollars last year alone add to that the hundreds of other pills this multi-billion dollar industry and who wants these men to get any better antidepressants abound Red Bull is sold as a soda Prozac Nation let's talk about this patient settled nurse ratchet chastises him when she discovers that he had been giving away his medication for a long time but she should be happy if he's functioning so well without medication he doesn't need the drugs but the problem here is we're not interested in insurers we don't want to help anybody no forget about a cure the important thing here is control submission over-the-counter drugs Red Bull things that keep people in line now the patients are all white and the attendees are all black and they like nurse ratchet are abusive remember this story was written and takes place in 1962. is a writer saying that if the tables were turned that black men if they were placed in Authority would turn on the white man is he saying that black men who are marginalized on the outside take out their aggression on the patients on the inside or in the psychology of Conformity it's easier to abuse people if you can always say well we're just following orders well that's open to discussion women are not treated very well in this story nurse ratchet is a monster her hair looks like horns like the devil itself and notice how her assistant nurse pillbow the name sounds like pill box she keeps the men on drugs she sedates him she is Nurse ratchet's accomplice her partner in crime patient Mr Harding his wife is flirtatious she humiliates him paranoid Harding states that he suspects his wife of cheating on him but nurse ratchet doesn't reassure him or say that he's wrong she says that he just didn't measure up that he is impatient and perhaps didn't meet her needs Billy bibbett's mother is so possessive of his affections that she keeps him in an infantile dependent state Chief ramadan's mother persuades his father to sell his land to the white man so they can build a dam then she belittles him makes him change his last name until finally he turns to alcoholism McMurphy was arrested because he had sex with a teenage girl who lied about her age the Asian nurse in the other Ward is soft-spoken as she sweet talks and soothes talks the man to lie down so she can give them electric shock therapy the only nice woman in this story are the prostitutes does this mean that only submissive women are worthwhile because they meet man's basic sexual needs maybe the story is sexist and misogynistic the book is even more pronounced in this area when Harding complains about a matriarchy however the chief States correctly that nurse ratchet is merely a part of the system what he calls the combine a machine speaking of which the name ratchet is very similar to a tool a ratchet or as McMurphy calls her a rat shed [Music] in the film the patients and the nurses and the attendees all dress in white demonstrating a false sense of equality as each man gained some sense of individuality he uses a different color in this picture you can see Cheswick holding a black jacket against himself as if taking baby steps towards independence in the next scene he's more assertive he's wearing it and if you listen closely you'll hear Jack Nicholson or I should say McMurphy praising Cheswick saying nice shirt cesaroo at the end of the film McMurphy calls Cheswick by his first name Charles Cheswick has obtained bad hood and speaking of names in one funny instance when nurse ratchet calls McMurphy Randall he answers back with her first name Mildred McMurphy loves sexual freedom and sexual expression while nurse ratchet disapproves and seems frigid she doesn't approve of his body humor if you look at nurse pillbow she looks at McMurphy with fear but at times with a little Intrigue what's going on here sex is universal but it's one of the most divisive topics in our society it's either hushed up or overblown embraced or feared so who is right free spirited McMurphy or repressed nurse ratchet neither there is no right each individual must make up his own mind and when McMurphy faces off with nurse ratchet there is collateral damage McMurphy probably thought that sex would be like therapy for Billy bibbit but Billy is not ready for a relationship he's not capable yet on the other hand nurse ratchet condemns him so harshly and frightens him so much that there are tragic circumstances so is sex dangerous it can be but this can very well be because of society's over restrictions because of its over permissiveness a healthy balance does not exist between these two mindsets some say McMurphy was using the patience to further his game against nurse ratchet I don't think this is entirely true he seems to care very much about the men and he could have made things easier for himself his game turns serious without his knowing it and he realizes much too late that against nurse ratchet he's out of his League he cannot beat the system nurse ratchet allows her overbearing need of control to completely overwhelm any sense of fair play she may not have been evil at the beginning but she certainly is Evil by the film's end now she believed she was doing the right thing but she was corrupted by power and authority she has become a tyrant these have been made about Conformity and how good people can do horrible things under the right circumstances there are many many nurse ratchets out there the film also leads us to question our world and how we treat those who are different McMurphy flat out tells the men and I quote what's the matter with you guys are you you think you're crazy you're not you're not you're not crazier than the average person out on the street and that is it forty percent of prisoners have some kind of mental illness prescription drugs are more prevalent than ever the psychology of conformance is so strong that despite Independence thinking today many people assert themselves only over the social media we categorize people over conditions one last thought the water fountain now this is really a hydrotherapy console but that's a mouthful so I'm just going to call it a water fountain McMurphy says at one point he's going to pick it up and throw it out the window and Escape well he tries and he fails it's just too heavy this water fountain represents all the rules and regulations and social wars but McMurphy is not able to pick it up and get rid of it he's just not strong enough I guess you could say so he is trapped but wait later on somebody does pick up society's rules and regulations and controls and suppression and he manages to throw it out the window and Escape so all is not lost it's one big triumphant moment yes we need rules we need regulations but if we become too complacent well the powers that be can become abusive so we need these Misfits to come in here and change things around we need them so as the poster for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest said in 1975 in this day and age who needs people like McMurphy everybody this is cool talk