Quote:
Originally Posted by SeaOfGrass
We still refer to Nurse Ratched on a regular basis, as do many. Wow, she was spot-on in that role.
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Fletcher actually re-defined that role.
I read the Ken Kesey book when it was first published.
In it, Nurse Ratched was portrayed as being as physically huge as a football player, black haired, ugly, and with a glare that intimidated everyone.
In the book, Ratched was always called The Big Nurse. Her name was only mentioned a few times, and Kesey left her physical description pretty sketchy.
Louise realized when she was reading for a tryout that there was no way she would get the part with her physical appearance.
So she re-envisioned Ratched, and made her an icy master of her little world where everyone had to accept Ratched's version of reality... all quiet, all the time. Working the hospital bureaucracy was Ratched's greatest strength; she didn't need physical strength to have her way.
Louise also invented Ratched's hairdo; tight, overdone, and as hard looking as a helmet.
The director instantly understood Fletcher had really captured what Ratched was all about, and Louise got the part before she finished her tryout reading.
McMurphy was a much easier character to envision, both in the book and the movie.
The book didn't sell very well at first, but Kirk Douglas read it and thought McMurphy was a good part for him.
Douglas wanted to put it on the stage as a play, and optioned the rights for it. Kirk never was able to get it all put together, so when his son Michael was looking for a property to produce, Kirk gave him the rights.
The movie was a battle of wills between a woman who had never lost a fight and a convict who had never won one. They had both played the same system both were in all their lives, but came from the totally opposite ends of that system.
When Kesey was still in college, he took a night orderly's job in the Oregon State Hospital one semester. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was written soon afterward while he was still fresh from that experience.
Ken Kesey only wrote 2 books in his lifetime. Both became hit movies and best sellers. "Sometimes A Great Notion" was his second, and it followed Cuckoo's Nest a couple of years later. That movie starred Henry Fonda.
While his second book and the movie did very well, it never became the classic that Cukoo's Nest became.
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