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  The bottom line was that Zaentz and Michael were learning on the job how to be producers. They were in over their heads and over budget, and they knew it. This film had so much riding on it that the two of them were continually anxious, unsteady, and insecure.

  For Michael, the production was a formative lesson in how to be a head honcho, and it allowed the positive, creative aspects of his personality to overcome the negative, passive ones. Reflecting on his experience co-producing on Cuckoo’s Nest, Michael said, “Well, I’ve learned that [film] work is a totally collaborative effort. Half the battle is getting along. If you start pissing people off or alienating them you get nowhere. It’s better to bend than get into a conflict. We have conflicts but it makes them more important when they come if you try to d[e]fuse them first. Of course it’s your sanity too.”

  BY THE TIME production wrapped that March, everyone connected to the project was aware that something special had taken place. Michael remembers, “It was a really magical experience for all of us—for everybody except, unfortunately, Ken Kesey, and that has always hurt me, and it has probably hurt him a lot. It is the only thing about the film that I regret.”

  Cuckoo’s Nest opened on November 19, 1975, to mixed-to-positive reviews and overwhelming box office support. Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, called it “a film so good in so many of its parts that there’s a temptation to forgive it when it goes wrong. But it does go wrong, insisting on making larger points than its story really should carry, so that at the end, the human qualities of the characters get lost in the significance of it all. And yet there are those moments of brilliance.” Ebert would later upgrade his opinion and include the film on his list of greatest movies.

  Vincent Canby wrote in the New York Times that the film was “a comedy that can’t quite support its tragic conclusion, which is too schematic to be honestly moving, but it is acted with such a sense of life that one responds to its demonstration of humanity if not to its programmed metaphors.… Even granting the artist his license, America is much too big and various to be satisfactorily reduced to the dimensions of one mental ward in a movie like this.”

  Richard Schickel, in Time magazine, said. “The trouble [with the film] is that it betrays no awareness that the events are subject to multiple interpretations.… [T]he fault lies in a script that would rather ingratiate than abrade, in direction that is content to realize, in documentary fashion, the ugly surfaces of asylum life.”

  Newsweek’s Jack Kroll complained that the movie had “simplified” the book. “What’s missing,” he said, was the “powerful feeling at the center, the terror and the terrifying laughter.… By opting for a style of comic realism, Forman loses much of the nightmare quality that made the book a capsized allegory of an increasingly mad reality.”

  However, Pauline Kael, the doyenne of esoteric film critics in the 1970s, heaped praise on the film in her highly influential weekly column in the New Yorker, calling it “a powerful, smashing, effective movie—one that will probably stir audiences’ emotions and join the ranks of such pop-mythology films as The Wild One, Rebel Without a Cause, and Easy Rider, the three most iconic, culture-shifting films of the ’50s and ’60s.”

  Reviews really didn’t matter because from day one, audiences packed theaters to see it. Cuckoo’s Nest would go on to gross $108,981,275, most of that in 1975 dollars (before additional video, cable, and Netflix streams of revenue became available, adjusted for inflation, in today’s dollars $400 million.)3 It ranks eighty-two on the list of highest-grossing movies of all time (Victor Fleming’s 1939 Gone with the Wind is number one; number eighty-one is Ken Annakin’s 1960 Swiss Family Robinson; and number eighty-three is Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H). It played to packed houses all over the world; in Sweden it reportedly played in one theater for eleven years. It is ranked number twenty in the American Film Institute’s documentary One Hundred Years … One Hundred Movies.

  WEEKS BEFORE the highly anticipated awarding of that year’s Academy Awards, Ken Kesey flew down to L.A. and, despite their previous agreement, sued Zaentz and Michael for damages for not using his script to make the movie version of his novel. “They took out the morality, they took out the conspiracy that is America” was the main thrust of his complaint. This time he had hired a team of lawyers who demanded 5 percent of the film’s gross for Kesey, along with $800,000 in punitive damages. Eventually the case was settled, with Kesey receiving 2½ percent of the film’s gross—no small amount, but it did nothing to assuage his anger over what he saw as the bastardization of his work.

  THE ACADEMY AWARDS for 1975’s best pictures were held on March 29, 1976, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. The ceremonies were hosted by television and film star Goldie Hawn, representing “young” Hollywood, and veteran song-and-dance man Gene Kelly, holding up the rear. In an unusual twist, additional hosting segments were given over to Walter Matthau, a serious character man who had found real fame late in the day as a comic actor, leading man George Segal of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? fame, and the venerable Robert Shaw, who that year had given a remarkable performance in Steven Spielberg’s insanely popular Jaws.

  Michael showed up in a superbly tailored tux with a gowned Brenda Vaccaro as his official date—even though by now the two had officially broken up. “It was a bittersweet thing,” Michael later recalled. “I had been with Brenda for years—and we had just separated. She had been nominated that year in a film, coincidentally, that my father was in. So we went together, though we were not together.” She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Guy Green’s Once Is Not Enough, and it just seemed to Michael like the right thing to do to appear together, as friends. (Vaccaro lost to Lee Grant for her performance in Hal Ashby’s Shampoo.)

  What made the night truly memorable for everybody was the incredible sweep that Cuckoo’s Nest pulled off. Not since 1934, when the film industry and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were quite different from what they were in the 1970s, had one film won all four of the major categories—Best Actor (Clark Gable), Best Actress (Claudette Colbert), Best Director (Frank Capra), Best Picture (It Happened One Night). This night, against some formidable competition, including Spielberg’s heavily favored Jaws, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the film that nobody had wanted to make, was about to make history.

  The evening began on a less than auspicious note. Nominated for a total of nine Oscars, Cuckoo’s Nest lost the first four out of five it was up for, prompting Jack Nicholson to raise his eyebrows, grin, and whisper over to Michael, “I told you,” whatever that meant. “You try not to put importance on it,” Michael said later, “but it gets you crazy.”4

  Then the broom came out. Louise Fletcher, the sixth choice for the role of Nurse Ratched, won Best Actress. When her name was announced and she went to the stage, she surprised everybody (and confused some) by accepting her award in American Sign Language so that her deaf mother could “hear” her. Translated, her words were, “I want to thank you for teaching me to have a dream. You are seeing my dream come true.”5

  Perhaps the biggest no-brainer of the night was choosing Best Actor. Jack Nicholson was the current prince of Hollywood, and his performance in Cuckoo’s Nest was right up there with the best of his best. The charismatic personality that Nicholson had exhibited most notably in Easy Rider, The Last Detail, and Roman Polanski’s 1974 Chinatown—a combination of leading man and character actor, with charm, sarcasm, a winning smile, and a blast of intelligence—made him irresistible. He had Brando’s wounded-animal strength and Dean’s pained vulnerability, fortified with a sixties-style skepticism toward authority, all of which perfectly fit into his astonishing immersion-therapy performance in Cuckoo’s Nest. Audiences loved it, and the Academy did too. When his name was called as the winner, the crowd stood and cheered as he ran up to the stage and flashed his zillion-dollar smile for all the world to see. “Well,” he said, “I guess this proves there are as many nuts in the Academy as anywher
e else!” The audience roared with laughter.6

  Between the meaningless song-and-dance numbers meant to entertain the home TV viewers and tickle the ratings numbers, the night actually managed to build to a dramatic climax when it became clear that Cuckoo’s Nest actually had a chance of sweeping the big four. Next on that list was Best Director. The nominees’ names were read, and when Miloš Forman’s name was called and he got up, the onetime Czech film savant had reached the pinnacle of Hollywood glamour and power.7

  The audience then hushed, waiting to witness history the way a crowd at a baseball game anticipates a no-hitter, as Gene Kelly introduced Audrey Hepburn to present the night’s final award, Best Picture (in Hollywood parlance, Best Producer). In her familiar clipped and elegant fashion, Hepburn read the nominees one last time, said, “The winner is …,” opened the envelope, then threw her arms in the air and shouted, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest!” The audience erupted in cheers, and Michael slowly stood up and waved. Then he turned to Forman and said, laughing, “It’s all downhill from here.” Michael found the white-haired, bearded Zaentz, and together they linked arms and made their victory walk to the podium.8

  Zaentz spoke first. “The dream started at the Rialto Theater in Passaic, New Jersey, a long time ago. But now gratification comes from all over the world … dreams do come true.”

  Then it was Michael’s turn. Looking tan, his head tilted slightly to one side, his Oscar held low like a six-gun, he leaned into the long, slim microphone. “I think It Happened One Night, 1937, was the last time a film won Picture, Director, Actor, Actress” (it was 1934). “I’d just like to really thank the Academy for all your support, and to our really incredible cast and crew, from whom I think we all learned something about working ensemble … and as Louise said, anybody who’s got a dream and it’s a possibility it’s not going to be a reality, just hang on.” The music came up, and once more the audience stood and applauded.

  After some early scary moments, Michael’s big night had burst open like a balloon filled with glitter. As he recalls, “It was a wonderful moment. I remember it well. First of all, Jack Nicholson had lost two years in a row. He lost for Chinatown and The Last Detail and he was not even going to go [to the Awards]. We had nine nominations but it was still a fight to get him to go … And then came the last five [sic] awards … Then Miloš won … then Louise won … and then Jack won, and then we did. I think the picture was popular because everybody knew the dark horse history of the project.”

  That night Michael attended all the parties, including the most important and prestigious, the Governor’s Ball, and went on and on about town until dawn.

  Without Brenda.

  NOT MENTIONED IN Michael’s acceptance speech nor in attendance for the Awards ceremonies was Kirk Douglas. He had decided to stay home and watch it all on television.

  1 DeVito and Lloyd. Later on, Nicholson would be given similar “privileges.”

  2 Little of Haskell’s footage remains in The Conversation, mostly a few long outdoor shots that were too complicated and too difficult to reshoot within the budget limitations of the film.

  3 All box office numbers, unless otherwise noted, are from Box Office Mojo.

  4 The four nominations the film lost were for Cinematography, Film Editing, Scoring—Original Music, and Best Supporting Actor (Brad Dourif). It won an Oscar for its fifth nomination, Writing—Adapted from Other Material, which went to Cuckoo’s Nest’s Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman. Kesey had not been listed as one of the screenwriters and did not receive an Oscar.

  5 The other nominees were not much competition in the Academy’s eyes: Isabelle Adjani in François Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H., Ann-Margret in Ken Russell’s Tommy, Glenda Jackson for Trevor Nunn’s Hedda, and Carol Kane for Joan Micklin Silver’s Hester Street. Sign language was not yet a common practice at Awards ceremonies.

  6 The other nominees were Walter Matthau in Herb Ross’s adaptation of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys, Al Pacino in Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon, Maximilian Schell in Arthur Hiller’s The Man in the Glass Booth, and James Whitmore in Steve Binder’s Give ’Em Hell, Harry!

  7 The other nominees were Robert Altman for Nashville, Federico Fellini for Amarcord, Stanley Kubrick for Barry Lyndon, and Sidney Lumet for Dog Day Afternoon.

  8 The other nominees were Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, Martin Bregman and Martin Elfand’s Dog Day Afternoon, Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown’s Jaws, and Robert Altman’s Nashville.

  CHAPTER 9

  Everybody was happy to see me. When you have a hit, you are the most popular man in the world. I went around the world and just savored it. Jack and I went on a promotional tour for the movie. We had a blast.

  —MICHAEL DOUGLAS

  JACK AND MICHAEL SHARED THE SAME TASTES IN A lot of things besides movies, including food, drink, drugs, and women. They toured the world promoting the film like a couple of rock stars with a new hit album, loving the excesses of success and always looking for more. They teetered through England, Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Australia, greeted by big crowds, hordes of pot-smoking hot young girls willing to audition for anything the boys wanted, and huge box office receipts wherever they went. Three months into it, Jack finally had to return to the reality of work and begin promoting his newest film, Arthur Penn’s The Missouri Breaks, in which he co-starred opposite Marlon Brando.

  Jack’s departure signaled the end of the party. As Jack later said, “We had a blast—I couldn’t keep up with Michael. Oh, and by the way, he has a penchant for the bizarre.” He may have been referring to their alleged shared liking of kinky sex games, as stories kept leaking about the actors’ wild romps, to the point where an angry Anjelica Huston booked a vengeance trip to London with Ryan O’Neal, intending to have some fun of her own.

  As far as Michael was concerned, “I was single at the time and I was determined to savor the experience in the most decadent of ways. True, it did get a bit excessive, and people close to us were worried what I was doing to myself, but it was fun and it was meant to be. I knew it could not last forever and never intended that it should.”

  After Jack left, Michael continued on alone to South America, making stops in Brazil, Venezuela, and Mexico. He did not return to Los Angeles until the autumn of 1976, fully six months after he had won his Oscar. And when he did, his reception by the industry was surprisingly mixed.

  Hollywood is nothing if not a petty and jealous place. It’s the turf that comes with the chronic insecurity that is the hallmark of an industry where nobody really knows anything about anything, except occasionally how to make a decent movie. Already the word filtering through Hollywood was that Michael had shot to the top too quickly, he had not paid his proper dues, and he was the son of a famous movie star without whom he would not have gotten the necessary breaks. There could be nowhere for him to go now but down. For the most part, he tried to ignore it, more concerned with what he could possibly do to top Cuckoo’s Nest—if he could top it at all.

  That fall, Jimmy Carter was elected president in what was one of the greatest upsets in American politics; he was an unknown peanut farmer from the South who had become governor of Georgia and then ran against Vice President Gerald Ford for the presidency. Carter was so little known that when he was governor he appeared on the television program What’s My Line? as the celebrity guest, and no one on the regular panel had a clue as to who he was. Ford, politically fatally wounded by his pardon of his predecessor, the disgraced Richard Nixon, was never able to shake the notion that it had all been prearranged to keep the former president out of jail, and lost in the general election to Carter. Many thought that Mickey Mouse could have run against Ford and beaten him. (Still others thought Jimmy Carter was Mickey Mouse.)

  To thank all those in Hollywood who had supported his campaign, Carter invited many of them to his inaugural gala, Michael among them. He had somehow found time to attend a few fund-raisers during Cuckoo’s Nest to hel
p ensure that the Republicans would not hold on to the White House. Jack Nicholson was invited, and he and Michael arrived together, Jack in shades and Michael reverting to his shoulder-length hair and bushy beard look from his college days. Early on, they were joined by Bob Dylan on the roof of the White House, where they all celebrated the occasion by smoking some pot.

  Midway through the festivities, in one of those storybook moments that Rodgers and Hammerstein turned into a love song for the ages, Michael looked across the crowded ballroom and saw for the first time the princesslike Diandra Luker, smiling, shining, utterly resplendent in a flowing white gown.

  Michael made his way toward her, and, completely ignoring his official escort for the night, started a conversation with this tall, slim daughter of an Austrian diplomat, who was a student at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

  She was polite, but in truth she had never heard of him. She had only been in America three years, never watched television, had never seen The Streets of San Francisco, and knew nothing about Cuckoo’s Nest. According to Diandra, “He had this enormous, burly beard. He looked like a painter or a sculptor. I just thought he was interesting. He was different. He had different perspectives about things. He was sixties, rock and roll, and drugs.… We were people from opposite worlds.”

  After a very short time, he asked what she was doing later, and she said she was going to a private club. Michael confidently said he would see her there, but she smiled and told him he wouldn’t be able to get in. Michael showed up at the club with Jack anyway, but despite their confidence and their fame, rules were rules, and they were not allowed past the front door.

  Michael got in touch with Diandra the next day and arranged to take her to dinner. Soon after, she accepted an invitation from Michael to spend a weekend in Southern California. When she left for L.A., a cautious Diandra told her roommate, “If my mother calls, tell her I’m in the library.”