Talk:Ken Kesey

screen rights

Without Kesey's permission or involvement, Milos Forman directed a screen adaptation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest starring Jack Nicholson in 1975, which won the academy award for best picture.

It's completely cary to my understanding of IP laws in the U.S. that Forman made the film without Kesey's permission: Kesey would have owned the screen rights, and no one could make a film of his book without his permission unless they were in for lengthy litigation which would end in defeat. I know that Kirk Douglas had the screen rights for awhile, and I guess if Kesey signed a loosely-worded contract, Douglas could have sold the rights without Kesey's permission. If that's the case, it should be clarified. As it is, it's misleading, so I'm removing "permission" above. Koyaanis Qatsi

That is all true but it should be noted that Kessey didn't like the film version of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's nest and had wanted to sue the makers of the film beacause he thought the film was too far away from his book.Saulisagenius

Here's the version of the story that I'm familiar with -- Ken Kesey sold the movie rights to Cuckoo's Nest for $20,000 and wrote the first screenplay. The screenplay that was eventually used was a revision, not Kesey's. One of the major adaptations from the book for the movie was the use of Nicholson's character. RP McMurphy in the book was a tall, broad shouldered man with red curly hair. Nicholson's RP McMurphy was a very different creature.

Kesey at one point got into an argument, not just with the lawyers over the paltry sum he'd received for the movie, but also over the casting of Nicholson to play McMurphy. According to Kesey, one of the lawyers said "we don't see what you're complaining about. You'll be the first one in line to see that movie." Kesey claims that at that point he swore that he would never see the movie, and said, "you don't lie to lawyers. If you do that, you go straight to hell." So, apparently, Kesey never saw the movie. At the time of its release it was the 7th highest grossing film and earned over $300 million. (Those figures are taken from http://www.filmsite.org/onef.html.)

According to a eulogy written after Kesey's death and published in a local paper in Springfield, Oregon, the night of the Academy Awards, when Cuckoo's Nest was nominated for nine academy awards (and won five of them) Kesey and some of his buddies were in a backhouse behind his home playing poker and drinking. He was not invited to the Academy and did not watch the awards on TV. Also according to that eulogy, Kesey did receive some sort of settlement in addition to the $20,000. Kesey never warmed up to the fact that tens of thousands of copies of his book had Jack Nicholson's face on the cover.

merger.

i just removed the merger tag from furthur but i guess it should be discussed. some one can replace that if they feel i erred. the bus is an american icon which deserves its won article. it was the vehicle used for a voyage documented in books, it has a festival named after it. it shouldn't be merged. --Heah (talk) 05:46, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

due to the lack of any objection i'm going to remove the merge tag. --Heah (talk) 17:46, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

wasnt it michael douglas who owned the rights? kirk douglas, i dont think so...

Kirk originally bought the rights intending to do

a stage version. He either sold or gave the rights to his son.

Work in Oregon?

Didn't he work at the State Mental Hospital in Salem, Oregon? I was led to believe that he had, and that it was his work in Salem that led to his writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. A friend who worked at the hospital only months before the movie was filmed there, told me that Kesey had worked at the hospital in the 1950s or so. Anyone know? -- Andrew Parodi 04:41, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Kesey worked as a night attendant in the psychiatric ward at the Menlo Park VA Hospital, CA at the same time he was an experimental subject in a government sponsored project investigating certain "psychomemetic" drugs. His work experience combined with his experiences with one drug in particular were the basis for his characters in the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Splitsky 19:11, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I believe Kesey worked at the Menlo Park VA hospital while he studied creative writing at Stanford (under Wallace Stegner). However, the hospital in the film version of "Cuckoo's Nest" is in Oregon. It was recently in the news for allegations of inmate-abuse (http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/11/oregon.hospital.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories). Nelsonst2004 22:19, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Caverns

Kesey taught a novel-writing class at the UO that produced the collaborative novel Caverns. It might be nice to add this and some of his other teaching activities to the article. Katr67 13:48, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Acid Tests

Ken Kesey did not often slip acid into punch unbeknownst to his guests as this article metnioned. I edited because that was done by Ken Babs when Kesey was in Mexico

Non-major Works

• Edited his own self-published literary journal Spit in the Ocean, which serialized his unpublished novel Seven Prayers by Grandma Whittier, 1970s, seven issues.

• "I've Used Cornstarch on my balls for years!" , by Ken Kesey, The Last Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog," Portola Institute, 1971. (Reprinted in Ken Kesey's Garage Sale).

The latter is a fine example of the Kesey spirit, but not a "major work" I'm afraid. See this source [1] to enjoy the whole thing.

Katr67 18:22, 17 July 2006 (UTC)