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Once the movie got under way, however, it was Forman who seemed detached. He worried about not having his Mercedes on hand near the Salem, Ore., mental hospital where the movie was shot (the car was eventually driven out from New York), and kept communication with cast and crew to a minimum. Nicholson went for several weeks hardly speaking to Forman, largely by his own choice. Cinematographer Haskell Wexler, himself an Oscar winner (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), groused about the way things were going and was replaced halfway through the filming. Fletcher fought with Forman through 17 takes of her first day's shooting. "Milos is very authoritarian," she says. "He doesn't want to discuss anything with his actors. He wanted us to surprise him with improvisations, but he never told us so." Encomiums for the director at Oscar time were noticeably cursory—when, indeed, he was mentioned at all.
At least he was mentioned. The name heard hardly at all was Ken Kesey's. Unacknowledged and unhonored, Kesey maintains that he has also been ripped off. He has filed suit claiming that he is entitled to 5% of the film's gross receipts and a cool $869,000 for damages. He has received, he says, a $10,000 advance for a screenplay that was not used, and has become financially hard-pressed. Kesey, his wife Faye and some friends watched the Oscars on TV at their Oregon farm, noting that, save for a passing mention by Forman, nobody had anything to say about book or author. "These people, they're like pump salesmen," Kesey says. "They stand around and talk about their wonderful pumps, how marvelous they are, how good the water tastes that comes through their pumps. They don't even seem to know the water comes from a well."
Kesey has not yet seen the film made from his book, insisting that it cannot be "truly good until they've made good with me." Still, it caused him some anguish to watch the Oscars being raked in. "I really love the movies," he says. "When they can be turned around to break your heart like this, well, it's like something that you never thought would happen."