<p>-
- Danny DeVito Reveals His Surprising Jack Nicholson Connections, Discovered on "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest "Set" "(Exclusive)</p>
<p>Scott HuverJuly 11, 2025 at 4:40 AM</p>
<p>Earl Gibson III/Deadline via Getty;CPC/THA/Shutterstock</p>
<p>Danny DeVito in 1975's 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' and in 2025</p>
<p>As One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest turns 50, Danny DeVito is looking back on the making of the iconic film</p>
<p>In an exclusive chat with PEOPLE, the actor talks about his first interactions with costar Jack Nicholson, and their surprising connections</p>
<p>The movie is being re-released in 1,000 theaters nationwide on July 13 and 16 with a 4K restoration from the Academy Film Archive and Teatro Della Pace Films</p>
<p>Fifty years after its initial release, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest remains renowned among critics and audiences as one of the greatest films ever made. But for Danny DeVito, who found his breakthrough role as the always-grinning asylum inmate Martini, it was the launchpad for a five-decade-and-counting rocket ride through the highest ranks of Hollywood, as well as the beginning of some lifelong friendships.</p>
<p>As Fathom Entertainment brings the Milos Forman-directed film to 1,000 theaters nationwide on July 13 and 16 with a 4K restoration from the Academy Film Archive and Teatro Della Pace Films, DeVito spoke exclusively with PEOPLE, looking back on how the film adaptation of author Ken Kesey's classic counterculture novel set him up for success, professionally and personally.</p>
<p>"Being fortunate enough to be in it, what a blessing for me," he recalls. DeVito also had a front-row seat for the dazzling performance of leading man Jack Nicholson, at that point on the rise as both an admired actor, a major movie star and a cultural icon. Cuckoo's Nest would unequivocally cement that status: Nicholson would claim the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, and the film itself would become only the second film at the time to win all five major Oscar categories (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Director and Screenplay).</p>
<p>DeVito, now 80, vividly recalls the thrill of witnessing Nicholson hitting a career high firsthand. "Everybody was in awe of that," he says. "We're in the presence of this guy who's really at his moment, where he was breaking out into the big time."</p>
<p>THA/Shutterstock</p>
<p>Danny DeVito and Jack Nicholson in 1975's 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'</p>
<p>When Nicholson joined his castmates for rehearsals on set in the Oregon psychiatric hospital where the film was shot, DeVito and his costars — young, hungry actors including DeVito's future Taxi costar Christopher Lloyd, now-journeyman actor Brad Dourif (the voice of Chucky) and the late Vincent Schiavelli, known for prolific character actor roles in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Batman Returns — marveled at how instantly inclusive the nascent superstar, hot off a string of knockout turns including Easy Rider, Carnal Knowledge, The Last Detail and Chinatown, was.</p>
<p>"There was no need for an icebreaker," says DeVito. "He was immediately just so embracing." Despite Nicholson's increasing profile, DeVito says the actor remained deeply grounded, having launched his career in low-budget fare like the films of Roger Corman. "He started out exactly the way everybody else did, where he couldn't get a job. It was like he came to Hollywood and he was going to just write and direct, and then Easy Rider comes along after the Corman stuff … So he was in our milieu, and he was always just as open and genuine, and we all felt it immediately."</p>
<p>"Of course, he was doing it because he's that way," DeVito notes, "and he was also doing it because that had to be, because we had to be all joined at the hip in that movie, and we had such great performances."</p>
<p>DeVito had been an admirer of Nicholson's since the actor's earliest work, and while he planned to keep it to himself during initial production, "he and I have a little history, because we were born in the same hospital in New Jersey." DeVito recalls how his sisters worked in the same local hair salon circuit as Nicholson's older sister and while the two actors had never met, "when I was a kid, I always heard about this really handsome guy from Neptune who went out to California and became a movie star."</p>
<p>United Artists/Fantasy Films/Kobal/Shutterstock</p>
<p>Christopher Lloyd and Jack Nicholson in 1975's 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'</p>
<p>DeVito's planned discretion — "I didn't want to ruffle the waters; I didn't want to add anything to the experience at that time" — was blown early on when his longtime friend Michael Douglas, who was making his first foray into producing on the film, spilled the beans to an enthusiastic Nicholson. "Jack came running around the corner: 'Ahhhh! You're from Asbury Park?' " DeVito says with a laugh.</p>
<p>Their friendship would continue on screen and off for five decades, including when they shared the screen again in Goin' South, Terms of Endearment and the DeVito-directed Hoffa, and the pair still convene socially. "I just saw Jack a couple weeks ago — it was his birthday a month ago, and he's great."</p>
<p>As the first actor cast in the film, DeVito had a leg up on any competition. He previously played the role in an Off-Broadway production of the book that caught on with a counterculture audience, and he'd also been friends and former roommates with Douglas for a decade.</p>
<p>He'd seen Michael's father Kirk Douglas struggle for years to try to get Hollywood to adapt Cuckoo's Nest into a film, with Kirk in lead role of Randle P. McMurphy. "His father couldn't get the movie made, and Michael said, 'Let me run with this.' And then he brought in Saul Zaentz, who was a brilliant producer [Zaentz later brought The Lord of the Rings trilogy to the screen], who was a guy from Jersey who started a record company, Fantasy Records, and they put it together."</p>
<p>Adam Scull/REX/Shutterstock Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito in 1984</p>
<p>DeVito was also privy to the difficult decision Michael had to make when it came to casting the film's central role. "Kirk wanted to play that part," he says, recalling a summer visiting Michael in L.A. in 1968 when the elder Douglas, still laboring to convince a studio to make the film, showed him wardrobe concepts and production sketches he'd commissioned.</p>
<p>"I wasn't in the room when he had to tell his father," he says. "[Kirk] was a tough guy, man. I mean, Kirk was one of a kind, a wonderful man, but I can't imagine what it was like for Michael to have to say, 'Yeah, I'm taking the movie, Pop, and I'm going to get it made. But that's the good news. I've got something to tell you. Do you want to sit down?' … [But] he picked the right actor. Oh my God, did he!"</p>
<p>There was an eerie sense of reality that permeated the set as filming commenced in the still-working sanitarium, he recalls. "Upstairs from where we were shooting was the maximum-security ward, so there were guards there all the time at the staircases. It was only one flight up. It was locked off. So downstairs where Louise Fletcher would walk in, that was all just exactly the way it was in the movie."</p>
<p>The young, eager, immersion-friendly actors weren't at all put off by the proximity to the actual inmates. "We wanted to live there!" DeVito says with a laugh. "But they wouldn't let us because of the maximum-security ward upstairs. So Michael put us all up in a motel." Cells with thick, wired-glass windows were converted on set into makeshift private dressing rooms, but DeVito says the cast camaraderie kept everyone gathered in a common room when they weren't shooting.</p>
<p>"Nobody wanted to go [to the dressing rooms] because Michael and Saul set up this little room with a pool table," he recalls. "Scatman Crothers was a pool shark. He played bank pool and was just amazing. And Jack was in there every day, and he would be just talking about all the women that he [was dating]. It was a boys' club!" And one that included a poker table and even an early video game console. "And this is how long ago it was: the video game was Pong! It was state of the art."</p>
<p>Many of the friendships forged on the set of Cuckoo's Nest would endure as the actors' careers grew and occasionally reconvened. "That was the first time I worked with Chris Lloyd," DeVito says of his future Taxi costar. "We've been friends forever, and we talk to each other four times a month, at least, on Zoom."</p>
<p>There was an initial issue with typecasting after the film made such a monumental splash: "You're going on an audition now and from that movie they all thought we were all inmates," DeVito explains. "Everybody thought Martini was going to come in the door. They'd always have extra people in the room in case the nut job returned!"</p>
<p>Gilbert Flores/Variety/Getty</p>
<p>Danny DeVito in 2025</p>
<p>But DeVito's own stardom skyrocketed: after Taxi he'd become a full-fledged movie star himself, headlining hit films like Romancing the Stone, Ruthless People, Twins, Batman Returns, Get Shorty and L.A. Confidential before returning to series TV for a nearly two-decade-and-counting run on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He also emerged as an A-list director (helming films including Throw Momma from the Train, The War of the Roses and Matilda) and producer (his Jersey Films was behind now-iconic films including Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Reality Bites, Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich and Garden State).</p>
<p>— sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.</p>
<p>And his Cuckoo's Nest relationships converged again years later when, while attending a birthday party for Douglas' wife Catherine Zeta-Jones, he found himself at a table with director Forman.</p>
<p>"Milos and I were sitting at a table getting drunk, smoking a stogie, when he said, 'Danny, tell me about this guy.' I said, 'What guy, Milos?' 'Andy Kauffman — tell me about him … I love this guy. We should make a movie about him.' "</p>
<p>The late, brilliantly eccentric Kauffman had, of course, costarred on Taxi with DeVito. "I started hyperventilating under my breath when he said that! And it took me about four minutes to get to a telephone — I didn't have a cell phone at the time — and call everybody and say, 'Let's get this ball rolling!' And we did Man on the Moon. So let's talk about all the blessings that you get from Cuckoo's Nest!' "</p>
<p>Tickets to the 4K restoration of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest can be purchased now through Fathom Entertainment.</p>
<p>on People</p>
<a href="https://ift.tt/I9A7kvL" class="dirlink-1">Orign Aricle on Source</a>
Source: AOL Entertainment
Source: AsherMag
Full Article on Source: Astro Blog
#LALifestyle #USCelebrities