Michael Douglas on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: ‘My half of the producing fee I gave to Dad’

The actor looks back on his first foray as producer as the Oscar-winning drama reaches its 50th anniversary

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at 50: the spirit of rebellion lives on

His early career was defined by the Vietnam war with early roles in political films such as Hail, Hero! and Summertree. So it felt natural for Michael Douglas, just 31, to make his first foray into producing with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a tale of one man raging against the system.

Fifty years since its release, Douglas is struck how Cuckoo’s Nest resonates anew in today’s landscape. “It’s about as classic a story as we’ll ever have and it seems timeless now, with what’s going on in our country politically, about man versus the machine and individuality versus the corporate world,” the 81-year-old says via Zoom from Santa Barbara, California.