Just returned from the vet and Nurse Ratched (a.k.a. Mommy) scheduled my castration for the Tuesday before Thanksgiving of all days…..(can she be any more cruel…). Neutering is supposed to tamp down my rambunctious behavior (uh-huh, let’s see about that).
I feel just like Jack Nicholson as “Randle Patrick McMurphy in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. In the film he receives a lobotomy that transforms him into a vegetative state, silent and motionless. His friend, the “Chief”, realizes that if the other patients see McMurphy in that condition, Nurse Ratched will have ultimately defeated him, demoralizing the patients who were only beginning to assert themselves as men because of McMurphy's influence. The Chief smothers him with a pillow during the night, so that he can die with dignity rather than lie there as a representation of what happens when one tries to fight the system.
Some interesting tidbits about the film:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was a direct product of Ken Kesey's time working the graveyard shift as an orderly at a mental health facility in Menlo Park, California. Not only did he speak to the patients and witness the workings of the institution, he took psychoactive drugs (Peyote and LSD) as part of Project MKULTRA. From this, he became sympathetic toward the patients. Kesey claimed he wrote the first three pages of the novel after ingesting eight peyote plants, and that these pages remained almost completely unchanged through all the book's rewrites.
Only the second movie in Oscar history to sweep the top five awards (Best Film, Director -- Milos Forman, Actor -- Jack Nicholson, Actress – Louise Fletcher and Screenplay adapted by Bo Goldman and Laurence Hauben from Ken Kessey’s best-selling 1962 novel).
Here's a link to a classic scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFCXBUC3M70
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