​Drive-in Movie
​by Katherine Wilson
​Ken Kesey was a 3-D artist. He was somebody who wanted to create worlds. He didn’t want to just write the book: he saw who was acting in it, the locations. He was a filmmaker.
​That incredible grant that he got to go to Stanford, then he wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He went to Hollywood for a year to write screenplays, then he got this grant and wrote that novel. The film of it wound up winning more Academy Awards than any film in history except one, 47 years ago.
​Kesey was so cinematic. He was a great cinematic writer. We were always making films. He was part of Gus Van Sant making a film. He was everywhere films were being made
​Ken met with Michael Douglas during the making of Cuckoo’s Nest. Michael idolized Kesey. Michael was living on a compound in Santa Barbara. He wanted Ken to be part of the production.
​Animal House was set in 1962. The screenplay was so bad that I didn’t want to work on it. At first it was going to be set in November 1963, the day before John F. Kennedy got shot. If you look at Animal House, there’s a float with Jackie Kennedy on it wearing her pink hat and a giant sculpture of Kennedy’s face. All the universities turned it down, and that was probably why they changed it to 1962, before the world changed in 1963. The Kingsmen’s hit version of “Louie Louie” came out that year.
​Animal House was supposed to be a drive-in movie; it had a drive-in movie budget. The University of Oregon said yes to it. I’m in film and people would ask me, “Why do you think The University of Oregon would say ‘yes’?” I answered, “Because it’s the home of the Merry Pranksters.” A lot of the Pranksters were celebrated Oregon alumni: Mike Hagen, Jackie Springer, and George Walker.
​What blew the producers away was that all of these “Kesey Filmmakers” had skills they needed for the film. They hired all of us. Hagen had run off to LA.
​We were working on Animal House, and the whole community showed up. All these people helped make the movie look like a million bucks. Universal said, “Hey, we’ve got to put more money into it, but before we do, you’re going to need to have a star.” The directors and the producers said to themselves, “Hey, well let’s see. We’re on a one-million-dollar budget right now. We’ll have like two million if we can get a star. Who do we know that’s a star?”
​John Belushi goes, “Well, all these filmmakers around here are referring to Ken Kesey and he’d be a great professor, right? He actually was one once.” John Landis and Belushi drove out to Ken’s house and within 15 minutes Kesey had made up his mind. He was not interested; he was not an actor. Then Belushi mimicked Del Close, this guy who taught him improv in Chicago. Kesey fell on the floor laughing, because it was so spot on.