Sound editor Pat Jackson, associate professor in the Department of Cinema at San Francisco State University, worked on numerous projects produced by Saul Zaentz, including tonight's film.

Convinced that a short stint at the nuthouse would be preferable to hard time in jail, the ever-manic McMurphy (Jack Nicholson in a super-sized performance) convinces the prison docs that he's crazy. Inside the asylum, however, the cruelty of the institution is made apparent in the form of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), a coldhearted matron. Cantankerous to a fault, McMurphy refuses to succumb, becoming the oddball idol of the other inmates, cracked curios played by Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito, and Brad Dourif. McMurphy's is a fine and tragic madness-his unyielding resistance becoming a seventies symbol for the struggle against a soulless System.