Cuckoo

Hollywood's basic instinct is success. And when there's a whiff of it, you'll see the film community turn out. So it was at Wednesday night's glittery "Moving Picture Ball," honoring Oscar winner Michael Douglas (best actor in "Wall Street" and a producer of 1975 best picture "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") with the Eighth American Cinematheque Award. Hollywood's A-list filled the Century Plaza Ballroom to salute the 49-year-old son of legendary actor Kirk Douglas.

When Paul Kiluk was commuting into Los Angeles every day, he never dreamed that one day he'd give up his business career to become an artist. And perhaps his decision to switch careers was a little wacky, a little cuckoo. "I have a twin brother who is an artist," Kiluk said. "I always thought of myself as a businessman and my brother as the artist. Then two years ago, I walked into an art gallery and the work there was so incredible that it made the hair on my arms stand up.

There's a wonderful moment in Deaf/West's production of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," at the Fountain Theatre, when Dr. Spivey (Gregg Berger), after an emotional outburst, looks at his hands in wonder, and the audience realizes with him that he's been using sign language as he speaks.

As far as Eric Fuchslocher is concerned, people can keep their digital clocks with fancy LED readouts. They can have their voice-synthesized alarm clocks and quartz-operated wristwatches. The Panorama City resident refuses to get wound up over anything less than antique cuckoo clocks, particularly those made before 1925 from the Black Forest region of Germany. Wander around his home and you will see several dozen of them--many ornately carved with remarkable detail.

Dale Wasserman's play adaptation of Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is designed as an act of liberation from authority, from the State, even from motherhood--with the mental asylum potentate Nurse Ratched as all three. In the '60s, when the novel was essential reading, Ratched's rebel patient, R. P. McMurphy, was an essential figure--powerfully questioning the rules, rather hapless about what he wants to put in their place.

The Aranjuez Concerto, one of Spain's best-known pieces of classical music, is loved the world over with the exception of one place--Aranjuez. Residents of the central Spanish town, once a summer retreat for royalty, are up in arms after being forced to hear it 48 times a day.

The Minnesota North Stars beat the Kings Tuesday night at the Forum. But off the ice, it was a different story. North Stars Won is lost. Confused? It's really pretty simple. Minnesota owner Norm Green, seeing the success the Kings and other teams have had with private jets, decided to get one, too. That was the simple part. From there, it got difficult. While King owner Bruce McNall bought his jet, Green leased his.

Since "Wonderful Wonderful Times" is set in the 1950s gloom of postwar Vienna; since everyone in it is crass, corrupt or distorted; and since it ends in a horrible blood bath, the title could justifiably be taken as gallows humor of the crudest kind. It is, in fact. Jelinek's characters, and the voice she uses to tell of them, are fashioned with black irony and jarring distortion.

In response to Gary Fenton's letter inquiring why Jack Nicholson needs binoculars at Lakers even though he sits in the front row, he needs them to get an enlarged view of the Laker Girls. I'm surprised he doesn't bring a telescope. TOM GERLING Phelan

The Huntington Beach Playhouse tries, almost literally, to pull us into "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." The small theater has been turned into a mental hospital ward; audience seats mingle with those of patients, who wander about and are apt to take a breather by sitting down beside you. The program comes disguised as an "admittance folder" for Oregon State Hospital; the cast box shares billing with a list of rules telling everybody how to behave.