Some great ideas fail because they are bad ideas.
Others fail because their time has not arrived yet.
And sometimes an idea simply needs a new set of eyes.
There may be no better example than “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
Kirk Douglas fell in love with Ken Kesey’s novel almost immediately after it was published in 1962. He acquired the rights, played Randle McMurphy in a Broadway adaptation and spent years trying to turn the story into a movie.
Douglas desperately wanted to play McMurphy on film, but Hollywood wasn’t interested.
The project languished for years. Financing proved tough. Studios passed. The movie Douglas believed in simply could not get made.
Eventually, his son Michael became interested in it.
Michael Douglas was in his 20s when the novel caught his eye. He had been involved in student activism while attending the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Kesey’s story of an individual struggling against an oppressive institution spoke to him.
He saw something in his father’s old project that perhaps Hollywood had not seen a decade earlier.
The times had changed.
America had changed.
And Michael Douglas belonged to a generation that had come of age amid Vietnam, Watergate, protests, distrust of institutions and a growing willingness to question authority.
Suddenly, a story about one man rebelling against an entrenched system did not seem quite so strange.
It seemed timely.
Michael convinced his father to give him a chance to make the movie.
There was only one problem.
Michael later acknowledged that he really didn’t know what he was doing.
There is something wonderfully reassuring about that.
We tend to imagine successful people arriving fully formed, armed with experience, confidence and some secret knowledge unavailable to the rest of us.
Often, they are simply people willing to say, “Give me a chance.”
Michael Douglas got his chance.
And “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” finally reached theaters in 1975.
Kirk Douglas did not get to play McMurphy. By then, he was considered too old for the role, and Jack Nicholson was cast instead.
That had to hurt.
Kirk had championed the story for more than a decade. He had believed in it when almost no one else did. He had imagined himself at the center of it.
Then, when the moment finally arrived, someone younger stepped into the role.
But the movie got made.
More importantly, it became one of the most acclaimed films in American history, winning the five major Academy Awards: best picture, best actor, best actress, best director and best adapted screenplay.
Michael Douglas won an Oscar as one of the film’s producers.
And Kirk Douglas, according to his son, ultimately handled the situation like a gentleman. The movie he had carried for all those years had finally become what he always believed it could be — even if it did not happen exactly the way he once imagined.
There is a lesson in that story that extends far beyond Hollywood.
Sometimes leadership means fighting for an idea.
Sometimes it means sticking with something when everyone else tells you it cannot be done.
And sometimes leadership means knowing when to hand the keys to somebody younger.
I find myself thinking about that as I look at American politics today.
This is not an argument about Republicans or Democrats. Both parties have talented public servants, and both have people who have occupied the stage for a very long time.
Experience matters. Institutional knowledge matters.
There is something to be said for having lived through a few battles before being asked to lead one.
But there is also something to be said for fresh eyes.
There comes a point when protecting institutions can become protecting the people who occupy them.
There comes a point when experience can harden into habit.
And there comes a point when the greatest contribution an older generation can make is not another turn at the wheel, but giving someone else the opportunity to drive.
That does not mean throwing experience away.
Michael Douglas could not have produced “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” if Kirk Douglas had not spent years believing in it first.
The younger generation inherited something.
That is how healthy institutions are supposed to work.
One generation builds. The next generation inherits. It keeps what works, questions what doesn’t and adapts old ideas to a world its predecessors could not have completely anticipated.
Then, someday, it gets out of the way for the generation behind it.
I would like to see more of that in public life.
I would like to see experienced elected officials become mentors instead of permanent fixtures.
I would like to see political parties recruit young teachers, business owners, farmers, journalists, veterans, doctors, tradespeople and community volunteers and tell them, “You ought to run.”
I would like to see more people in their 20s, 30s and 40s sitting on city councils, school boards, county commissions and in state legislatures.
And I would like to see those opportunities extend eventually to the highest offices in the country.
Not because younger automatically means better.
It doesn’t.
Michael Douglas himself admitted he did not know exactly what he was doing, but somebody gave him the chance to find out.
That may be the larger lesson.
Every generation eventually must trust the next one with something important.
Maybe the young person who takes over will stumble. Maybe they will make mistakes the old hands would have avoided.
But that person may also see possibilities the rest of us have stopped seeing.
The world that produced “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1975 was not the world in which Kirk Douglas first tried to make it in 1962.
The idea had not necessarily changed.
The moment had.
And when that moment arrived, it took someone from a new generation to recognize it and carry the project across the finish line.
Our politics could use some of that spirit.
So, to the next generation of public servants — regardless of party — I hope you run.
Run for the school board.
Run for city council.
Run for the Legislature.
Run for Congress.
Bring your ideas. Bring your energy. Bring your different experiences and your different understanding of the world.
You will not know everything.
Neither did the people who came before you.
And to those who have spent decades serving, building and fighting for the things they believe in, there may eventually come another important responsibility.
Hand over the keys.
Then wish them well.
You might be surprised by what they make.
Source: Freepik.com