Dr. Dean Brooks, "the superintendent

...of the Oregon psychiatric hospital where the Oscar-winning picture One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was shot — and who had a small, well-received on-screen role as the fictional hospital’s superintendent," died at age 96.

The movie, released in 1975, was based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey. It was based, in turn, on Kesey's experience as a night-shift worker at the Veterans' Hospital in Menlo Park, California.

Kesey, who featured prominently in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, a must-read by Tom Wolfe, was once quoted as saying he "was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a hippie."

The Oregon native was also something of a real-life Zelig, as he crossed paths at varying times with such famous people as Larry McMurtry, Wallace Stegner, Frank O'Connor, Malcolm Cowley, Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and the Grateful Dead.