Like most writers, I have a list of Projects That Never Happened But I Wish They Had. On mine is turning the classic TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas into a live-on-stage Broadway-style show. Lee Mendelson, who produced the original, wanted to do it and he wanted me to do it and we talked about it for months…
…and it never happened. No, let me correct that: It never happened when Lee wanted it to happen or thought it would and with me involved. There’s now a live-on-stage version of the cartoon that tours around Christmas time and I have no idea who put it together or why Lee couldn’t.
I also have no idea how good it is but I’ll bet it’s very popular. If I were in Las Vegas — a city to which I have no desire to return — this weekend, it’s playing in a big showroom at the Orleans Hotel. There are two shows tomorrow, then a matinee on Sunday. Then it packs up and heads for Provo, Utah and the Covey Center for the Arts.
I could have seen it yesterday or today here in Los Angeles. It was playing at The Novo downtown but I didn’t hear anything about it and I’ve never heard of The Novo. Apparently, the play is done like You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown with eight young actors who play the roles without looking all that much like Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy and the rest. A gent in a white outfit plays Snoopy. You can see them in a photo gallery on this website.
I’ve learned not to be resentful or jealous or to have any real negative reaction when a project doesn’t happen or happens without me. That occurs so often in this business that you have to…and having had plenty of practice, I’ve gotten to be pretty good at it. It’s probably pretty good. In fact, one of the reasons I wanted to do it was that I thought, “With that source material, how could it not be pretty good?”
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