This Cartoonist Isn’t Wishy-Washy About Control

If looks could talk or came equipped with their own cartoon balloons, there’s no doubt what exclamation would accompany this silver-haired study in skepticism: “Good Grief!” is plastered all over Charles M. Schulz’s face. The cartoonist who immortalized that expression and the equally exasperated “Rats!”--the strongest epithets ever uttered by his trusty band of head-heavy comic strip characters--seems genuinely stunned as he sits at the wood, plexiglass and chrome desk that also serves as his easel here inside his cozy suite of offices at a wooded address that is--really--One Snoopy Place.

Presented with a Playbill direct from the Broadway production of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” which opens on Broadway Thursday at New York’s Ambassador Theatre, the creator of “Peanuts” appears impressed--but not by the cover depicting silhouettes of his famous pair, jug-eared Charlie and his floppy-eared beagle Snoopy. Nor does he seem to care that an early preview crackled with enthusiasm. But the Broadway ticket prices! And Schulz refuses to be consoled with the assurance that $75 is the going rate, that audiences for “The Lion King” pay as dearly. “Oh, who cares about Disney,” he says with only a flicker of good humor, concerned with the family purse for what he complains “is to be a family show.”

Just as he needed some convincing that the musical, an off-Broadway hit in 1967, required some refurbishing, Schulz seems ambivalent about the things that come with a Broadway debut. He remarks several times that he’s “amazed someone came all the way out here just to talk to me,” and he has no plans to travel East for a firsthand look (he didn’t see the original production until it came to San Francisco). Assured of the cast’s pedigree--Anthony Rapp, for example, an original lead in “Rent,” is playing Charlie Brown--he replies, “I’m amazed they’d want to do it; they must have better things to do.”

If this seems vintage Charlie Brown wishy-washiness, don’t be misled. Schulz, 76, may have to deal with a tremor in his drawing hand, but after 50 years of “Peanuts” cartoons, he still creates and executes all his work by himself and remains super-vigilant about spinoffs.

Michael Mayer, the director of 1999’s “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” made a pilgrimage west to this Northern California city to win him over. “We hung out,” Mayer says, which included lunching at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, a first-class skating rink built by Schulz, with a cafe that he uses as a kind of social annex to his office.

“He’s a nice young man. We got along fine,” Schulz says casually, warming as he reports the discovery that Mayer played the Beethoven-worshiping Schroeder in a college production in Michigan. Mayer was invited, like everyone else the artist favors, to call him “Sparky.” (The nickname, acquired when Schulz was a child in St. Paul, Minn., is itself a comic strip inspiration, after the racehorse in “Barney Google.”)

For Mayer, Schulz’s permission to make changes in the original musical--for which Clark Gesner wrote the music, book and lyrics--brought with it thousands of copies of “Peanuts” strips published since the show first opened. Regardless of any edgier “new look” Mayer envisioned, the words must still be true to the syndicated strip. “I have control over everything,” Schulz says firmly.

The Delicate Matter of Tinkering With Success

So, throughout the fall and during the out-of-town tryouts that began in early December in Skokie, Ill., and the New York previews, Mayer and songwriter Andrew Lippa have been tweaking the script. Their efforts have included beefing up the opening title number, adding two completely new songs and replacing Patty--a somewhat generic, pre-Peppermint Patty character no longer in the strip--with Charlie Brown’s irrepressible little sister, Sally. Out came archaic references to the advent of ZIP Codes (“brand-new in 1967,” Mayer says), dial telephones and Lucy’s dreams of becoming a housewife. Some added touches were also, upon reflection, dropped: “For a while, we had Lucy miming smoking a cigarette,” the director says. “Then we got word that Sparky wouldn’t like it. And, you know, he’s right--even if it is hard for a director to give up a laugh.”

“What worried me from the start is tampering with something so successful,” Schulz says of his initial reluctance to make changes in the play. “I think every church, school, college and professional group has done it; it’s survived terrible beatings.” The stipulation Schulz made to Mayer is the same one he made to the original producers: “Don’t try to make it overly sophisticated or put in a few sly vulgarities to please the so-called New York audience.”

Schulz’s sensitivity to what he disdainfully refers to as “the so-called cutting edge,” may stem from the fact that he suspects people judge not only the original production of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” as out of step, but also his half-century-old comic strip. And on this subject he can be as crabby as Lucy on a bad--or is it good?--day.

“I don’t know what the ‘cutting edge’ is,” Schulz complains, “but if it means political and vulgar and all that sort of thing that’s damaging, I don’t want to be cutting edge.

“I think the strip is better than it’s ever been,” Schulz says. “Who else do you know who’s read by 200 million people?” Schulz asks, back on track.

Actually, the syndicate gives his readership as 350 million; he’s published in 2,600 newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times. Millions of copies of “Peanuts”-inspired books have been sold, and there have been 50 animated television specials, which are constantly replayed on Nickelodeon.

Dialogue Balloon Over His Head Reads, ‘Sigh!’

So with all this balm to salve any perceived slights, one might wonder why Schulz appears so thin-skinned about some things. It’s because that’s exactly what he is--and he’s beguilingly upfront about it, incorporating it into his overview of his strip’s success: “Winning isn’t funny,” he’s often said. And who’s to argue? It’s easier to envision a big “Sigh” floating above his head as it often does with Charlie Brown, the character who is most like his creator.

Schulz holds grudges. Look no further than Charlie Brown’s romantic nemesis, “the little red-haired girl,” inspired by an early Schulz love who rejected his proposal of marriage. For inspiration, Schulz mined his own childhood as the son of a barber, borrowed from his five children, and he now has 18 grandchildren should he run out of ideas. “The character who’s giving me the most ideas right now is Lucy and Linus’ little brother, Rerun,” he says. “I’ve got so many grandkids starting school, and they hide under the bed all the time.”

A 1989 biography, “Good Grief,” by Rheta Grimsley Johnson, a news columnist, deals with Schulz’s ongoing battles with depression--although he now says “that really isn’t the right word. It’s too complicated to talk about. I suppose I’m an anxious person, but it’s not debilitating except in not wanting to go places.”

Which, it turns out, is yet another example of turning a negative into a positive--at least for his fans. Of cartooning, Schulz says, “This couldn’t be done by someone who has to be out flying all over the world. If it’s anxieties that confine me, well, OK, this is where I belong.”

* “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” opens Thursday in New York at the Ambassador Theatre, 219 W. 49th St. Telecharge: (800) 432-7250.