Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 15, 1990 TAG: 9003143015
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAY SHARBUTT ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
"Good grief, Charlie Brown!" cries Linus. "What kind of question is that?"
A blunt one, asked in a different kind of "Peanuts" special that CBS is showing at 8 p.m. Friday (on WDBJ Channel 7 in the Roanoke viewing area). Rest assured, though, that the ending is upbeat, in keeping with medical fact and the nature of Charles M. Schulz.
Schulz, who has drawn the wise and whimsical characters of his "Peanuts" cartoon strip since 1950 and did his first TV special in 1965, hadn't thought of making his next one about a child who develops leukemia.
What became Friday's "Why, Charlie Brown, Why?" began, he says, with an idea from Sylvia Cook, a nurse in California who works with young cancer patients at Stanford Children's Hospital.
She proposed a five-minute film for them in which cancer and its treatment were explained by the "Peanuts" gang. He recalls that he pointed out a few problems, including that animation is expensive.
That didn't stop Cook, Schulz says.
"Gradually, her idea changed, and she finally decided that it'd be more important if we could do a film that would show the people around the person who was ill just what is going on," he says.
With the aid of the American Cancer Society, that's ultimately what happened. It helped that Schulz came to believe the film would make a good "Peanuts" special for TV and shouldn't be limited to hospital showings.
The gentle lessons of Friday's show include the early symptoms of leukemia and what can be expected in treatment of the disease.
A key part of the program - the survival rate of children stricken with leukemia - is only obliquely noted, mainly because a mass of statistics would be as out of place in a "Peanuts" special as a visit from The Simpsons.
Little Janice, in chemotherapy treatment that she notes will cause her temporary hair loss, quotes her doctors as saying she should get well.
Schulz, who worked with the society in preparing Friday's special, downplays his role in it.
"I didn't go into making this thing because I wanted to teach the world all about this," he says. "This was the idea of the cancer people. It was their project. My only job was to make it palatable, to give it some kind of story and try to tell the things they wanted told, yet make it so that people wouldn't turn it off."
by CNB