Producers Threw Down Over ‘A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving' Moment
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving isn’t exactly the cutting edge of cinema verite, but it’s not without its controversies, and we’re not just talking about Peppermint Patty’s taste for turkey neck. Every year, a new generation notices for the first time that Woodstock happily chows down on the turkey Snoopy cooks at the end of the special, raising such questions as, “Wait, isn’t that cannibalism?” and “What kind of bird is Woodstock, anyway? Whatever it is, it’s definitely too close to turkey for this, right?” and “Why would they do this to us?”
Well, it turns out producer Lee Mendelson was part of both the “they” and the “us.” Detailing a “rare, minor dispute” he had with producer Bill Melendez and writer Charles Schulz “during the creation of the show” for The Huffington Post in 2013, he wrote, “Mr. Schulz insisted that Woodstock join Snoopy in carving and eating a turkey. For some reason, I was bothered that Woodstock would eat a turkey. I voiced my concern, which was immediately overruled.”
It might have ended there, but as “minor” as Mendelson insisted the conflict was, he was still unnerved enough by the bird-on-bird violence “years later” that he pounced on an opportunity to right this historic wrong.
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“When CBS cut the show from its original 25 minutes to 22 minutes, I sneakily edited out the scene of Woodstock eating,” he wrote. Unfortunately, “when we moved to ABC in 2001, the network (happily) elected to restore all the holiday shows to the original 25 minutes,” forcing him to lay down his splicing sword.
Too bad he never used it on that turkey neck thing.
