The Child of Neil Simon and Calvin and Hobbes

CALVIN AND NEIL

If Neil Simon and Calvin and Hobbes had a kid… it would be To Catch a Tooth. I’ll never forget reading my first Calvin and Hobbes comic book. My mom gave it to me while we were taking a train ride from California to Chicago. I read it that first night and kept my sisters up with my giggling.

Neil Simon… well, the first time I’d really sat down and read any Neil Simon was at Ventura College. I grabbed his collected plays Vol. 1 and just started reading. Come Blow Your Horn was the first one I read. And once again, I got in trouble for laughing… this time in the library.

Both pieces are different, but both are fun, with heart, and a lot of laughs.

The Idea

“Everyone thinks they can write a play; you just write down what happened to you. But the art of it is drawing from all the moments of your life.”

- Neil Simon

The idea for To Catch a Tooth came during a class at Loyola Marymount University. I was taking an introductary Playwrighting class. We all had to write a one act. I had written a few things at this point about kids Blackmailing Santa and getting lost in video game worlds. So, I guess it was only natural that I thought of another mythical/make-believe character for kids to mess around with.

A friend of mine, Pieter Miller, and I were talking about fairy tales and holiday figures. He said something along the lines of, "you know what always creeped me out was the Tooth Fairy!"

Dylan: "Why?"

Pieter: "Well, think about it. What kind of a fairy goes around the world buying bloody teeth off of kids?"

And that was the beginning. Right away you start thinking, okay... what would a kid do with that. And then I started thinking about how the Tooth Fairy must always carry a lot of cash because she has to give kids a buck for each tooth... and then the idea was born.

That was in the Spring of 2000... six years, and several re-writes later here we are...