Michael McLean talks about 'The Forgotten Carols,' the holiday story he's been tinkering with for 29 years — and now has been captured in a movie

Michael McLean was pleased as punch that someone from The Salt Lake Tribune was finally doing a story about “The Forgotten Carols,” 29 years after he started performing it.

In defense of my paper, back in 1991, “The Forgotten Carols” was McLean’s one-man show, performed on the road in high school auditoriums and gyms, not something we were likely to cover, with all the national Broadway touring shows and professional theater troupes in Utah. And by the time he expanded it — first as a two-person show, then a trio, and eventually as a stage musical — I’m sure the thinking was to see “The Forgotten Carols” in an announcement and think, “That old thing?”

I was happy to rectify the long omission, in part because McLean was such a fun person to interview. Also because, according to McLean, the current version of “The Forgotten Carols” — the story of a good-hearted but possibly addled old man who brings unexpected holiday joy to a taciturn nurse —  is the best it’s ever been. And it’s now a movie, opening Friday, Nov. 20, in theaters around the region.

Here, at sltrib.com, I talk to McLean and Christy Summerhays, who directed the film, about the story’s long history, how it’s touched audiences over the years, and what it means finally to have evidence that “The Forgotten Carols” exists.