He still has those baby blues. Take that, you'll-shoot-your-eye-out worrywarts. Don't get Peter Billingsley, aka Ralphie in "A Christmas Story," started on his peepers. The former child star, 40, admits his eyesight is so bad he'd miss a target the size of Higbee's. "Face it, I'm legally blind," the Los Angeles-based actor-turned-filmmaker jokes. "Those were my real glasses I wore in the movie. I wear contacts now." Ah, but his long-term vision is 20-20. After ducking "Christmas Story"-related projects for more than 25 years, Billingsley is embracing his signature role as Jean Shepherd's youthful alter ego. The original Ralphie is serving as producer of "A Christmas Story, The Musical!" It's based on the 1983 film about a little boy longing for a BB gun in Depression-era Indiana. Directed by John Rando, adapted by Joseph Robinette and scored by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the Broadway-style show was born in Chicago. A five-city tour struck out last month, circling back for a run that starts Wednesday and goes through Dec. 30 at the Chicago Theatre. The two-hour salute to flagpole-licking bowed in Kansas City, Mo., in 2009 and was restaged in Seattle in 2010. The unspoken hope: the show cracks New York next year and snags major (Tony) awards. KEPT HIS DISTANCE Over the years, Billingsley has resisted many Ralphie-centric offers to establish his reputation as a producer ("Iron Man," "The Break-Up" starring best friend Vince Vaughn). Revisiting the Bob Clark-directed Red Ryder saga, a 24-hour TBS staple, just "never interested me," the compact blond filmmaker shrugs. "I thought, 'It's a great movie, and it's terrific, and I don't mind talking about it at junkets.' But there was nothing for me to do with it. "Then I heard 'Christmas Story, The Musical!' When I heard those words put together, I thought, 'Ooh. That sounds really good. That makes sense.'" When he caught the show in Seattle, he was convinced. Like the film, the show is about "just really real people," he says. Forget gimmicks. The story's charm lies in homey Midwest moments: Mother over-swaddling the kids; the Old Man cussing the neighbor's hounds; the triple-dog-dare, stuff "we've all been through," muses Billingsley, nursing a glass of water at Macy's Walnut Room on State Street. The story "is sort of an over-commitment to the mundane." FINGERPRINTS ALL OVER Like Clark and Shep before him, Billingsley is Mr. Hands-On. He oversaw auditions for the 29-actor cast, starring Chicago talent Gene Weygandt as Shepherd and Clarke Hallum as Ralphie. He also reviewed the script, tracks day-to-day operations and shoulders the lion's share of interviews. "I just don't put my name on things ... I have to like what it is, and where it's going, and want to be creative. That's just how I work," he says. Writer-radio raconteur Shep would approve. During the filming, he haunted the set, bombarding his young alter ego with notes. An exasperated Clark, returning from a bathroom break to find Shepherd coaching his star, once half-growled, "Don't talk to my actor!" Shepherd was "nondescript" in appearance, recalls Billingsley, who cut his baby teeth in TV commercials. But he was a mesmerizing monologist with a genius for language. Consider the obscenities Ralphie spouts while pummeling Scut Farkus. Shepherd scribbled the tirade for him on an index card, saying, "Memorize this. This will be the profanity that you scream at the bully that you've heard from your father." Billingsley smiles, remembering such gibberish as "Youdamnnipplebangdunkstinkin'crisp!" "It was so well done," he says. Shepherd "was a complex guy. I think that comes through his radio stuff as well. He had a range of emotions which made him a really great storyteller. He saw life in a certain way. He had a real point of view on things. You weren't going to talk him out of things. ... He wasn't a pleaser. He was a guy who said, 'I see it this way, and here's how this goes.'" REAL TEARS FROM RANDY Billingsley's favorite memory: Shooting the "slide" scene at Higbee's department store, where a sadistic Santa boots his character down a giant slide. The cast kids loved the slide. "We didn't go to lunch that day," he reminisces. "We just slid down the slide. Repeatedly." The exception was young Ian Petrella. The then-8-year-old, who played kid brother Randy - and believed in Santa Claus, Billingsley figures - hated the whole setup. "We did one take, dropped him down, he started crying, and that was that," Billingsley admits. "He was terrified of it. The slide was probably tiny, but it felt so big at the time." Since "A Christmas Story" was filmed in the pre-cable and pre-DVD era, nary a cast member has earned a penny from merchandising royalties and residuals. Should the musical snowball into a Broadway yule tradition, the real Ralphie may finally bag a sleighful of checks. In the meantime, the big payoff is within his family. Yes, "A Christmas Story" is usually on the TV during holiday get-togethers. "You get a lot of street cred with the nephews 'cause you're in that movie," he says, grinning. Copyright 2011 nwitimes.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.