"American Masters" Good Ol' Charles Schulz (2007)

Director:

David Van Taylor

TV Series:

"American Masters" (1983)

Original Air Date:

29 October 2007

Genre:

Documentary | Biography | History | Music | Romance

Plot:

For 50 years, Charles M. Schulz captivated and comforted millions with PEANUTS-his innovative daily chronicle of cruelty...

Plot Keywords:

Reenactment | Male Female Relationship

Cast

Linus Maurer	...	Himself
David Michaelis	...	Biographer
Charles M. Schulz	...	Himself (archive footage)
Jean Schulz	...	Herself
Donna Wold	...	The Little Red-Haired Girl

Runtime:

84 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color | Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Company:

Lumiere Productions

Trivia:

In April 1960, the world first learned that "happiness is a warm puppy." Fewer people remember that in October of that year, Snoopy rejected another "warm-puppy" hug from Lucy, declaring that "My mother didn't raise me to be a heating pad." In October 1964, Linus hugged Snoopy and then asked "What's so happy about a warm puppy?"

Movie Connections:

References Citizen Kane (1941)

Rather Disjointed Documentary -- Relies Too Heavily on Interviews

A recent trend in documentary film-making has been the elimination of a narrator. In its stead, interviews direct all the material to be discussed and/or developed with the producers interspersing stills and film footage. Unfortunately, the draw-back is that the filmmakers are dependent upon whatever the interviewees decide to focus. This "let the interviews tell the story" approach left me feeling that there were a lot of holes in the documentary. I felt it a very unsatisfactory portrait of Charles Schulz and in particular the creation of Peanuts.

I found there were many areas about Schulz and the creation of Peanuts that were left like a void, and other areas that were explored ad infinitum that were superficial tangents. I wanted to hear more about the original creation of Peanuts, particularly the first strips, who published them, and how they were received. This was touched upon but in a very round-about way. The people telling the story sort of bounced around their recollections but never seemed to quite get to the heart of the matter.

By contrast, a lot of screen time was spent discussing rather irrelevant details. An interview with a former girlfriend that dumped him, not knowing he would become the most famous comic artist of the 20th century, seemed to go on and on and on. Still more time was devoted to his first wife's extravagant building projects. These I really could have cared less about, and I didn't see how they told me much about Schulz, except that his first wife had a kind of domineering personalty and she liked to get involved with large construction.

The one saving aspect was the use of the strips to reveal the inner world of Schulz. But I think I wanted more of that and less of the interviews. In the end I learned a lot about what other people thought about Schulz but less about him and what he did.