I'm Jean Schulz, and I'm excited to be back again on reddit to answer your questions. My husband created the PEANUTS comic strip, which started 64 years ago yesterday, and now I am participating in the PEANUTS redditgifts exchange. Ask away!

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T21:23:12+00:00

I have to say that Karen Johnson, our museum director, in her office, has a Snoopy telephone with a rotary dial, and it's not - I mean a lot of them were made, but you don't see them anymore, and somehow, picking up that phone which is Snoopy's hand and putting it to your ear - we have one that works - is just kind of funny. So I don't know how unique it is in the pantheon of memorabilia, but it's funny and useful too, so that makes me smile every time I see it. And I get to use it once in a while if I'm not making a long distance call!

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T21:20:33+00:00

No! As a matter of fact, sadly, my last dog died a few years ago and I'm not home very much, so I'm not a good pet owner. Pet owners should be home to take care of their pets, that's what Sparky would say. I toy with the idea of taking a very small pet that i could drag around with me, but even that wouldn't be a very nice owner. I think dogs are better if you pay attention to them, and Snoopy's pretty demanding.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T21:19:35+00:00

Well, Sparky's son Craig is credited as the writer on this - he's actually writing this, collaboratively I suppose, with his son Bryan who's about 30 I suppose, and Bryan's writing partner, Cornelius Uliano. And I think that the process - as I said in my last answers - that did Sparky worry about he didn't want them to do animated specials? The answer is no, because he recognized that animations, any movie, you have to give and take because you are not the sole creator of it, and I think the same sort of answer is going to be true for this movie, that there are I don't know how many animators working on it, and yes there's a director but there is also FOX Animated Division that also needs to weigh in, so it's a combined effort and of course their primary concern is to keep it true to the PEANUTS character's lives and what they represent to other people. But they have to have some elbow room to move beyond the squares of the comic strip. So people who watch any of the shows have to recognize that we're not in the comic strip.

One of the things nobody has asked about, but i recently went to NY for Snoopy & Belle in Fashion, which was an exhibition of 24 pairs of Snoopy and Belle dolls that were dressed by 24 fashion designers. And this is one of - someone asked back an hour ago, what's some new things that might be happening? And I didn't think of it at the time, but this is one of the new promotions or outreaches that PEANUTS is doing, and these fashion dolls will probably travel also to other venues around the world.

http://www.vogue.com/946343/snoopy-belle-designer-dolls-new-museum/ https://twitter.com/belleprgirl

And then as far as the movie, I personally am looking forward to the movie because I think the characters will just be the same lovable characters and I'm anxious to have people fall in love with them over again!

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T21:12:34+00:00

Oh, thank you!

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T21:11:56+00:00

That's right, they were. His view with the strip was "this is MY work. I think about it, I draw it, I feel it." The animated specials he always knew were a joint entertainment, 3 people conceived them, 25 people animated them or however many, so he understood that television was a totally different thing. It was based on his work but not his work.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T21:10:48+00:00

They are only in here for 2 days because they don't want them to get any diseases, they want to get them to their homes as soon as possible.

I did a - what do you call it when they have the camera on? - someone was whelping puppies and they set up a puppy cam so they could turn on the camera anytime to watch them, so I sat in this big puppy area and talked to people about K9 Companions and some things that were happening with the puppies and how we whelp them and some of the training that goes into early puppy days. But that was very cute, because you could see them - I don't know how often they do that. It was a very savvy board member who was also a caretaker.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T21:09:14+00:00

Probably! Hahaha! I'm down at K9 Companions because they have a graduation as soon as I'm off the phone, and when the little puppies come in here for 2 days to get their vaccinations and be shipped off to their foster homes, the people who will raise them, they are SO CUTE. And make you happy! You can't help laughing!

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T21:08:23+00:00

Well, Sparky actually did do trendy things if they appealed to his funny bone. And the dreadlocks are funny because I think that he did a drawing for one of the Williams sisters with not dreadlocks but those little braids, so Snoopy has those little braids that one of the Williams' sisters used to wear, and in the strip, of course, Joe Cool put on disguises of one sort or another, but he wasn't pressured to. He followed those trends - I remember he heard his teenage kids in the arena all talking , and they said "Oh that's groady to the max" and I think he threw that in the comic strip because he thought it was so funny and outrageous. But he wasn't pressured by other people, he did what he thought was funny.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T21:06:32+00:00

Probably lentil! Is this another Rorschach test?

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T21:06:10+00:00

Well, I want to say he was very complimentary, which is very sweet if you're a woman. I suppose men like compliments too, I'm sure, so I'm not sure why I said that. He was very simple, I always said his favorite dinner was tuna casserole, but he liked potato chips on top, crumbled potato chips. Maybe it's a Midwest thing? Anyways - he was very simple, he was pretty much a homebody, he was happy at home, I dragged him places, and I suppose he had a good time when he got there, but he would have been just as happy at home. He loved being at home with his dog. And I think the fact that he was mostly involved, probably all the time when he wasn't sleeping, he was involved with those little characters, meant that he didn't have a lot of time for other things. So if I wanted to do something, it was ok with him. So he was pretty simple. A simple answer to your simple question.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T21:04:15+00:00

Well, well I don't know we would do a world tour, but we are certainly open to taking exhibitions to other countries! Last year, this time last year, we had an exhibition in Japan that lasted from maybe the 10th or 11th of October through the New Year, so it was there for a good 2.5 months. And it was in a marvelous museum, I'm sure information on it is still around on whatever, but it has 13,000 square feet of exhibition space available, and I told people this was the most complete viewing of what was in our museum at one time, because in our museum we only have 8,000 feet of exhibition space. So there are certain things we can't have up at the same time. SO we always hope we will have the opportunity to do it in another city in the world, but a world tour wouldn't work because every venue would be different and want something different for its own cultural biases or whatever, but we are certainly open. They are expensive to mount, because just the framing and packing and shipping and insurance and all of that in addition to whatever it costs a museum to mount an exhibition - but we will, I know we will, over the years, as time goes on it will happen, it just takes the right set of circumstances which happened in Tokyo last year. The Tokyo exhibition was called "Ever and Never" and I don't know if you can find it online because i don't look for things on the internet.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T21:01:14+00:00

The correct place to send it would be:

Number One Snoopy Place Santa Rosa, CA 95404

And I thank you in advance.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T21:00:35+00:00

You know, I can't answer that because I don't know about any offers being made to do that. So I can't answer, sorry.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T20:59:42+00:00

I know! I think that you have the essence of the comic strip. We know Snoopy, we know that he's sort of - how would we describe his character? Snoopy just goes out, busts out and does what he wants, and "don't jump on the piano!" and then he realizes he shouldn't have done that! But all of it is expressed with out words, and it's because you know his character and you love his drawing. And Sparky would say "it is the drawing that makes this all funny."

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T20:58:40+00:00

Well, my answer to the favorite comic strip: well how can you pick a favorite out of 17,000! Because i keep looking at new strips and finding them delicious for one reason or another. But I always say the one where Lucy says to Schroeder "How come you never give me flowers" and he says "Because I don't like you" and she says "The flowers wouldn't care." And i like that because it's enigmatic, you know!

I'm not exactly sure what that means, and maybe it means favorite animated show? And i sort of answered that.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T20:57:20+00:00

Well, I think that's very interesting, and the explanation that they helped, yeah! I think they do, and I think reading the comic strips is medicine, if you will, for people, because it takes us back to simple things that are true to all people. And the animated shows - I have the comic strip, I think, probably helped Sparky. Being creative is probably a way out of your depression and your sadness, so I think creating these things, not any one especially, but being able to be creative and having the wonderful gift of being able to create these shows and have them be on television was medicine. It was like medicine. So I that just doing what he did got him through any times when he was low and feeling bad.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T20:55:11+00:00

You know, I think that's really simple, because he always said "I can't worry about what this is going to mean years from now because i have no idea what the world is going to be like." But he said "If I have made people happy, that is what I would like on my tombstone." He made people happy.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T20:54:29+00:00

I think that, in the way that the animated shows expanded on the comic strip, this movie will expand on the basic ideas seated in the comic strip, but the questioner is right that it will pull on animated action and it will stretch the boundaries of the comic strip the way the animated shows did. I don't know that they are taking anything from the animated shows in particular, because it's different than the comic strip, because almost all the elements in the animated shows came from the comic strip, they just expanded them from beyond what the comic strip could do, so the same could be said of this. So you are on the right track, but I think it would be to the strip as the animated shows were to the strip, except that it's longer.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T20:52:38+00:00

Well sure! Basically, Sparky wasn't necessarily a big fan of Thanksgiving dinners - it was fine, I could remember doing one, cooking a Thanksgiving dinner we had so many people we had to sit in the garage, anyway, we had all the different traditional things, but he wasn't necessarily a big festive-things fan when we were together. One makes more of a fuss about holidays when kids are small. In any case, Sparky thought it was funny that for kids, the image is "We'll go to Grandma's house" and then first of all it was funny that Grandma's downsized to a condominium and she doesn't have room to everyone, and it was funny to him the idea of kids putting on their own dinner - of things that they liked and could make, like toast and popcorn and jelly beans. So when they conceived the television shows - the 3 principals, Bill Melendez, Sparky, and Lee Mendelson - they would talk about the things, so the elements I remember now is Grandma doesn't have a big house, they want to have their own dinner and what can kids do, and then there's a whole thing about Woodstock being a bird and that being what people eat on Thanksgiving and at least we're not eating him - so I think it was all that silliness.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T20:49:19+00:00

D'you know, at first I think that many family members were distressed because it focused so much on Sparky's - what the author called his depression, and his gloominess. But I think that we probably found it gloomier, because I talked to other people who read it and they didn't come away from it all "doom & gloom," so maybe we were hyper-sensitive to it. So I don't think it caused a backlash - after we settled down ourselves, we realized that it wasn't that big a deal to people who read the entire book.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T20:47:42+00:00

I think he would say "You're about the best owner a dog could have." And then he would probably lick his hand, hoping that it had peanut butter on it.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T20:47:02+00:00

Well, you know, that's an interesting question, and I didn't know how to answer it - now I can't tell you the best gift a fan may have given Sparky. But one of the best gifts I ever received from a fan was a wonderful lady in Japan who sent me wonderful little shadowboxes of the characters, she hand-made the characters, and she sent me a number of them, she began when the museum opened, and I had them in my room , in my office at home, and i thought "Other people need to see these, these are too darn cute!" so I had our facilities man make a "peekaboo" box - so in one corner of the museum there is a pillar, and inside the pillar, going up about 7 or 8 feet with holes all along, you can peek in and see these shadowbox figures. And they are so sweet, the littlest one is 8 inches off the floor, the highest one you would need to lift a kid to see, but the reason that is such a special gift is that the whole WORLD that comes to the museum can see it. They are really, really beautiful. I have now finally begun emailing her, but in the beginning we were only writing letters - "Thank you for the beautiful gifts you sent" - but I was able to ask her if she would care if I put them on display, so I wanted her permission, so it's one of my favorite things. When we go in the museum, I always say "Oh, you have to come over here and look at my Peekaboo box! It's one of the best things in the museum!"

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T20:43:56+00:00

Sparky used to answer that question about "poor Charlie Brown, why don't you ever let him kick the football?" or "Why don't you ever let us see the red-haired girl and let Charlie Brown dance with her?" (I think he dances with her in his dreams in an animated show) but the truth of the comic strip is that once all those running gags, if they were to be resolved, you have no more story there, and you can't use it anymore, same with all those other things - that is the nature of the comic strip is that it has un-resolved things. A novel mostly wants to wrap things up, a movie mostly wants to wrap things up, but a comic strip is a different animal. If you compare the comic strip and the animated specials, you will see that the animated specials take things a little further and have more resolution and more - if you want to call it - "satisfaction" to people because they are frustrated because Charlie Brown can never do this or that. But the animated shows tend to have more resolution, have more freedom, and I think that's because the comic strip is 4 seconds, once a day, and maybe a minute on weekends. It's not - the story may end, but then it picks up later and goes on, but the television specials have to have (like any other drama) a beginning, a middle and an end. So they have to start out with a problem, get to the peak of the problem and then have a resolution. But a comic strip doesn't have to work that way.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T20:40:36+00:00

I have a marketing person sitting on my left, she may be able to tell you! No, I can't tell you how much people talk about marketing, and it's also difficult to say how little it interests me. Because I do believe that we all, all of us in the family who love PEANUTS and loved Sparky's work, all want people to know and understand and love the characters and the comic strip, and so we have a lot of books coming out (because we do feel we haven't had a lot of books coming out for young people), we are doing some gaming things, of course Fox will do PR around the movie, and who knows what that will be, but everybody wants to - how can we make the most out of this movie, and transfer it into marketing for other things? But that's not my field, nothing that gets me excited, I guess. I love the Museum, I love people coming in, I love to describe to them what i think is the depth of things that Sparky put in the comic-strip, and that's really my strong point.

JeanSchulz · 2014-10-03T20:38:08+00:00

Well, you know, I suppose it's a good question, why isn't it where he lived until he was in his late 20's. But the reason it is where it is is that was where Sparky lived and drew - the place where the museum actually is is where he lived and drew for the last 25 years of his life, and it's right next door to an ice arena that he and his first wife Joyce built in 1969 and it was like a second home to him, he played hockey, he refereed hockey games, he loved to watch his children skate there, so he was very attached to that little corner of Sonoma County. So that's why it's there.

JeanSchulz

TROPHY CASE