Pretty Good Ol Charles Schulz
But at the end of the 90-minute show, viewers will be left with many more questions unanswered in the profile.
American Masters did a great job assmbling old B&W photos, home movies and interviews with family members, longtime friends and former coworkers. His old friends always refer to him as "Sparky," his nickname, though nobody every explains that to viewers. You'll see former co-workers at the Art Instruction school, where he worked with a Charles F. Brown and Linus Maurer --who became namesakes for his cartoon strip – the Donna Wold, the little red-headed girl who spurned his romance. You'll hear Schulz's voice from interviews, but it's not made clear enough when he was interviewed or by whom. We just kind of hear his voice from time to time.
The pictures of Schulz with his first wife, Joyce, and their kids in
Then the story shifts to his apparent personality change after marrying Jean Clyde in 1973. The kids -- a big part of the story until then -- are never seen again. We don't know how old they were at the divorce, or what kind of relationship he had with them after that. Very strange.
You'll learn a lot about Schulz, for sure. You won't learn that much about his hugely popular TV shows, except for "A Charlie Brown Christmas," his first TV special." Again, that was kind of odd.
The producers cleverly uses his old strips to illustrate what Schulz was going through or feeling in his personal life. But there are many factual gaps in the show that could frustrate viewers. I know I was.
2 Comments:
John,
During the portion I watched, it looked like the producers staged b-roll shots of classrooms, church shots, etc. (and then added bogus film noise). I mean, how many home movies from the 50's would include really good stable reaction shots of audiences????
Not good for a documentary.
Good Grief!
Almost sorry I watched the OLD Peanuts, which was good til the start of the domestic life, who cares how many wives he had. Very bad evening and disappointing
when I thought it would be fun to see cartoons.
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