查理·布朗，你是谁？ Who Are You, Charlie Brown?(2021)(EN)Subtitles
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1 00:00:15 We have to write an essay?
2 00:00:18 Five hundred words about who we are?
3 00:00:21 I have no idea who I am. How am I gonna come up with 500 words?
4 00:00:26 That will take forever.
5 00:00:30 Due in one week? Good grief.
6 00:00:33 I couldn't be stuck with a worse subject: me.
7 00:00:38 You worry too much, Charlie Brown.
8 00:00:42 Good ol' Charlie Brown,
9 00:00:45 the lovable loser who never seems to catch a break.
10 00:00:49 You've probably heard of him. You've definitely seen him.
11 00:00:54 He's been everywhere.
12 00:00:56 In newspapers and books, movies and TV.
13 00:01:01 He's been all over the world and up in the air.
14 00:01:05 - He's even been to the moon. - Good grief, Charlie Brown.
15 00:01:08 It sort of feels like Charlie Brown, his dog, Snoopy,
16 00:01:12 and the rest of the Peanuts Gang
17 00:01:13 have pretty much always been around.
18 00:01:16 Linus, I always had a special feeling for.
19 00:01:18 My favorite character is Linus.
20 00:01:20 I'm a Woodstock fan.
21 00:01:22 It was amazing how much Franklin meant to me.
22 00:01:25 My favorite Peanuts character is Peppermint Patty.
23 00:01:28 Yeah, and Snoopy.
24 00:01:29 Of course, I like Snoopy the best.
25 00:01:31 For 70 years, Peanuts has been part of our lives.
26 00:01:36 Like, Peanuts is just its own planet.
27 00:01:38 The audience is the world.
28 00:01:40 It appeals to everyone, and that's why
29 00:01:41 it became this huge phenomenon.
30 00:01:44 Peanuts may be a global icon,
31 00:01:47 but at the center of it all is still good ol' Charlie Brown.
32 00:01:51 I love Peanuts, and I love Charlie Brown.
33 00:01:54 I love Charlie Brown.
34 00:01:56 I related to Charlie Brown so much.
35 00:01:59 But who is Charlie Brown really?
36 00:02:02 And where did he come from?
37 00:02:03 Why would anybody care about who I am?
38 00:02:06 I'm nobody special.
39 00:02:15 "Who Are You, Charlie Brown?"
40 00:02:23 Long before there was a boy named Charlie Brown,
41 00:02:27 there was a man named Charles Schulz
42 00:02:29 who had dreamed of being a cartoonist.
43 00:02:32 I always dreamed I'd have a comic strip.
44 00:02:34 I think I've been dreaming about this thing
45 00:02:36 since I was about six years old.
46 00:02:38 Almost from the moment he was born,
47 00:02:40 it seemed like Charles Schulz was destined to be in the comics.
48 00:02:44 When he was a baby,
49 00:02:46 one of his uncles called him Spark Plug,
50 00:02:48 which came from Spark Plug the horse, a comic strip character.
51 00:02:52 So, everybody called him Sparky.
52 00:02:55 He was an only child,
53 00:02:57 and he was the little kid that no one really talked to.
54 00:03:01 He was so painfully shy
55 00:03:02 that when he and his mother
56 00:03:03 would walk down the street in Saint Paul,
57 00:03:06 he'd walk with his head down.
58 00:03:07 Shy little Sparky did so well in school
59 00:03:10 that he skipped a grade.
60 00:03:12 But that really wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
61 00:03:14 He was the youngest person in the room by a year,
62 00:03:19 which when you're a kid is a big deal.
63 00:03:21 And it was hard to keep up with the older kids.
64 00:03:25 He was miserable.
65 00:03:27 He just felt as if he didn't mean anything
66 00:03:29 to the rest of the kids in school.
67 00:03:31 After school, Sparky liked to
68 00:03:33 hang out in his father's barbershop.
69 00:03:36 "When I'm real lonesome, I like to go to my dad's barbershop.
70 00:03:40 They always ask if I've come in for a shave."
71 00:03:44 But even that had its downside.
72 00:03:46 When I used to go into the shop, and he'd be working on me,
73 00:03:49 the embarrassing thing about that was
74 00:03:51 maybe he'd be halfway through my haircut,
75 00:03:54 and a real good customer would come in.
76 00:03:56 And he would say, "Why don't you just sit over there
77 00:03:59 and wait for a little bit because I have to wait on this man."
78 00:04:02 It was so embarrassing to sit on the bench
79 00:04:04 with just a half a haircut.
80 00:04:06 By the time he was in middle school,
81 00:04:08 even Sparky's good grades were starting to slip,
82 00:04:11 and he felt like a total failure.
83 00:04:13 I think it was in the eighth grade when the roof fell in.
84 00:04:16 I failed everything there was possible to fail.
85 00:04:19 One place where Sparky found happiness
86 00:04:21 was in his sketchbook.
87 00:04:23 He drew all the time,
88 00:04:24 and he dreamed that someday he would draw comics
89 00:04:27 like the ones he read in the newspaper.
90 00:04:30 We subscribed to two papers in Saint Paul, and on Saturday night,
91 00:04:33 my dad would drive up to the local drugstore
92 00:04:35 and buy the two Minneapolis papers
93 00:04:37 so we could get four comic sections to read.
94 00:04:41 And that was what life was about to me.
95 00:04:53 Five hundred words about who I am. Who am I, Snoopy?
96 00:04:58 I'm the son of a barber.
97 00:04:59 I like baseball. I go to school.
98 00:05:03 I just try to make it through the day.
99 00:05:05 This assignment is impossible.
100 00:05:11 You wouldn't understand, Snoopy.
101 00:05:13 You never have to do anything difficult.
102 00:05:15 Sit, stay, roll over.
103 00:05:19 A dog's life is so simple.
104 00:06:32 "Sparky Goes to War!"
105 00:06:36 In 1942, Sparky was drafted into the army.
106 00:06:40 "What happens when you get drafted?"
107 00:06:43 "They send you someplace."
108 00:06:45 "That's what I was afraid of."
109 00:06:52 Leaving home was heartbreaking for Sparky.
110 00:06:55 He was very close to his mother,
111 00:06:57 and she had been sick for a long time.
112 00:07:00 Sparky was never told how ill his mother was.
113 00:07:04 And that she probably wasn't going to make it.
114 00:07:09 And he felt very left out
115 00:07:12 and isolated because of that.
116 00:07:15 The night that I had to report back to Fort Snelling
117 00:07:19 in Minnesota, she said, "I think we should say goodbye
118 00:07:21 because we will probably never see each other again."
119 00:07:25 And off I went.
120 00:07:27 He would get very depressed, visibly shaken,
121 00:07:30 when he talked about the death of his mother.
122 00:07:31 Really did reduce him to tears.
123 00:07:35 It left him, probably, with something
124 00:07:37 that he thought about all his life.
125 00:07:42 "It's all very strange.
126 00:07:44 You can be walking along, not thinking of anything in particular.
127 00:07:48 Suddenly, you're reminded of a lost love..."
128 00:07:52 Ten-hut!
129 00:07:54 I don't know how I ever survived those days though.
130 00:07:56 It's a long time ago,
131 00:07:57 but those are some things that you just never forget.
132 00:08:10 Young Sparky had never spent a single night away from home.
133 00:08:14 But during the war,
134 00:08:15 he traveled all the way to France and Germany.
135 00:08:19 Throughout his time in the service,
136 00:08:21 Sparky was often homesick and lonely,
137 00:08:23 so he drew pictures, just as he had when he was a kid.
138 00:08:27 He brought his sketchbook everywhere he went.
139 00:08:30 And when the war was over, he came home more determined than ever
140 00:08:33 to make it as a cartoonist.
141 00:08:40 Big brother, I need help with my math homework.
142 00:08:44 Can't you see I'm busy writing my essay?
143 00:08:46 What's it about?
144 00:08:48 It's about who I am.
145 00:08:50 Who you are? I'll tell you who you are.
146 00:08:53 You're my big brother.
147 00:08:54 And you're a lousy big brother
148 00:08:56 if you don't help me with my math homework.
149 00:08:59 Here, take a look at this.
150 00:09:02 Good grief.
151 00:09:04 Okay. If you have two apples, and I give you three more,
152 00:09:09 how many apples do you have?
153 00:09:12 Who cares?
154 00:09:13 I've never eaten more than one apple at a time.
155 00:09:16 And who's handing out all these apples anyway?
156 00:09:20 I guess my essay will have to wait until later.
157 00:09:27 Sparky wanted to be a cartoonist more than anything.
158 00:09:32 Just like Charlie Brown, he kept on trying.
159 00:09:35 And just like Charlie Brown, he kept on failing.
160 00:09:40 I would send in ten cartoons to The Saturday Evening Post.
161 00:09:43 While they were out, I'd be working on my comic strip.
162 00:09:46 And when I mailed in the comic strip,
163 00:09:47 I'd be working on something else.
164 00:09:49 Sparky was able to get a few of his cartoons published,
165 00:09:53 but they didn't have Charlie Brown or Snoopy in them yet.
166 00:09:56 Now, you always think that the first sale you make
167 00:09:59 is gonna open up everything to you, but it doesn't work that way.
168 00:10:02 I sold two or three and then, suddenly,
169 00:10:03 I couldn't sell any for months.
170 00:10:05 For five years, Sparky tried and failed.
171 00:10:09 And then he started to realize something.
172 00:10:12 He drew this comic strip called Li'l Folks,
173 00:10:15 which featured a character called Charlie Brown
174 00:10:17 and featured a dog
175 00:10:18 that didn't quite look like Snoopy but was close enough.
176 00:10:23 I discovered, little by little, that when I drew little kids,
177 00:10:27 these seemed to be the type of cartoons
178 00:10:29 that editors liked the best.
179 00:10:31 His work was finally starting to catch on.
180 00:10:34 And one day in 1950,
181 00:10:36 Sparky published his first Peanuts comic strip.
182 00:10:40 The first strip that ever appeared showed three characters.
183 00:10:44 One of them was a little girl named Patty,
184 00:10:46 and another was a little boy named Shermy.
185 00:10:49 And Charlie Brown was in the strip,
186 00:10:51 and he came walking by in front of them.
187 00:10:53 There he is. There goes Charlie Brown.
188 00:10:55 "Good ol' Charlie Brown."
189 00:10:57 Then as soon as he's gone, he's like, "Boy, how I hate him."
190 00:11:00 Like, it's so--
191 00:11:03 That's harsh, right?
192 00:11:05 But that's childhood.
193 00:11:07 Kids are rough. It's like the way kids treat each other
194 00:11:11 is what sort of helps inform you to build up your armor.
195 00:11:16 And then you have to spend the rest of your life
196 00:11:18 remembering to take off the armor.
197 00:11:20 Before long, people all over America
198 00:11:23 were falling in love with good ol' Charlie Brown.
199 00:11:26 Here's a character I can relate to
200 00:11:28 who's clearly as nerdy or just as not accepted as I am, or as I feel.
201 00:11:35 That was a huge thing.
202 00:11:37 We would see Charlie Brown being bullied.
203 00:11:40 You'd root for Charlie Brown because he was so painfully human.
204 00:11:45 He keeps going even when it gets tough.
205 00:11:47 He gets right back up and tries again.
206 00:11:49 So that's, like, really cool to me.
207 00:11:51 Sparky's dream was finally coming true,
208 00:11:54 and he did it by just being himself.
209 00:11:57 This whole business about Charlie Brown.
210 00:11:59 These are memories of my own miserable days.
211 00:12:02 I think Charlie Brown is just a little bit
212 00:12:04 of what all of us have inside of us.
213 00:12:08 Mainly me. Mainly, I'm Charlie Brown.
214 00:12:17 Linus,
215 00:12:18 how am I supposed to come up with 500 words about myself?
216 00:12:22 There's nothing about me that's worth writing down.
217 00:12:25 This assignment is actually a great opportunity for you,
218 00:12:28 Charlie Brown.
219 00:12:29 An opportunity for what?
220 00:12:31 It's a chance to ask yourself
221 00:12:33 some of life's most essential questions.
222 00:12:36 Who am I? Why am I here?
223 00:12:38 What is my purpose in the world?
224 00:12:40 Good grief. How am I supposed to figure out all of that?
225 00:12:44 Well, Charlie Brown, when I'm faced with difficult questions,
226 00:12:48 I look to the great minds of history.
227 00:12:50 The Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes once wrote,
228 00:12:54 "Tell me what company you keep,
229 00:12:56 and I'll tell you what you are."
230 00:12:59 What company I keep? What does that mean?
231 00:13:03 It means you should look to your friends, Charlie Brown.
232 00:13:05 The people you spend your time with. Maybe they can help.
233 00:13:09 I don't know, Linus. It seems impossible.
234 00:13:13 Cheer up, Charlie Brown.
235 00:13:15 You have a whole week to find the answers
236 00:13:17 to life's most fundamental questions.
237 00:13:23 Sparky always said he was a lot like Charlie Brown,
238 00:13:26 but there's actually a bit of Sparky
239 00:13:28 in almost all the Peanuts characters.
240 00:13:32 He was exactly the person
241 00:13:34 you would hope the creator of Peanuts would be.
242 00:13:37 He is sort of all his characters in one person.
243 00:13:40 Linus is the philosophical part of Mr. Schulz.
244 00:13:43 You know, has the philosophy, has something to say.
245 00:13:46 He's quietly philosophical. That's kinda what Sparky was like.
246 00:13:49 Linus is always asking these bigger questions about
247 00:13:53 the meaning of life and our place in the universe
248 00:13:56 and how it all fits together.
249 00:13:58 "Life is difficult, isn't it, Charlie Brown?"
250 00:14:01 I think I related to Linus because of--
251 00:14:04 Well, I had a security blanket.
252 00:14:06 I used to, like, also carry around a blue blanket,
253 00:14:09 so I just really relate to him.
254 00:14:12 I, too, had a blankie.
255 00:14:15 And I used to stand in front of the washer-dryer
256 00:14:18 at the Laundromat my mom went to,
257 00:14:20 crying on the wash cycle, and then crying on the dryer cycle.
258 00:14:25 And so everybody called me Linus.
259 00:14:29 Linus can be very smart. He can be dumb.
260 00:14:31 He can be innocent. He can be all-knowing.
261 00:14:34 The nature of his personality
262 00:14:35 lends himself to all sorts of ideas.
263 00:14:38 Linus and Charlie Brown
264 00:14:40 showed the sweet side of Sparky's personality.
265 00:14:43 Linus's big sister, Lucy, on the other hand...
266 00:14:46 Lucy's really mean.
267 00:14:48 "You're a very boring person, Charlie Brown."
268 00:14:51 And loud and kind of scary.
269 00:14:54 Lucy is funny, but she's really mean.
270 00:14:57 Most of us don't like Lucy 'cause she's so mean.
271 00:15:00 But at the same time,
272 00:15:01 she's so over-the-top mean that it's kinda funny.
273 00:15:05 Everybody knows what Lucy with the football means.
274 00:15:08 Charlie Brown's, like, running, and Lucy pulls away the football,
275 00:15:11 and he screams and he falls on his back.
276 00:15:14 Classic.
277 00:15:18 Which of the characters do I feel in closest sympathy with?
278 00:15:21 I like them all because each one is probably a little bit of myself.
279 00:15:24 The sarcastic part of me belongs to Lucy.
280 00:15:27 The wishy-washy part of me belongs to Charlie Brown.
281 00:15:30 And the dreamer belongs, of course, to Snoopy.
282 00:15:36 Snoopy.
283 00:15:38 While Charlie Brown and the other kids
284 00:15:40 were a bit like Sparky himself,
285 00:15:42 the sky was the limit with Snoopy.
286 00:15:45 Snoopy was a dog who refused to be a dog,
287 00:15:48 and he was very aspirational, right?
288 00:15:51 Oh, my God. I love Snoopy. He's so cute and so funny.
289 00:15:56 Everyone loves Snoopy because he represented
290 00:15:58 what I think we all wanted to be.
291 00:16:00 You go, "Okay, today, I'm pretending
292 00:16:02 I'm a World War flying ace.
293 00:16:03 Tomorrow, I'm pretending I'm a movie star." Whatever it is.
294 00:16:06 Snoopy kinda lives his own life and has all these fantasies.
295 00:16:10 But even Snoopy came from someplace in Sparky's life that was real.
296 00:16:13 Snoopy really is based upon a dog that I had
297 00:16:17 when I was about 13 years old.
298 00:16:18 There's a reason Snoopy played hockey and ice-skated,
299 00:16:20 'cause Schulz did as well.
300 00:16:22 So, like all the best creators,
301 00:16:24 there's a lot of himself in the work,
302 00:16:27 that you can kind of see in what the characters speak about
303 00:16:30 and the things they're also fans of.
304 00:16:41 I've gotta get a good grade on this essay.
305 00:16:45 Maybe I should talk to a professional.
306 00:16:50 Hi, Charlie Brown. What seems to be the problem today?
307 00:16:54 I'm having trouble writing my essay for class, Lucy.
308 00:16:57 Can you help?
309 00:16:58 Absolutely. I've actually thought a lot
310 00:17:01 about you and your imperfections.
311 00:17:03 My imperfections? I'm not sure that is going to help with my--
312 00:17:06 Listen, Charlie Brown.
313 00:17:08 There's no better way to learn who you are
314 00:17:09 than to have your many faults pointed out by a professional.
315 00:17:13 My many faults?
316 00:17:14 Exactly.
317 00:17:15 And I've created a proprietary system
318 00:17:17 that I think you'll find very enlightening.
319 00:17:23 Make yourself comfortable, Charlie Brown.
320 00:17:25 I've prepared a few hundred slides
321 00:17:27 to illustrate your many flaws and foibles.
322 00:17:31 Lights, please.
323 00:17:42 Let's start with your early years.
324 00:17:45 As you can see, from the very beginning,
325 00:17:48 you were not well-liked.
326 00:17:51 Popularity eluded you.
327 00:17:55 You never really measured up to your peers.
328 00:17:58 See?
329 00:18:00 Now, pay attention.
330 00:18:03 If we dig deeper, we'll see that a pattern emerges,
331 00:18:06 a pattern of repeated failure.
332 00:18:12 Under your management,
333 00:18:13 your baseball team has lost every game you've ever played.
334 00:18:17 Well, we've won a few times.
335 00:18:20 Yes, but that was only when you broke your arm.
336 00:18:25 Continuing with the sports theme,
337 00:18:28 you've never managed to kick a football, ever.
338 00:18:33 See?
339 00:18:35 Even when you're not playing a team sport, you still fail.
340 00:18:41 You fail alone and with others.
341 00:18:44 Now, let's take a look at Valentine's Day.
342 00:18:50 Enough! I can't take it anymore.
343 00:18:56 I hope I helped with your essay!
344 00:18:59 Expect an itemized bill in a few days!
345 00:19:03 Failure, failure, failure.
346 00:19:09 Sparky got most of his ideas
347 00:19:10 for Charlie Brown from his own childhood.
348 00:19:14 But once he had kids of his own,
349 00:19:16 their childhoods started to make their way into Peanuts.
350 00:19:20 I think I probably get more ideas from watching my own kids
351 00:19:24 than I probably really would like to admit.
352 00:19:28 Just watching the little arguments
353 00:19:30 that they go through and this sort of thing
354 00:19:32 has given me quite a few ideas.
355 00:19:34 The only stuff that really resonates in entertainment, I feel,
356 00:19:38 is when it's coming from a very singular point of view.
357 00:19:42 And the only point of view
358 00:19:44 any creator has is his or her own point of view.
359 00:19:47 Even as a kid, I was, like, cognizant of the fact that
360 00:19:51 there is a man somewhere in America
361 00:19:54 who sits at a large slanted desk, and he's got a wife and kids.
362 00:19:59 And he gets up, he draws Snoopy, and then he goes ice-skating.
363 00:20:01 One of the boys was making model airplanes,
364 00:20:04 and he was showing me the latest model.
365 00:20:06 And all of a sudden, it occurred to me,
366 00:20:08 why not put Snoopy on the doghouse
367 00:20:09 and let him pretend he's a World War I flying ace?
368 00:20:12 He was listening to Craig, his other son, one day,
369 00:20:16 and a young man walked by, and Craig said,
370 00:20:19 "That guy acts like Joe Cool."
371 00:20:20 Joe Cool started.
372 00:20:23 Everything in the comic strip had something personal to Sparky.
373 00:20:27 If he wrote about a symphony that Schroeder was playing,
374 00:20:32 that was a symphony that he loved.
375 00:20:34 He took a lot from his life.
376 00:20:36 You always wondered what
377 00:20:37 he was observing if you were ever around him.
378 00:20:39 I remember I called him my sweet babboo.
379 00:20:42 Pretty soon it was in the comic strip...
380 00:20:44 "And this is a very special one for my 'sweet babboo.'"
381 00:20:48 ...and became something that Sally tormented Linus with.
382 00:20:53 "I'm not your sweet babboo."
383 00:20:56 "Pigpen." What does that phrase mean to you?
384 00:20:58 "Pigpen" came from a friend of mine
385 00:21:01 who used to call his children by funny names.
386 00:21:04 And I can remember,
387 00:21:04 his little boy was running around the living room,
388 00:21:06 and he says, "Go to bed, Pigpen."
389 00:21:08 And I thought that would make a good title for a comic character.
390 00:21:11 Here's this character
391 00:21:12 who seems like he should be a laughingstock.
392 00:21:15 And occasionally other characters,
393 00:21:16 they come over to Pigpen and they say,
394 00:21:18 "You should be ashamed of yourself."
395 00:21:20 "You know what he looks like?" "What?"
396 00:21:24 "A human soil bank."
397 00:21:26 And he'll have none of it. There's this dignity to Pigpen.
398 00:21:30 As a young transgendered kid,
399 00:21:32 I think maybe that's a thing that I was drawn to.
400 00:21:45 Lucy sure wasn't very helpful.
401 00:21:48 I think I need a second opinion.
402 00:21:51 Ninety-seven, 98, 99, 100.
403 00:21:56 My turn.
404 00:22:02 Pigpen!
405 00:22:05 You're making a mess.
406 00:22:25 Hi, Charlie Brown. Do you wanna help me make mud pies?
407 00:22:28 I don't think I can, Pigpen.
408 00:22:31 I have to work on a school project.
409 00:22:33 Hey! Come jump rope with us!
410 00:22:36 Oh, no. That little red-haired girl is coming.
411 00:22:41 What's the matter, Charlie Brown?
412 00:22:43 - I can't let her see me. - Why not?
413 00:22:47 What if she doesn't like what she sees?
414 00:22:49 I think what's more important is how you see yourself.
415 00:22:53 I like myself no matter what people think.
416 00:22:56 Really? Even if they think you're... filthy?
417 00:23:01 Well, I don't see myself as filthy.
418 00:23:03 I see myself as a part of history,
419 00:23:06 covered with the dust and dirt of countless ages.
420 00:23:09 Guess I just don't have your confidence, Pigpen.
421 00:23:13 I better go before the little red-haired girl sees me.
422 00:23:18 Poor Charlie Brown.
423 00:23:27 Just like Charlie Brown,
424 00:23:29 in real life, Sparky had his own little red-haired girl.
425 00:23:33 As a young man, Sparky met Donna Wold,
426 00:23:36 the little red-headed girl,
427 00:23:38 and fell head over heels in love with her.
428 00:23:41 And Donna was engaged to marry a fireman,
429 00:23:45 and she wasn't sure about this fireman.
430 00:23:49 And she broke up with him, and she went out with Sparky.
431 00:23:54 I had the high hopes that she would marry me.
432 00:23:59 But she didn't.
433 00:24:00 I think that he thought, "Well, if I work hard enough,
434 00:24:04 if I'm this and I'm that and--
435 00:24:06 She'll forget the fireman and stick with me."
436 00:24:09 But, nope, she made up her mind and she married the fireman.
437 00:24:12 I gave her my complete devotion, my heart,
438 00:24:16 and she walked away.
439 00:24:19 I didn't deal with it very well. I dreamed about it for years.
440 00:24:24 That was the woman he wanted to marry.
441 00:24:27 This story is so Charlie Brown.
442 00:24:37 Charlie Brown wasn't the only one in the Peanuts Gang
443 00:24:39 who was unlucky in love.
444 00:24:41 Peanuts, it's a world of unrequited love.
445 00:24:45 Lucy pines for Schroeder.
446 00:24:47 That always cracked me up, 'cause he was always like, "No."
447 00:24:52 Sally wants Linus.
448 00:24:53 At one point,
449 00:24:54 Peppermint Patty actually sort of wants Charlie Brown.
450 00:24:56 So it's like this unbroken chain of these children
451 00:25:00 whose hearts are full of love,
452 00:25:03 and the love is... almost never returned.
453 00:25:08 His constant quest for the little red-haired girl
454 00:25:10 was just such a-- so relatable to me,
455 00:25:13 because I always had some monster crush
456 00:25:16 on some girl in the school
457 00:25:17 who I never had the nerve to even go near.
458 00:25:21 And there's a lot of like,
459 00:25:22 "Today's gonna be the day when I'm gonna get in there
460 00:25:24 and I'm gonna finally talk to that little red-haired girl."
461 00:25:26 "Today's gonna be the day." And then it never ever comes.
462 00:25:50 You're so talented, Schroeder.
463 00:25:52 Do you think your music is the reason people like you?
464 00:25:57 That may be true, Charlie Brown, but it's sort of ironic,
465 00:26:00 since one of the things I like most
466 00:26:02 about playing music is the solitude.
467 00:26:10 It's like your music represents who you are.
468 00:26:13 I wonder what music would represent who I am.
469 00:26:26 How's your essay coming along, Charlie Brown?
470 00:26:28 Did my slideshow help?
471 00:26:33 Hi, Schroeder. Did you miss me?
472 00:26:48 Over the years, Peanuts grew and changed just like Sparky did.
473 00:26:53 And it wasn't always just about being funny.
474 00:26:56 My own children grew up,
475 00:26:57 the strip became really less kid-oriented.
476 00:27:00 The strip has become more abstract,
477 00:27:02 and the kids are really just caricatures of what adults are
478 00:27:06 and the problems that adults have
479 00:27:07 and the things that adults really say.
480 00:27:11 It's a cute little cartoon, funny characters, funny moments.
481 00:27:14 But it also is kind of deeper.
482 00:27:17 The characters are so complex,
483 00:27:19 and they're talking about human feelings
484 00:27:21 and emotions, you know, the human condition.
485 00:27:25 I think he was one of the best
486 00:27:29 when it came to capturing the mood.
487 00:27:32 He captured the mood of the country.
488 00:27:35 I feel like he always was
489 00:27:37 searching for the truth and telling the truth.
490 00:27:39 Sparky wanted the world to be equal for everyone,
491 00:27:42 and that's what his truth is.
492 00:27:47 In the late 1960s, Sparky created Peppermint Patty,
493 00:27:51 an independent girl living with a single parent,
494 00:27:54 who broke her school dress code by wearing sandals and shorts.
495 00:27:59 She was so different.
496 00:28:01 She was not the stereotypical female character
497 00:28:03 you would see on the comics page.
498 00:28:05 She's totally her own person.
499 00:28:07 She's just, like, so unique, and she's comfortable being unique
500 00:28:10 and in her own skin.
501 00:28:13 Peppermint Patty gets terrible grades.
502 00:28:15 She's always falling asleep in class.
503 00:28:19 But she's a great pitcher.
504 00:28:20 And she beats Chuck's baseball team every time.
505 00:28:24 Sometimes by, like, you know, 100-1.
506 00:28:28 Sports-loving Peppermint Patty
507 00:28:30 was partially inspired by Sparky's friend, Billie Jean King,
508 00:28:33 one of the greatest tennis players of all time.
509 00:28:37 You saw the women, the girls in sports,
510 00:28:40 which of course, as a girl, I'm like, "That's great."
511 00:28:43 Sparky was really a feminist.
512 00:28:45 In the world of Peanuts,
513 00:28:46 Sparky always made sure that the girls were just as strong,
514 00:28:50 and often even stronger than the boys.
515 00:28:52 The comic strips really have mirrored our culture.
516 00:28:55 And it just may be that Peppermint Patty
517 00:28:58 does represent a new trend among kids
518 00:29:01 to be more independent and to speak out.
519 00:29:03 "Here I come, fella! Stop me if you can!"
520 00:29:41 Yeah!
521 00:29:45 Yes!
522 00:29:53 Good game, Chuck.
523 00:29:54 But you looked a little distracted up here.
524 00:29:57 I'm surprised your team's manager didn't pull you off the mound.
525 00:30:00 He is their manager, sir.
526 00:30:02 Are you okay, Charlie Brown?
527 00:30:04 It's this homework assignment.
528 00:30:06 I have to figure out the meaning of my life.
529 00:30:09 Boy, Chuck, that is a tall order.
530 00:30:12 I sure am glad our teacher didn't give us any homework.
531 00:30:15 We've had homework every day this week, sir.
532 00:30:19 The meaning of life is
533 00:30:20 something people have always wondered about,
534 00:30:22 Charlie Brown.
535 00:30:23 My grandfather always said that our main purpose in life
536 00:30:26 is to give and receive love.
537 00:30:30 He also used to sigh a lot.
538 00:30:34 I don't know if anyone could ever love me.
539 00:30:36 I asked Lucy for help,
540 00:30:38 but all she did was tell me what's wrong with me.
541 00:30:41 Is there anything right with me?
542 00:30:43 Absolutely, Chuck. You've got plenty of good qualities.
543 00:30:47 I do? Like what, for example?
544 00:30:55 Well, you're very kind.
545 00:31:00 And you're generous.
546 00:31:02 And don't forget helpful. You're super helpful, Chuck.
547 00:31:07 Kind, generous and helpful. Thanks, guys!
548 00:31:11 Hey, Lucy. Guess what?
549 00:31:13 You were wrong. I'm kind, generous and helpful.
550 00:31:17 Of course they would say that, Charlie Brown.
551 00:31:19 You're kind because your pitches were so easy to hit.
552 00:31:22 You were generous to give them so many runs.
553 00:31:24 And you helped them win the game.
554 00:31:28 You sound just like my grandfather, Charlie Brown.
555 00:31:34 Franklin Armstrong was one of the last major characters
556 00:31:37 to join the Peanuts Gang.
557 00:31:39 And when he arrived, he changed the comics forever.
558 00:31:43 I was in eighth grade
559 00:31:45 when Franklin made an appearance in Peanuts.
560 00:31:49 And I remember thinking, "Wow." Here was a Black character.
561 00:31:52 Here was a Black kid.
562 00:31:53 Here I am reading this comic strip,
563 00:31:55 and all of a sudden there's a kid in there
564 00:31:56 that looks like me.
565 00:31:58 It may not seem like a big deal today, but in 1968,
566 00:32:03 Black and white kids playing together
567 00:32:05 in a comic strip was a huge deal.
568 00:32:08 When he brought Franklin into the strip, it was 1968,
569 00:32:12 and the cities were burning
570 00:32:13 because of Dr.King being assassinated.
571 00:32:17 Dr. Martin Luther King,
572 00:32:18 the apostle of nonviolence in the civil rights movement,
573 00:32:21 has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee.
574 00:32:24 And a woman contacted Sparky. Her name was Harriet Glickman.
575 00:32:30 She said, "It's time for you,
576 00:32:31 with this platform you have, Mr. Schulz,
577 00:32:34 to do something."
578 00:32:36 She said, "I think you should add a Black child in Peanuts."
579 00:32:42 He's like, "I can't.
580 00:32:43 I don't know what it's like to be a young Black child."
581 00:32:46 So Harriet Glickman asked
582 00:32:48 her friends Kenneth Kelly and Monica Gunning,
583 00:32:50 who were Black, and also parents, to write to Schulz as well.
584 00:32:55 Back then, there were almost no people of color in the comics,
585 00:32:59 and Sparky realized what it might mean to all kids
586 00:33:03 if he could help change that.
587 00:33:05 He wanted to do something that had meaning,
588 00:33:08 that actually said something.
589 00:33:10 You got the sense from him he was a very fair-minded person.
590 00:33:13 And, I mean, racial inequality is not fairness.
591 00:33:17 I held off on Franklin for a long time
592 00:33:19 because I simply felt I wasn't capable of doing him properly.
593 00:33:23 And I didn't want to appear to be patronizing.
594 00:33:27 I tried to do it without fanfare.
595 00:33:29 The little incident when he did appear
596 00:33:32 was two little boys meeting on a beach.
597 00:33:34 And they discovered they both liked to make sandcastles.
598 00:33:37 It doesn't matter that one is Black and one is white.
599 00:33:40 "Now, there you are, Charlie Brown.
600 00:33:42 There's a real sandcastle!"
601 00:33:45 You know, papers threatened to drop the strip.
602 00:33:47 And he was like, "Fine, drop it." And then they didn't.
603 00:33:50 And then they were like,
604 00:33:51 "Well, just don't show them in school together."
605 00:33:53 And of course, then it's exactly what he did.
606 00:33:56 The interesting thing about Franklin was,
607 00:33:58 you don't remember his personality per se,
608 00:34:01 as much as he seemed pretty serious.
609 00:34:04 He was a serious kid that you almost got the feeling, again,
610 00:34:08 looking back at it now as an adult,
611 00:34:11 you know, the burden, almost,
612 00:34:14 of being this Black kid in a white world,
613 00:34:16 even though it was a comic strip world,
614 00:34:18 was weighing on him.
615 00:34:20 He knew that everybody was kind of looking at him.
616 00:34:40 Maybe that's my purpose in life: feeding a dog.
617 00:34:49 I guess I can't put it off any longer.
618 00:34:51 I better start writing.
619 00:35:24 Who am I? Who am I?
620 00:35:31 This is hopeless.
621 00:35:33 Maybe I should get some fresh air.
622 00:35:47 One of the biggest things to ever happen
623 00:35:49 to Charlie Brown and his friends was
624 00:35:51 when they were first brought to life on TV
625 00:35:54 with A Charlie Brown Christmas.
626 00:35:56 My mother timed the purchase of our first color TV
627 00:36:00 so that I could watch the Christmas special in color.
628 00:36:03 That was a huge moment for me.
629 00:36:05 Every Christmas, we just all watch it together
630 00:36:08 and drink hot cocoa, and it's just really fun.
631 00:36:11 I personally don't celebrate Christmas.
632 00:36:13 I'm a Jew. I hate Christmas.
633 00:36:15 It means nothing to me. Christmas means nothing to me.
634 00:36:18 But the Charlie Brown Christmas special...
635 00:36:20 I mean, does it get better than that?
636 00:36:23 A Charlie Brown Christmas was a huge hit,
637 00:36:26 and soon there was a Peanuts special for almost every holiday.
638 00:36:29 I didn't have traditional holidays when I was a kid.
639 00:36:32 Like, I was probably traveling for work.
640 00:36:35 And so to me,
641 00:36:37 those specials were like the marker
642 00:36:39 I didn't have in a traditional home of,
643 00:36:41 "It's this holiday. It's this time of year."
644 00:36:44 I remember the Halloween special ran,
645 00:36:47 the Great Pumpkin special,
646 00:36:49 and the ongoing joke, "What did you get?"
647 00:36:51 "I got an apple." "I got a candy bar." Charlie Brown...
648 00:36:55 I got a rock.
649 00:36:58 All right. Let's take it from the top again.
650 00:37:06 Five, four, three, two... All engines running.
651 00:37:11 The holiday specials helped make Peanuts so popular
652 00:37:14 that NASA named the Apollo 10 modules
653 00:37:17 after Charlie Brown and Snoopy.
654 00:37:19 We are very flattered to be part of your whole program,
655 00:37:23 and extremely grateful.
656 00:37:24 I had no idea that all of
657 00:37:26 these strange things were going to happen,
658 00:37:27 like Snoopy going to the moon.
659 00:37:30 Roger. We notice the resemblance there too.
660 00:37:34 Certainly one of the most moving experiences of my entire life.
661 00:37:39 You have to be such an iconic part of the culture
662 00:37:42 for them to name a lunar lander after you.
663 00:37:45 Do you know what I mean? Like, can you imagine being that famous?
664 00:37:47 Like, can you imagine? Like, that's crazy.
665 00:37:51 But while Charlie Brown and Snoopy were going to outer space,
666 00:37:54 Sparky was living a quiet life.
667 00:37:57 He built a world around himself
668 00:37:58 that was filled with the things he had loved since he was a kid,
669 00:38:02 like a skating rink,
670 00:38:04 and a baseball field.
671 00:38:07 He didn't work in a studio. It was a campus. It was Disneyesque.
672 00:38:10 This building was a café, this building had hockey.
673 00:38:15 I love my daily routine of
674 00:38:17 getting up and going down to the ice arena
675 00:38:19 and having breakfast and going to the studio in the morning.
676 00:38:22 When it comes right down to it,
677 00:38:23 I'd rather sit and draw a funny picture than do anything else.
678 00:38:27 He'd get up in the morning, drive down the hill,
679 00:38:31 would park his car in the same place across the street.
680 00:38:33 He had breakfast at the ice arena.
681 00:38:35 An English muffin with grape jelly.
682 00:38:38 And then he went into his office, sat at his desk and worked.
683 00:38:42 He would literally go in his office
684 00:38:44 and wait for the inspiration to hit.
685 00:38:48 I never saw him not working, really.
686 00:38:50 Whenever we visited, he was always in his studio.
687 00:38:54 That's what he did. He loved it.
688 00:38:56 That solitary part of his studio where he would sit and create.
689 00:39:01 It takes a certain solitary type of personality
690 00:39:05 that can handle hours alone in the room,
691 00:39:10 hours alone in your head.
692 00:39:12 Even as successful as he was,
693 00:39:16 I don't know that he got the full depth of
694 00:39:21 the love and devotion people had to him and those characters.
695 00:39:36 Doesn't looking at all these stars
696 00:39:38 make you feel sort of insignificant, Charlie Brown?
697 00:39:42 I always feel insignificant, Linus.
698 00:39:48 How are you doing with the assignment?
699 00:39:50 I haven't written a single word.
700 00:39:53 Maybe I'm just a nobody.
701 00:39:55 I don't think you're a nobody, Charlie Brown.
702 00:39:58 Thanks, Linus.
703 00:40:00 But what am I supposed to do? My essay is due tomorrow.
704 00:40:05 Well, when I'm feeling overwhelmed,
705 00:40:07 sometimes I find the answers by staring at the sky.
706 00:40:16 It's not working, Linus.
707 00:40:18 What do you see?
708 00:40:20 A bunch of stars, I guess.
709 00:40:22 But what does that have to do with my assignment?
710 00:40:25 Well, in some ways, the stars are a lot like you.
711 00:40:31 If you look closely, you'll see that every star is different.
712 00:40:35 They each vary in color, size and how brightly they shine.
713 00:40:40 But it's those differences that create something beautiful.
714 00:40:45 Just like us, Charlie Brown.
715 00:40:47 Each of us is unique,
716 00:40:48 but we're part of something much greater than ourselves.
717 00:40:52 We each have a purpose,
718 00:40:53 even if it's hard to know for sure what it is.
719 00:40:56 And there's joy to be found in the journey
720 00:40:58 of figuring it out each day.
721 00:41:00 Maybe for now, your purpose is just to be Charlie Brown.
722 00:41:08 Maybe you're right, Linus. Well, I better get to work.
723 00:41:14 I guess if there's hope for Charlie Brown,
724 00:41:16 there's hope for all of us.
725 00:41:23 By 1980,
726 00:41:24 Sparky had been drawing Peanuts
727 00:41:26 practically every day for 30 years.
728 00:41:30 That's over 10,000 strips.
729 00:41:33 And in all that time,
730 00:41:34 he never took a vacation or missed a single deadline.
731 00:41:38 You're like a squirrel running in a cage day in and day out.
732 00:41:42 No vacations.
733 00:41:44 A comic strip is a completely unique form of entertainment.
734 00:41:47 It lives with you day after day after day.
735 00:41:51 You gotta be a machine that way to write the same thing every day
736 00:41:56 without repeating yourself.
737 00:41:58 A lot of cartoonists would pencil the strip
738 00:42:01 and then have someone else ink it.
739 00:42:04 But he always insisted on inking it himself.
740 00:42:07 He had this matter of pride that
741 00:42:09 no one ever touched the strip but him.
742 00:42:11 He did all the work himself.
743 00:42:13 In July of 1981, Sparky started having chest pains.
744 00:42:18 He was rushed to the hospital for surgery on his heart.
745 00:42:21 He was in the hospital.
746 00:42:23 He asked for a sheet of paper
747 00:42:24 just to see if he could draw a character.
748 00:42:26 He wanted to do that immediately
749 00:42:28 to make sure that he could still draw.
750 00:42:31 And he could, but it had changed.
751 00:42:38 His hand got shaky, and his lines got shaky.
752 00:42:41 And you can see in the later strips,
753 00:42:44 the edges of the lines are quite wiggly.
754 00:42:48 He would say, "Sometimes my hand shakes so much
755 00:42:51 that I have to hold it up to draw."
756 00:42:54 I remember watching him drawing, say, Charlie Brown,
757 00:42:57 which is a fairly large circle, the head.
758 00:43:00 And his hands would shake, and he'd get so angry.
759 00:43:03 But yet he said, "I can do rain." Like, little slashes and lines,
760 00:43:07 like rain or grass.
761 00:43:11 He just said, "This is what it looks like now.
762 00:43:13 This is still authentically my work."
763 00:43:15 The shaky line becomes his signature move.
764 00:43:21 Like, that is amazing. That is amazing.
765 00:43:23 It would've harmed a lot of careers.
766 00:43:25 But it took Peanuts to another level,
767 00:43:28 and actually made us feel more empathy
768 00:43:31 for both him and his characters.
769 00:43:36 It tells you that he's willing to put himself out there.
770 00:43:41 He didn't stop. His ego didn't say,
771 00:43:43 "If I can't draw perfectly, I'm not doing that." No.
772 00:43:46 This was his being. This is how he communicated.
773 00:43:49 This is how he lived.
774 00:43:52 I like to think that I bring up some solutions now and then.
775 00:43:56 I suppose one of the solutions is,
776 00:43:59 as Charlie Brown, just to keep on trying.
777 00:44:04 He never gives up. And if anybody should give up, he should.
778 00:44:20 Good morning, Charlie Brown. How did your essay writing go?
779 00:44:24 I was up all night, but I finished it.
780 00:44:27 - Maybe I'll even get an A. - That would be nice.
781 00:44:30 But life's rewards often manifest themselves
782 00:44:32 in unconventional ways.
783 00:44:35 I'm not sure what that means, Linus.
784 00:44:38 But if I get an A, that would certainly be unconventional.
785 00:44:55 Our essays have been graded.
786 00:44:57 I wonder if I finally got an A.
787 00:45:03 I can't take the suspense.
788 00:45:08 C minus? Good grief.
789 00:45:11 I got an A.
790 00:45:13 The teacher complimented my penmanship and perfect margins.
791 00:45:23 I can't believe it, Linus. All that work for a C minus.
792 00:45:28 Cheer up, Charlie Brown. Grades aren't a measure of one's value.
793 00:45:32 Anyway, a true work of art can only be judged over time.
794 00:45:37 Well, I guess that's something to look forward to.
795 00:45:44 "Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, 'Why me?'
796 00:45:49 Then a voice answers, 'Nothing personal,
797 00:45:51 your name just happened to come up.'"
798 00:46:00 Just a few weeks ago,
799 00:46:01 Charles Schulz announced his retirement from drawing
800 00:46:03 the Peanuts comic strip in order
801 00:46:04 to concentrate on treatment for colon cancer.
802 00:46:08 He was weak from chemo,
803 00:46:10 and he decided he was going to retire.
804 00:46:14 I remember very clearly when he said,
805 00:46:17 "I can't draw the strip anymore."
806 00:46:19 He came in one day,
807 00:46:21 and we were talking about doing the last strip.
808 00:46:24 And he was sitting a few feet away from me,
809 00:46:26 and he just looked at me and he sort of laughed, and he said,
810 00:46:29 "I really drew some funny things."
811 00:46:31 And you could just feel how sad he was
812 00:46:35 that he knew he wasn't gonna be able to draw it anymore.
813 00:46:38 The last daily strip is going to be January 3rd,
814 00:46:41 the day this story is airing.
815 00:46:43 Has it completely sunk in
816 00:46:44 that you're not gonna be doing this anymore?
817 00:46:48 It didn't really sink in until
818 00:46:51 I was writing a little kind of a
819 00:46:55 "So long, friends" sort of thing.
820 00:46:58 And then right at the end,
821 00:46:59 I wrote his name, my name.
822 00:47:04 And then it said--
823 00:47:06 And I'll probably start crying.
824 00:47:09 It said, well,
825 00:47:12 that was Charlie Brown, Linus and so-and-so.
826 00:47:15 And all of a sudden, I thought...
827 00:47:18 "You know, that poor, poor kid.
828 00:47:20 He never even got to kick the football."
829 00:47:26 Sparky died on February 12th of the year 2000.
830 00:47:31 That very same day,
831 00:47:32 his final Peanuts comic strip was published.
832 00:47:36 The day he died
833 00:47:38 was the day the last strip ran.
834 00:47:41 I think it says something about how deeply connected his soul was
835 00:47:46 to the soul of these amazing characters that he came up with.
836 00:47:49 I mean, he was those characters.
837 00:47:52 It's amazing. He dies doing the thing he loves.
838 00:47:56 He was one person
839 00:47:58 telling this really personal story every day.
840 00:48:02 And I think the fans, they got that. They felt that.
841 00:48:07 These funny, memorable, wondrous comic strips.
842 00:48:11 And that you can really just love and cherish
843 00:48:14 and take a lot of good life lessons from as well.
844 00:48:17 It's about humanity at its most tender.
845 00:48:21 It's about humanity and its silliness.
846 00:48:24 It's about humanity without cruelty.
847 00:48:27 And I think we need that in our world today.
848 00:48:31 We may not agree with each other.
849 00:48:32 We may be a fussbudget like Lucy.
850 00:48:35 We may be insecure like Charlie Brown.
851 00:48:38 We may think our philosophy's the most important, like Linus.
852 00:48:42 But the reality is, we're all in it together.
853 00:48:44 And the conversations those young children have
854 00:48:47 resonate with all of us to our soul.
855 00:48:56 Twenty years after Charles Schulz drew
856 00:48:59 his last Peanuts strip,
857 00:49:01 his work and the characters he created
858 00:49:03 are still being celebrated around the world.
859 00:49:06 Like Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn,
860 00:49:08 Peanuts is woven deep into the fabric of American pop culture.
861 00:49:13 What resonates still is the human emotion of it.
862 00:49:17 That's never gonna change.
863 00:49:19 It's iconic and it's timeless,
864 00:49:20 and that everybody around the world
865 00:49:22 can identify with and love and cherish.
866 00:49:26 You know, my grandkids are gonna read Peanuts.
867 00:49:29 It's Charlie Brown.
868 00:49:30 Is there anything you'd
869 00:49:31 like to say to the folks who have read Peanuts
870 00:49:33 for the last almost 50 years?
871 00:49:35 It is... amazing
872 00:49:38 that they think that what I do was good.
873 00:49:43 I just did the best I could.
874 00:50:12 Where have you been, Chuck? Grab your skates.
875 00:50:39 Nice to see you, Charlie Brown.
876 00:50:43 Hurry up, Charlie Brown. Grab on.
877 00:50:53 There's nothing quite like the first snowfall of the year.
