Which Peanuts Character Are You?

Geek To Me: Tell us about this new contest!

Jill Schulz It's a kick off for the 60th Anniversary of the cartoon strip. My dad would have really liked this because he said that people don't do enough things just for fun.  You know I think it's a great way to bring all the characters to the forefront again, especially going into the season when they'll be airing the Thanksgiving tv show, the Christmas and the Halloween, all the classics.

Michael Cera as Linus

It's a great way to bring all the characters back in front of people, who maybe haven't been following them as much lately.  We've asked a handful of celebrities to sort of match themselves up with who they felt they either looked or something about their personality would match them up.  Such as Will Ferrell as Snoopy or Kristin Chenoweth as Sally, obviously will Ferrell doesn't look like a beagle, (but) he's got the same sort of out-there personality as Snoopy and things like that.

Kristin Chenoweth as Sally

The part that I think is the most fun is that anybody can enter.  They can enter their two year-old child, their grandma, or themselves as who they think they're most like personality wise and/or just look like.

It's kind of fun because throughout the years, one of the classic things about the cartoon characters is I've always heard people say 'that's such a Charlie Brown moment' or 'my little kid has a blanket like Linus' or 'my sister drives me crazy, she's crabby and yells at me like Lucy.' I think that everybody can relate to something about at least one if not more of the characters. It's for fun, to kick off a whole slew of events for the whole year.

G2M: I'll admit I have a thing for redheads right now, because of Charlie Brown.  I blame Charlie Brown for that.

JS: You do? (laughs)

G2M: Yeah (laughs) So, who came up with the idea?

JS: I believe our team over at United Media in New York as well as some of the people working at Creative Associates in Santa Rosa.  I'm not sure of one individual, I'm sure someone had to have come up with the idea. I can't answer what individual, but I know it was a group effort.

G2M: You have a whole list of Peanuts characters, who do you relate to the most?

JS: I myself, I thought I always related to Snoopy the most; his imagination and his drive for wanting to be whatever he wanted; being out there and looking at the different adventures there are out there in life.  Although the more I think about it, I'm getting older and maybe I'm not as adventurous (laughs).

G2M: (laughs)

JS: I would like to be a little bit more like Linus, because he's always so diplomatic you know?  But I guess I would have to say Snoopy.  And maybe a little bit of Sally!

Debi Mazar as Lucy

G2M: My sister is a Lucy. (laughs)

JS: My sister is a Lucy as well!

G2M: What about the kids?  Who do your children relate to?

JS: Well my son who's 7 has the blanket like Linus, but he relates to Snoopy, he wanted to have Snoopy - the one that walks around Knott's Berry Farm - to his birthday party because he wanted him to go swimming.  So I had to explain to him 'I can get him to come to your birthday party but I'm not thinking he's gonna go swimming!' (laughs)

G2M: Well at least he didn't ask for him to show up with the plane, the flying doghouse.

JS: Yeah, well he did want a jetpack for Christmas last year, so, I'm glad he forgot that.

G2M: (laughs)

JS: And my daughter who's 11 who's way into Broadway musicals and theater classes, she would totally be Sally, I think.  She actually played Sally in a local production here and did 'My Philosophy' the song that Kristin Chenoweth did in the show, so that was her.  

G2M: You talk about wanting to keep these characters in the public consciousness.  They are classic characters that are beloved by generations and you have to watch all the specials. What do you think are some of the other efforts that need to be made to keep Peanuts alive in pop culture?

JS: Obviously one of the things that's out there the most outside of the television specials every year - and there's no saying how long they'll continue , there's no sign of that not continuing - the licensed products have definitely jumped from 2 to 3 thousand approvals of licensed products go through our studios in Santa Rosa a year. I think not only the licensed products that are out there, the plush Snoopys and the cups the hats and the pens and the toys and all of that; I think that going a bit more cross generational into the more high-end t-shirts, sweaters and all of that.  The fact that now in the media you show up and see a known actress wearing a Snoopy t-shirt, that all helps.

Mike Rowe as Pigpen

Personally I think one of our biggest challenges is now the whole internet and movies and TV, how fast everything is, so out there and fast moving; being able to keep the Peanuts characters out there in the media in some form or another, whether its straight-to-video or on-line, or even shorts in theaters.  Things like that are constantly in the works.

There are always a lot of things proposed, as well as feature films, some of them have happened and we've continued some animation shows, like even after the Christmas show there will be a brand new half-hour special that will follow it.  

That whole area gets a little complicated because we've got this thing that no one will ever write the strip, which is a decision made a long time ago by myself and my sisters and brothers, and step mom Jeannie.  Nobody can ever write the strip.  We would rather have less out there than sacrifice the integrity of our dad's strip which was really his main concern.  Of anything out there, all the rest of it, was obviously overwhelmingly successful, but the strip was the thing that was important for him.  People have always said 'well you're gonna need to have someone else write it, because then you're going to lose all that business entity that spins off of it.'  Well, we're not going to do that, so when we do these TV specials, as of now what has been happening is we've allowed our animators to take strips - they can go way back in the archives - and string them together.  There's a little bit of theatrical licensing as far as writing enough to connect the storylines, but we've yet to take that step to allow someone to actually write an entire Peanuts movie, per se.  The strip is one thing that will never happen. It will never come out written by somebody else.  How do you do someone else's art?

G2M: Why doesn't Snoopy have a blog, then?  Snoopy could blog and tell us about the Peanuts gang!

JS: You know, that's actually a good question and I don't know if it's because we would question if Snoopy was to blog who would have the liberty to speak on behalf of him because he can't talk, because he's a dog.  

G2M: And every entry would begin with 'It was a dark and stormy night...'(laughs)

JS: That's right! Exactly! (laughs) You can only hear that so many times.  That's funny.  Yes, so I don't know.  That's a good question, which now I'm going to actually ask if there's a way we could.  I do think we can increase the amount of interactive things on-line.  I have to admit I haven't researched that myself, what we do and don't have to the full extent.  Not a bad idea, I think that if it hasn't happened the question might be again, who would speak for him; because, again it comes down to the integrity of the writing.  We don't want anybody else having liberty to put words in the characters' mouths.  

With my dad's cartoon strips, one of the things he was very proud of was that nobody, throughout his entire career, ever wrote any of the gags for him, any of his lettering, (or) penned any of his drawings.  Which is really unusual, a lot of cartoonists have assistants, one person might do the text, another person does the artwork.  So that was one thing he was really proud of.

G2M: On a personal note I have to say that your father was a tremendous inspiration to me and led what I believe was of the most complete lives you could possibly ask for.  The fact that his last strip was published the day he passed on.  I cannot think a more fitting way to complete a career and a life.
 
JS: Thank you, I really appreciate that.  Yeah it was really kind of an amazing thing.  I really believe that once he realized he couldn't draw the strip, well then that was his entire purpose in life.  I'm not sure that happens very often with anyone.  So, thank you.

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"It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" and "You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown" will air on Tuesday, Oct 27 (8-9 EST)

"A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" and "This is America, Charlie Brown: The Mayflower Voyagers" airs Thursday, Nov 26 (8-9 EST)

Check your local listings.

Enter the Peanuts 60th Anniversary Photo Look-A-Like Contest! (The deadline is Nov. 3rd, 2009.)