Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Celebrating “A Charlie Brown’s Christmas" Encore

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

GGACP gets into the holiday spirit with this ENCORE of a special episode from 2020, as Gilbert and Frank are joined by writer-producer Craig Schulz (“The Peanuts Movie”) and author-archivist Chip Kidd (“Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz”) for an in-depth look at the origin and legacy of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and the genius of the man behind it. Also, Snoopy crushes on Peggy Fleming, Linus makes prime time history, Barney Google inspires a lifelong nickname and Craig introduces his father’s work to a new generation. PLUS: Joe Shlabotnik! “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”! The artistry of Bill Melendez and Lee Mendelson! And the experts reveal their favorite “Peanuts” strips of all time! (Special thanks to Charles Kochman, Melissa Menta, Lindsey Schulz and John Murray!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hurry up though, like the holiday season, Popeye's $25 Fes of Family Box deal will be over before you know it. Love that chicken from Popeye's. Snow time, wintertime, Christmas time. The time of sugar plums, Santa Claus, and at last those lovable children from peanuts. Enjoy a Charlie Brown Christmas. Meet Charlie Brown, Schroeder and Beethoven, Lucy, and that impudent hound, Snoopy. That's terrible, Charlie Brown! Here comes Charlie Brown now. Listen.

Thanks for the Christmas card you sent me, Violet. I didn't send you a Christmas card, Charlie Brown. Don't you know sarcasm when you hear it? Be here as your favorite comic strip comes to life. This year enjoy a Charlie Brown Christmas. Season's greetings, GGACP faithful. Your devoted co-host, Frank, here to introduce another encore episode, another best of GGACP. We've been working very hard this year and hard of late, and we're taking a little time off for the holidays, some time to be with our families, much needed time off, which we always say, but it really is true.

So we're reposting our second holiday episode from 2020, and that's our tribute to a Charlie Brown Christmas with special guest, Peanuts expert Chip Kidd, our friendship kid, and Craig Schultz, the son of legendary Charles Schultz and the keeper of the Peanuts flame. Now, this is a personal favorite episode of mine. the son of legendary Charles Schultz and the keeper of the peanuts flame. Now this is a personal favorite episode of mine. It's among my favorites. A Charlie Brown Christmas was an important part of my childhood and many people's childhoods obviously and we wanted to do an episode about it ever since we started the show way back in 2014 and these were the right guys to look back with us so we

finally got around to doing it. It's, we talked a little bit about everything, the history of the special itself, the contributions of Lee Mendelson and Vince Giraldi. I think my favorite part of the show is toward the end when Craig got a little choked up talking about his dad. It was a genuinely special moment and you'll hear it listening back. So the timing is just right with this one and we hope you enjoy this encore presentation as much as we enjoyed recording it. And as we close out another year, seven years in, can't believe it, coming up on Show 400 obviously. Gil, Dara and I along with the entire team,

Josh, Michelle, Greg, Dino, Jared, Aristotle, John Seals, John Murray and Gino want to wish you and yours from all of us a happy and a healthy holiday. We're very grateful to you guys for keeping this flame burning as long as you have. We love you. We wish you a happy and a healthy Christmas and New Year and we will see you next year. Enjoy. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast and I'm here with my co-host Frank Santopadre. And 70 years ago, a shy cartoonist from Minnesota began publishing a daily comic strip featuring characters named Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy and Schroeder, among others, which he would go on to write and draw for 50 years, publishing over 17,000 daily strips and making it arguably the longest story ever told by one human being.

And 55 years ago this week, a primetime TV special based on those characters premiered on CBS, a show that's aired every year since and been seen by hundreds and millions of viewers all over the world. That TV special was a Charlie Brown Christmas and we're here to pay tribute to it, as well as the beloved script and its legendary creator with our two experts. Craig Schultz is the son of Peanuts creator Charles Schultz, as well as president of Creative Associates, the company that oversees old Peanuts content. He's also the co-producer and co-writer, along with his son, Brian, of 2015's critically acclaimed The Peanuts Movie, as well as the screenwriter for Peanuts shows

that will air in 2021 on Apple TV+. Chip Kidd is an award-winning designer, that will air in 2021 on Apple TV+. Chip Kidd is an award-winning designer, editor, pop culture historian, and self-described peanuts nerd, as well as the author of numerous essential books. Peanuts, The Art of Charles M. Schulz, Only What's Necessary, Charles Schulz and the Art of Peanuts, and the newly released book, The Peanuts Poster Collection. Frank and I are excited to welcome to the show for our second holiday episode of 2020, Craig Schultz and Chip Kidd.

Gentlemen, welcome. Hi there. Hi there. Chip, welcome back. Craig, welcome for the first time. Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah. Well, I think that totally sums it up. What else is there to say? He came bearing a gag. How long have you been hanging on to that one, Craig?

A couple years. That's so funny how peanuts, those cartoons have influenced us, that you just have to make that sound effect and everybody knows. Yeah, worldwide. Every kid knows that when they listen to their school teacher. Since you did that, Craig, when was that decision ultimately made?

Was that dad's decision? No, that was done in... Or Melendez? It was done basically in 1967 at a show called You're in Love Charlie Brown where the kids had to talk and listen to the teacher. And they had Vince Giraldi who was doing all the scores for those shows

and he broke his trombone out and just started going wah wah, wah wah, wah wah and literally created the language. And in the movie we end up getting Trombone out and just started going wah-wah, wah-wah-wah-wah, and literally created the language. And in the movie, we ended up getting Trombone Shorty out of Louisiana to come out, and we practiced with him for about a couple days to get him to be able to convey language through the trombone, which is a really interesting prospect, and he was super excited to do that, and it came out really well. Yeah, it was fun to see that again in the Peanuts movie.

I had forgotten it. And tell us about the music, and the music everybody remembers. Well, the music's classic. I mean, sadly, you know, from the, you know, we'll stick with Charlie Brown Christmas for now, you know, it was done with Vince Guaraldi, and the story goes that Lee Mendelson was listening to Vince Caraldi in the Monterey concert and he was playing Cast Your Fate to the Wind which is similar to the song that became Linus and Lucy and as soon as he heard that he called my dad up he said I got the soundtrack for the Charlie Brown Christmas and no one even considered doing jazz at that point you know the

studio didn't they never did like it but you know Lee heard that soundtrack and just immediately connected it with the peanuts characters and the feeling for the show and They got Vince on board and you know, sadly Vince died in 76 Story goes that Vince was playing a concert went back to the hotel room To take a break and he just dropped dead in the hotel room. Never got to go back and do the second set. Wow. A great talent. Chip, we'll talk about the genesis of the show and we'll talk more about Vince Giraldi. Chip, do you have a vivid memory of seeing a Charlie Brown Christmas for the first time? I know you're a guy with a good memory. Oh, I mean.

Good recollection of your childhood. Absolutely. Just in retrospect, just the whole story of how it got made and just like what Craig just said, like that's amazing. I never knew that wah, wah, wah, wah, wah was Vince Guaraldi on a trombone. That's fantastic. That's so cool. That's fantastic. That's so cool.

It's fantastic. But I remember like the silence at the end was just so unlike anything that I had experienced like with Bugs Bunny and certainly, or certainly like Batman, like the use of silence in that show was really remarkable. And the fact that there wasn't a laugh track was so important. And these are things that I recognize in retrospect.

I think as a four or five-year-old, you're just sort of mesmerized by the story and what you're seeing, but there's just so many aspects of that show that were just so groundbreaking and all sorts of things that we kind of take for granted now, but these were all the things that like scared CBS to death, I think. Yeah. Well, Craig, the laugh track was never really on the table. I mean, I assume it was summarily dismissed. Well, yeah, my dad laid down the ground rules for the movies, and he wasn't going to give

up on it. But I guess, I mean, I think the one piece of trivia about none of you know that this show would have never happened had it not been for an automobile. Do any of you realize that? The Ford Falcon. That's it. Once for the Ford Falcon, this show never would have occurred. And, you know, the story goes, obviously, that CBS executives saw the Ford Falcon commercial,

you know, and went to Lee and said, hey, is there any thought of you guys ever making a Christmas special? And Lee said, well, certainly. So then Lee calls my dad up the next day and says, guess what I did? I just sold a Charlie Brown Christmas. And my dad goes, what's that? He goes, that's the show you're gonna write this weekend.

And they patted the show out in no time, you know, and got it made and- Six months. Yeah, six months is kind of the trouble. It's amazing. And what does the title Peanuts mean? Oh, that's a sensitive area. Yeah.

A title he hated. That might be another show. That's a whole other show there. My dad hated that name. And again, that got ran by the executives in New York. When he sold the strip after running around the country for years, they sold it to the United Featured Syndicate. And they didn't like Little Folks, because Little Folks was what he wanted to name it,

and that was used by another cartoonist. So they ran it by a room full of people in their offices and somebody came up with the idea of peanuts. And they loved it and ran it by my dad and my dad hated it ever since. And the thing you'll notice when you read the comic strip, if you go back through enough of it, it starts off with peanuts and midway through the early years, it says peanuts featuring good old Charlie Brown. Well, my dad always wanted to name the strip after a little act called good old Charlie Brown. Well, my dad always wanted to name the strip after a little act called Good Old Charlie Brown. So he kind of thought if he put it in there long enough, they could concede and sort of flip it over

and rename the strip Good Old Charlie Brown. But, you know, obviously that never happened. It never worked. So Pete, the Peanuts title was like an albatross around his neck for 50 years. Oh, yeah, yeah. And the other thing is he never ever owned those characters. You know, a lot of people would assume, because these days everybody owns their artwork, you know, the other thing is he never ever owned those characters. You know,

a lot of people would assume, because these days everybody owns their artwork, you know, for as long as he did the comic strip, he never ever owned the rights to those characters. Oh, and tell us how your father got the title, or the name rather, of Charlie Brown. Well, Charlie Brown was a friend of his that he had met, and he had used the name Charlie Brown in earlier comic strips he had done. And then when he finally got peanuts and sold peanuts, you know, he went to him and the program said, hey, would you mind if I use your name in this new comic strip I'm doing? And Charlie Brown agreed to it.

And you know, he had to live with a live with a legacy of being Charlie, the real Charlie Brown for the rest of his life. But my dad, most of the characters in the comic strip are named after friends of my dad from the early years. A lot of them were from the art instruction school he worked at. And a lot of them I've known through the years. So it was interesting how he'd find somebody

and either like their name or put them in the comic strip because they're friends of his. Yeah, I did a lot of reading up, Craig, as I do, and saw an interview with you, and you said that all of the characters in the strip represented a side of him in some way, which I found fascinating. No, I think absolutely.

Now that I look back after he's gone and I revisit him and so forth, I think he really had two families. He had his original family with me,'s gone and I revisit him and so forth, I think, you know, he really had two families. He had his original family with me, my brother, my sisters and so forth. And he had the family of Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Snoopy and all those other characters. And looking back and I realized, you know,

what could be a better job for 50 years and get to go to a studio and play with this cast of characters that you love. And you actually love them probably more than your real family. And every day you get to go play with these cast of characters that you love, and you actually love them probably more than your real family. And every day you get to go play with these cast of characters. And you see how they interact with each other,

the relationships, the love, the disappointment, and so forth. But that's what drove them back to the table every day was the joy of being able to play with this cast of characters. How many of us are that lucky to be able to do something like that? Very few.

And your father once said in an interview, happiness is not funny. Yeah. Yeah. And probably you, Gilbert, more than anyone knows it. And every stand-up comedy comedian I know really has to have some kind of a dark side in their life one way or another. There's very few stand-up comedy comedians that comes out of a joyful, everything rosy kind of a dark side in their life one way or another. There's very few stand-up congressmen that comes out of a joyful, everything rosy kind of world, you know, you need something to trigger you.

And for my dad, it was really, you know, his childhood growing up, you know, they made him skip a grade in school, and he became the youngest kid in his class and got bullied and picked on. And then in his teenage years, you know, he was heading off to World War II and his mom died and his mom said, you know, the day before he left, I guess we'll never see each other again. And he got on the train and went off to World War II. And that event stuck with him emotionally

for the rest of his life, dealing with the loss of his mother. And I think those losses are really what triggered the emotions and peanuts throughout the 50 year run. And then like Charlie Brown was kind of always a loser and depressed character, he seemed like. Yeah, we always say that really, I mean, actually all the characters were a piece of my dad, but for most part, Charlie Brown was probably 90% of my dad.

Yeah. And 10% was Snoopy, the fantasies and the joy and be able to go in all these different places that he never really got to do. But that's what he really was hoping to be. He hoped to be Snoopy, but unfortunately he was stuck being Charlie Brown. And why did Snoopy sleep on the roof of his doghouse? Kind of an impossibility when you think about that little angle is pretty sharp up there. I think he started off drawing him as a normal dog and then Snoopy kind of once Snoopy stood

up on his hind legs and evolved that, you know, the whole world just opened up to my dad and he saw that happen right in front of his eyes because in the beginning he was just a basically little dog like every other little dog. And then he stood up and then he started having the thought balloons and then You know in early 60s all sudden he my dad got the idea of him Taking on the Red Baron and become a pilot and from there it was his endless the world opened up and his creativity just flowed Chip chip talks about something that and how you're affected by it as a self-described peanuts nerd, something Craig just talked about or what Gilbert alluded to, you know, that some people say that the strip was a

study in disappointment. The great pumpkin never comes. Every baseball game is a loss. All the loves, all the love affairs or the would-be love affairs are unrequited in the strip. Charlie never gets to kick the football. It seems like that's part of its success. That's part of the beauty of it. Well, absolutely, because we can, no matter who we are, we can all relate

to that. There was always somebody in your life that you loved that didn't love you back. There was always that thing you were trying to do that you, I mean, that you just couldn't do, but you really wanted to. But I remember as a kid, I hated being in the Little League. It was just awful, but I had to do it because my brother did it,

and my best friend was doing it. And I remember stepping up there. It was literally like, you know, the ninth inning and the bases were loaded. And then I at age eight was like stepped up to the plate to try and like hit everybody home and I struck out. And it was, that is Charlie Brown. That is what we all relate to. But he has such a great heart.

And that's what makes it work. Like it's not about misery and disappointment. It's about weathering all that stuff. He does it because he's a good person. That saves it. Most of the other kids are too. Lucy, she sort of comes and goes in that department, but at their core, they're good people.

But they go through all of this stuff that we all go through in our lives, and that's what helped make it so endearing and work. And that's just the content, but the form of it is so great. The way it looks and the way he distills human emotion in such a simple, simple way. And yet those emotions are so direct, whether they're joyful or sad or disappointed or, you know, courageous. I'm going off on a tangent here, but yes, like you're not gonna have a story if everything is perfect.

It's like what Craig just said about standup comedians. Like they're not gonna have a career unless there's a problem. Well, yeah, so we know the best humor and the best comedy comes from adversity. Yeah. Or pain. And Charles Schultz said that he's very weary

about being happy or saying that he's happy in some interview Saying that if he's he if he says I'm happy then that means something bad will happen So it's fair to say he had a complicated relationship with happiness great yes, I think so Don't we all I mean don't we all don't we all? Don't we all? Don't we all? It's like, I'm afraid to say things are going well because I'll jinx it.

Yeah. He was never one to kind of roll with his celebrity and never felt like he was a celebrity. It was really, really interesting to see because he would go to the ice rink every day, sit down at the same breakfast every day and so forth and people would come up and talk to him. And invariably, whether it was whoever he's been interviewed

by, he would spend more time interviewing the interviewer than it would be the other way around, because he was always fascinated about people's lives. And it was very genuine. It wasn't like just kind of a phony, oh, what do you do? I work for CBS, whatever sort of thing. I mean, he genuinely wanted to know.

He wanted to delve into people. He was what I call a true humanist. He wanted to know what's behind the background of all these people. And that's what I think he was, he studied human nature continuously, whether it was through religion or just people's basic jobs and ethos.

It was very interesting. Yeah, and a very learned guy. I mean, a guy who read quite a lot and put that into the strips. I found it interesting doing the research that when he would draw the Beethoven notes that he made certain that everything was accurate. Yeah, absolutely.

Which is fascinating. He made certain that he was never gonna offend any other profession. So he typically, he would be reading four books at one time all the time. But when it came to doing something on the comic strip, whether it was something to do with ophthalmology or, or science, he would take the books out and dig them incessantly to make sure that the words were correct, that he was correct, the use was correct. And again, the music notes is a classic example

that all that music could be played by a pianist. We did that at the museum one time, we had someone come in and we had a classic piano and then they actually played the panels out of the comic strip. Oh, that's cool. And it was all by hand. All done by hand.

Yeah, and never with any help. And no. Just him, just him. Yeah, he wanted by hand. Yeah, and never with any help. And no. Just him, just him. Yeah, he wanted to be a Disney animator. Didn't last very long, yeah. He actually applied to Disney, they turned him down. Which was sort of interesting. Best thing that ever happened to him.

Yeah. Yeah, it's awesome. It's awesome too. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Gilbert, you relate to this thing that we're talking about a few minutes ago, this sort of not trusting prosperity and not trusting happiness. I mean, that's something that drives you and drives your humor as well. I've known you a very long time.

So I think this is something you connect to emotionally. Yeah. It's just like I feel like when I'm having having if I ever am walking down the street and saying oh Jim stunning to feel good Then I'll go. Oh I'll remember everything bad that's happening in my life So I think that's one of the great things about the strip is that is that it recognized that that neurotic nature in all of us You know that he put that and he put that on the on the page actually

I remember the first time as a child I ever encountered the word neurotic was Lucy she was listening to I think Georgie porgy Porgy Puddin' and Pie, Kiss the Girls and Made Them Cry. And the punchline in the last panel was, wow, what a neurotic he must have been. And I would have been like in second grade. And I remember I took the book to my mom and I said, what does neurotic mean? And she's like, I don't know. Why don't you look it up?

That's great. I learned so much from the strip too. I think that was a sample of his attention to detail because one of his close attorney's friends who just passed on last week used to give a talk. And he always used the example of Charlie Brown was doing something. And I think the punchline was something like,

yeah, he really had to suffer. And he always went into that and says, you know, you could use any other word and it wouldn't be the same thing as using the word suffer. You know, that word is so powerful. And, you know, my dad would take the time to finish those strips off. And when he would do strips,

it wasn't like he was doing them linearly, where he'd sit down and draw a strip from beginning to end. He would start on a strip and he might get halfway through it, stick it aside for a while until the word came. And when the right word came or the right language came, then he would go back to that strip. So he always had numerous strips going at any given time. Just as it just says, he read books, the same thing. It wasn't just linear crank them out one, you know, like you would think like a production run, like you'll Lucy on a conveyor belt with chocolates. So it's not quite that easy.

We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this. Your father, they used to call him Sparky. Yeah. Named after spark plug. He was named very early from an uncle, after the dogs, after the horse, Spark Plug, in the early comic strips. It meant to be a cartoonist in the way. Yeah, Barney Google.

Barney Google, yeah. Seems like fate. Before I forget, now that makes me remember, Barney Google, the comic strip, they made a song out of it. And it was Barney Google with the goo goo googly eyes. Barney Google had a wife three times his size. Barney Google's, his wife sued him for divorce.

Now he's living with his horse, Barney Google, with the googly eyes. Somebody watched too much television. Yes, yes. WPIX in New York, growing up. You know, I'm watching the Christmas special talking about neuroses, Craig and Chip, and the examined life.

Clearly he was a man interested in psychiatry, psychology. I'm watching the Charlie Brown special and I've seen it so many times. It's hard to see it with fresh eyes, but you realize five minutes into this thing that she's in the psychiatric booth and she's running down a list of his potential phobias. I mean, this is like no other children's Christmas special

you can imagine. In 1964, I mean, yeah, yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Well, I think that's what he did. His genius was really looking at something that you and I would look at straight on, and he would go around the corner,

take a peek of you at the same thing, and be able to twist it into something very interesting. That whole psychiatric with playing, played off the obviously the children's lemonade stands and he thought it wouldn't be funny rather than a lemonade stand that this little kid does a psychiatric booth. And the same thing that happened with pumpkin, you know, your great pumpkin Charlie Brown, he kept thinking wouldn't it be funny if a kid got the holidays confused and thought that Halloween was the same as Christmas, that someone's going to bring all the presents to us on Halloween. It was a simple idea like that.

A lot of people have taken, you know, the Halloween special and turned it into some kind of analogy about the return of Jesus and these religious overtones to it. But most of the ideas were kind of a very simple twist on what one person would look at and he would look at from a different angle. And I think it's funny getting back to happiness and something bad. I think in one comic strip he said, Charlie Brown says something that he's feeling happy today and then he falls off his chair.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I was reading an interview, I watched that wonderful Dick Cavett interview, I sent it to you Chip. Yes. Two, and it was fascinating that these characters, the daily grind of that strip, where Cavett said,

how often are you thinking about these things? How much time do you spend thinking about these things? He didn't really have the luxury of not thinking about those characters. He said, they're in my mind 24 seven. Because the immense pressure, I don't think any of us can imagine it, of having to produce something original every day,

five days a week. For 50 years. For 50 years. For 50 years. Non-stop. And as I started to say before, without help, without input, Craig, he wasn't one to take ideas, was he? Suggestions.

No, you know, when you look back on that, again, 50 years of non-stop comic strips, again, what people don't realize too, is that every time you take a vacation, every time you go to see a giant's game, every time you do something, you're going backwards, he would typically stay about four or five weeks out with the dailies and maybe a month or so out

with a Sunday strip. But again, you go on a two week vacation and now you're behind the thing. And he considered himself the utmost professional. He was never gonna be late to deliver a strip to the syndicate. So, you know, you hear the term, you know, writer's block and so forth. He never believed in writer's block. But the advantage for him was that he had a full keyboard, you know, it's like 88 keys on there. He could pick any number of characters to create stories. And he and again, most of his life, he spent observing people. So

he always had a notepad in the car, He always had a notepad by his bed. And whenever he would see somebody do something stupid or whatever, invariably it would create a strip. You know, if he went to see a tennis player or whatever, you know, any kind of sporting event ideas would pop up. He just had a way of doing that. What a fascinating way to go through life.

Early on, when he was like a struggling artist, he would go to a bunch of places each day. He would set out to show his work, and he was getting constant rejection. But he said that he just never let it get him down. Yeah, I think he had great faith in his ability and he knew eventually he would sell that commerce trip. But he struggled, the people in the reals

I love how much he did struggle in the early years. Gilbert, you know, he went out there, he sold single panels to the post and he would send these things in to all the magazines. And he was typically sending out three or four things every single day. He would just produce, produce, produce, send them out, send them out, send them out.

And then to me, I can't even fathom him getting on a train because after knowing him, getting on a train in Minnesota, ride the train to New York or Chicago, go up to his offices, try to sell the commerce ship. In the end, he was so much of a homebody, didn't like to travel and so forth. It's just incomprehends to me that he would actually, I've seen him trying to do that.

I can't imagine him doing that because it was such a struggle. And then when he did sell the strip, you know, it only went in seven newspapers. It took five or six years to even take off. So he was lucky. It could have failed. Chip, in your books, you're not only tracking the development of the strip, but you're tracking the development of the man and his psychology.

And you can see his confidence growing as an artist through the course of, in both books, in both of your Art of Charles M. Schultz books, you really get a sense of a guy coming into his own over time. Absolutely. I think... Developing as an illustrator too, developing his hand.

In both books, I was granted access. And by the way, thank you, Craig, and thanks to all of you at the Peanuts for letting me see and chronicle all this stuff. But in both books, I was granted access to sketchbooks that he kept when he was in the Army and in World War II. And there were two main ones. So in the one book I focused on the one Army sketchbook, which he titled As We Were. And then there was another one, As We Were was really about his boot camp experience and then the other one was you're in Germany and they're very good and they're very interesting but they're not...when he left the army and went into Art Instruction

Inc. then he turned a corner artistically and the drawings just got better and then he got this idea about little kids that were sort of behaving like adults. And he loved to play bridge, so these little kids were playing bridge in little folks. And it's just so kind of remarkable. What five-year-old plays bridge? But there they are. And so he turned a corner from the army sketchbooks to little folks, and then from little folks then to peanuts. And then it really grows throughout the 50s.

I mean, he was quoted as saying, like, I think, and Craig, you can correct me, but like the 50s for him was a real sort of period of experimentation. And I think he would have rather that people sort of ignored that once he got into the 1960s. And the strip really, really then came into its own and really changed. And Snoopy wasn't just a little puppy anymore. He was walking upright and had thoughts and

all this. But it's just so fascinating to see it. It is. To see the whole thing evolve and to see him evolve. Yeah, and you see those strips in the early 60s, you really see him coming into his own. You really see the comedic voice start to develop. And as I said, the confidence of the artist, everything kind of coalesces.

Yeah, and things go from a three-quarter perspective then to strictly two-dimensional, which was so powerful and so simple. But yeah, there's all different kinds of ways of looking at it. And Frank and I have discussed on the show a couple of times the death of movie theaters. Like that seems like a thing of the past,

the movie theater. And are comic strips gone? Are they dead now? Well, or certainly endangered. You mean in a newspaper. Yeah. Yeah, I think he means, yeah, daily strips. Yeah, I think the industry has changed tremendously.

You know what? It's hard to believe, but in the early 1920s, one of the famous cartoonists, he was making like a million dollars a year doing cartoons. So when my dad started, the newspapers had four or five people running around the country all the time telling his comic strip to each of these newspapers. The comic strip sold the newspapers. It was a very comic strip sold the newspapers. It was a very very big thing, you know, and now Obviously you can get them online and so forth

But but they sort of disappeared because it's almost like, you know kids don't read anymore And that was one of the things that drove us To create the Peanuts movie was trying to get trying to have something that would drive kids back to the comic strip and we considered You know the movie basically the rock in the pond and the ripple effect was gonna be that would drive people back to read those comic strips and stuff. One kind of funny story I like to bring up is, you know, when you talk about a classic Charlie Brown moment, my dad used to drive a lot of the neighborhood kids

to our local school and this was in the early 60s. So one day one of his friends who was one of the teachers at school said, you know, Sparky, why don't you come in and like give a talk to the kids at the school? So he'd been as generous with this time as he was He goes to school and gets up on the chalkboard and does this whole talk on peanuts and draws some characters And at the end of it, he asked anyone have any questions and one little girl raises her hand says Can you draw Mickey Mouse?

can you draw Mickey Mouse? Yeah. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Did he oblige her? Yeah. He actually could draw me.

And it's funny because it's funny. Thinking back on that was, I mean, obviously, I watched him draw the comic show my whole life. But he was on a, we were on a raft trip one time. He's going down the Colorado River doing research for one of the TV specials. And in the evening, he would sit down. He would sketch the area he was going down the Colorado River doing research for one of the TV specials. And in the evening he would sit down, he would sketch the area he was at. And I remember he brought the,

he'd draw the pictures back that he'd sketched and I look at him and I was like, I mean, I was like blown away going, wow, you can actually draw. I mean, it was, my daughter's a fine artist. I was just literally, I was blown away thinking he can actually draw because he used to see the characters.

And now as I get older, I can appreciate, and I study the line work more than I ever did in the past. You know, now I see these things come up and I literally look at the lines and study them and see how he drew these things and what an immense talent he was just in the art of drawing them. You know, I mean, the strip itself was unique

in the fact that between the drawings and the text and the context and the emotion, but the artwork is an example that should be studied in any college art class, because it truly is a study in abstract art. Chip's books open up a good window into that. You really do see some of his illustrations, his non-peanuts illustrations.

Yeah. Serious illustrations, I mean, portraits too. Yes, and when he would occasionally go on like a vacation to Europe and, you know, try to draw a landscape in the south of France or what have you. And yeah, he was great. He was really good at it. Let's circle back to the Christmas special, since it is Christmas. Gilbert, I know you're interested in this,

and we talked about this on the phone, and that was the groundbreaking decision to have Linus read a biblical passage. Yes. Which among other things about that special is so innovative, is so for the time bold. I think it would be bold now. Yes, it would be bold now. 55 years later. Well, there are many things that are bold in that show. Obviously, the soundtrack, the lack of

laugh track and then the quoting from the Bible at the end. Or the decision to have children perform the voices. Yeah. Which was not being done at the time. That was unheard of at the time. It was interesting, just had to do it so quickly. I remember Bill Melendez telling me these stories because Bill was somebody, if you ever met Bill, he was one of those few people that you would never, ever forget. was somebody, if you ever never met Bill, he was one of those few people

that you would never ever forget. You know, I mean, I was a kid, I was 13 years old, but I've never forgot my early days with Bill. He was tremendous. But he tells a story about, you know, they finished the animation up, they did the run through of the show, and Bill leans over to his staff, he says,

we've killed peanuts. And then, and one of the animators in the background was leaning back after drinking a couple drinks and he yells out, this show will play for 50 years. So they run it by the Coca-Cola executives and the executive looks at the thing, it was a week before airtime,

they already had the time slot booked. He says, you know, the snow is too slow. I don't like the music. I don't exist, but you know, we're locked in. We're gonna have to show this thing. Even though I hate it, we're gonna have to show it. So they'd run the show on the air. He gets a 48 share back when they only had three channels,

but basically half the country was watching Charlie Brown Christmas. The exec calls Leah up and he says, I want you to know, my wife hated it too. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha There's just so many things that are so amazing. We take it for granted now. Nobody had really articulated that in pop culture before. No, no. And of course, it's the fact that Snoopy's completely sold out to win the decoration contest. And Charlie Brown's heart is in the right place.

But I remember watching Charlie Brown going into is in the right place. But I remember watching Charlie Brown going in to get the Christmas tree and there's all these aluminum trees and he bangs on them and they make metal noise. And I'm like, what is that? Like I didn't even know what that was as a kid. Like that's so strange. I had an aluminum Christmas tree, so I related to that.

We had a silver aluminum Christmas tree, so I related to that. We had a silver aluminum Christmas tree, basically made out of the stuff the tinsel is made out of, and a color wheel, a plastic color wheel, with a bulb behind it. Classic. So I remember seeing that scene as a kid, and it resonating. And I remember, like when I was a kid, there was that cartoon or a,

called Davey and Goliath. Oh my God, yes. Oh yeah. Now Davey and Goliath would have him lost in a park or whatever, and then they'd always get to that part, well you know, God always knows where you are Davey. And that part would always make me really uncomfortable. Yes.

And yet in the Charlie Brown Christmas special, it works. Oh, it's done so artfully. Yeah, because it's so different. It's like poetry as opposed to, you know, be careful because God's watching all the time. It's like, no. And lo unto the shepherds and it's just... It's so underplayed so beautifully

as opposed to sermonizing. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, Craig, as the story goes, Melendez, possibly Lee Mendelson as well, who we should mention, pushed back a little bit on the idea, and the legend of it is, and I hope it's true, that your father said what? He says, well, if we don't do it, who will? And that dealt with the line from the Bible. Yeah. So he was, yeah, he was doing that. And I remember, from the Bible. So he was, yeah, he was doing that. And I remember,

I think Lee was the one that pushed back on my dad had the idea of putting rocks in the bag during that, during the pumpkin show. He said, let's put a rock in the bag. And Bill goes, well, maybe we'll put one in there. And my dad's, no, no, let's put one. Every time he gets something, we'll put a rock in the bag. And yeah, so they had, in 50 years of putting shows on, really, Lee and my dad had almost zero fights. Oh, it's a nice story, too, the story of the collaboration of these three men over time. Amazing. Well, that goes back to showing the loyalty my dad has.

I mean, he's stuck with the same people for years and years and years, as long as he could. He wasn't one to experiment and change talent unless he absolutely had to. I mean, for example, after the loss of Geraldi, then he had to bring in new people to the scores. But there are some trivia points to the Christmas special that I'm sure Chip probably knows about,

but I don't know if you guys do. In the original Christmas special, when you see Linus slide across the ice in the opening sequence and slams into the snow, something is now cut out of that show. You have any idea what that is? Oh, it's a Coca-Cola thing. Coca-Cola's thing. And Coca- something is now cut out of that show. You have any idea what that is? Oh, it's a Coca-Cola thing.

Coca-Cola's thing, and Coca-Cola was at the end of the show, and the ending credits too, there was Coca-Cola mentioned at the end of it. And our local Coca-Cola bottler was such a fan of the show and of the family that they offered my mom a lifetime supply of Coca-Cola, which she quickly turned down to my disappointment. Wow. That's fun trivia. And also because they use children as the voices, they had that problem

because kids would hit a certain age and their voices would change. They'd age out. Yeah. Yeah, they would age out. The funny thing that happened in Christmas was they started off and they were having Bill was coaching the kids. The kids were so young that they didn't know how to read, so you couldn't give them a script to read, so they had to feed them lines. Well, Bill was from deep in Mexico, so he started reading the lines.

The kids were reading them back trying to copy Bill. Finally, he walks in and says, Bill, you got all these kids speaking like Mexicans. Yeah. Yeah. Craig, when you cast the Peanuts movie, I noticed that there was a concerted effort made to find actors who had similar voices.

Were you using the Halloween special and the Christmas special primarily as your basis? Absolutely. Because the Charlie Brown character sounded a little bit like Peter Robbins and the Linus character sounded a little bit like Chris Shea. I think you guys nailed it. Yeah well thank you because that was one of my first things was we had to nail the voices. We actually interviewed over a thousand kids from all across the country to come out with those voices. Wow. And yeah, I remember being in the casting room

where the girl was sitting there and she had the high hopes of being Lucy. I didn't want to break the news or that we'd already cast Lucy, but we had a great cast for that show. The kids were phenomenal and we were very lucky. But I always, even to this day, I don't want them to send me auditions.

I want them to send me them just talking. Because when I hear them just talking in normal voices, that's what you want. These days, there's so many kids, there are kids, kid actors, professional actors, they get on the thing and they overact everything. And it's just isn't the same thing as having a kid just talk.

Aside from the two actors, Robbins and Shay, doing Linus and Charlie Brown in the Charlie Brown Christmas. Were the rest of the kid actors amateurs? Well, yeah. Actually, Lee would go into a classroom and have kids talk and literally pick kids out of a classroom and bring them to the mic and have them record. One of my pet peeves throughout the years was, and I asked Lee this later on, he used

his kids in quite a few shows. If you look at the credits, you'll see quite a few Mendelson kids in there. One of them actually played the voice of Pevere and Patty and some of the girls. We tease them about that today, but I asked Lee years later, I said, Lee, how come you never asked for any of Sparky's kids

to be in these specials? Lee comes back, because none of you guys could act. Dad. And the funny thing is it's like, and Lee comes back, because none of you guys could act. Yeah. And the funny thing is it's like they use children, and yet the children in those cartoons sound like depressed adults. I mean, Peter Robbins just so captured.

I don't know how much direction Melendez and Lee gave him, but it's the closest thing to me. Do you agree with this, Chip, as a lifelong reader of the strip, to what Charlie Brown should sound like? Although Craig, I heard you say that when you first heard them, you thought, I have different voices in my head. These don't sound like the characters that I've been envisioning. I would be willing to bet that almost everybody did that because, you know, whenever we read something in a book or whatever, we typically kind of sub vocalize in our minds what it

should sound like. So I'd been reading that comic strip for years and years and all of a sudden you hear the voices, you go, know, that sure doesn't sound like Charlie Brown has been in my head for ten years now or five year whatever was and Now it's ingrained obviously. So The gold standard right now, of course Peter Robbins was the gold standard, you know it's funny like whenever I read a book and like later on the book they'll say something like And like later on the book, they'll say something like, he pushed back his red hair. And I'll think, no, no, no, I was fantasizing.

I was seeing this character as having black hair. You know, it's like when you read something, you picture the character in your mind. Exactly. Chip, talk about the storytelling in A Charlie Brown's Christmas. You know, watching it from the perspective of a writer, you know, there's a lot said about the economy

of storytelling in Shultz's strips. Yes. Watching the Christmas special, and Craig, this is fascinating. You get so much story. You get so much story there's so much story in the first four or five minutes so much is established you get Linus's blanket and Lucy's judgment about it the Charlie Brown is depressed that he's that he's disillusioned about Christmas he doesn't get any Christmas cards in

his box you set up the psychiatric, everything is right there at the outset. What I always loved is the utter absurdity of Lucy directing, quote, the Christmas play. And the Christmas play is a bunch of kids dancing to jazz. Yeah. That's the Christmas play. And she's like, isn't this a great play? And Charlie Brown's like, no, this says nothing about Christmas whatsoever. She's like, no, it's great.

And then you're what? And and of course, that's that's the thing that animation can do that that a comic strip can't. It can it introduces movement and time and sound. But it's so absurd. It's so ridiculous. And then you have the one kid whose head just flops from side to side, which is such a brilliant little gesture. And then people throw their arms up and it's like, yay, Christmas! No, da da da da da da! No, that has nothing to do with Christmas.

It's just hilarious. I remember that now so well. Or some of them would be just kicking their leg up in the air. It's all very spastic moves. Totally. The storytelling is very artful though, and very, very economical.

You get Sally is writing the letter to Santa and she's trying to shake him down for cash. We send 10s and 20s. 10s and 20s. You know, again, it's so innovative and it's so gutsy for a kids' show to be dealing with these themes. I even remember as a kid, as a child thinking, I've never seen anything quite like this. Yeah, I think you have to recognize too, the interesting thing is that my dad was by no means

a screenwriter and I actually saw the original, I think I had a copy of the original script for Charlie Brown Christmas in my house before it burned down and it was literally three pages on a yellow notepad thing telling the story of a Charlie Brown Christmas. The same thing for Pumpkin. They were very, very simple stories that he had created. And to collaborate with Lee and Bill on these things and create a show that these days would be done obviously much more different and professional screenwriting software is amazing in itself. So he was multi-talented between the comic strips and his vision to try to do other things and he continually

did other things. You say he wasn't a writer and yet I wonder if he knew instinctively watching the Linus passage. It's essentially the climax of the piece. If you don't have that, because it's Charlie Brown moving through this world looking for the meaning of Christmas, and Linus just says effortlessly, well, if that's all you wanna know, I'll tell you the meaning of Christmas, Charlie Brown.

Light, please. Lights, please, and it's so beautifully done, and as you said before, Chip, it's so understated. But if you don't have that in there, Craig, and maybe your dad knew it instinctively, you don't really have anything if you don't have that in there, Craig, and maybe your dad knew it instinctively, you don't really have anything. You don't have a payoff. You don't have an emotional payoff. No, but there wasn't the point of where he would have thought her. If they'd been a normal show like today,

you would have all these executives come in to you and saying, well, how about the people that don't know who these characters are? You're gonna have to create the exposition and define who they are. He assumed that everybody knew what the characters were. Then they would start saying, well, where's the inciting incident? You have to have an inciting incident. What's the art from this character and that character? You start to develop it all along those lines

of creating a movie, it becomes a different story. In those days, he had a vision, he knew what he wanted to create, and he did it his way. And he did that through most of the shows. He was really, really, really hands on, on really what I call the big three, you know, Christmas, pumpkin and Thanksgiving. And after he makes that whole speech, then all the kids dress up that like weak, rotten

tree, and it's like beautiful. Because they show before, like like they try to put the star on top and it makes the whole tree fall over. And, but it's, that's really a touching moment that the kids dress up that tree. It's very sweet. No, it is. And I asked Lee years later,

if you actually, if you watched the special closely, you'll see his little green tree is sitting there and they keep coming by and and Charlie Brown goes by. It starts growing branches, you know? And I asked Lee years later, I said, Lee, were you guys doing that purposely, so that when Charlie Brown touched the tree, it was kind of having a relationship with Charlie Brown?

He goes, no, that just happened with the animators. They just kind of stuck everything in there. And the tree just kind of changes, it changes on its own. You know, Chip, I get emotional when I'm watching a miracle on 34th Street and the last shot and they see the Santa's cane leaning against the fireplace. I get emotional in the last moments of It's a Wonderful Life when Harry proposes the toast

and says to my big brother George, the richest man in town. And I get similarly choked up, and I watched it again last night when Linus makes that speech and especially when he says on earth peace and good will to men. And all these years later, I've been watching it for 50 years, Craig, I'm still emotional. Well and so so is powerful. And so is everybody else. I mean, look at this whole punch, you know, reaction to to, to what just happened. And people, people want to see this on television, and they want to see it, you know, like

it's like it's broadcast all over again, it means something to them. And it's a ratings winner every year. Like, yeah, they could watch it on DVD, but they don't wanna do that. They wanna see it on real TV. To me, the kicker was always when Charlie Brown hangs the red bulb on the little tree and it falls over. Yes, I've killed it. And he says, oh, I killed it.

Everything I touch gets ruined and then he slinks off and it's just like, oh, wow. It's almost like saying I've killed the tree. It's almost like Melinda saying we killed peanuts. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's so iconic that invariably, somewhere across the country, someone will take a tree out

and put it by the side of a street with one red bulb on it. And it'll sit there. And then day by day, someone will take a tree out and put it by the side of a street with one red bulb on it. And it'll sit there. And then day by day, invariably that tree will be decorated and become Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. And it happens every year, someplace. It's the most amazing thing. And it just shows the legacy of this,

the powerfulness of this movie, that people are willing to go out and bring these ornaments out to some stray, lone, poor tree that needs to be decorated. It's taken on its own life. And I got a flashback now. This is going to the Charlie Brown Halloween of the running gag of them like looking at through their Halloween bags going, I got some chocolate. I have some cookies. I got a rock.

The things that stay with us. Craig, how pleased was he with the final result? And did the show become a staple in the Schultz household at Christmas? It's funny as I look back, I literally have zero recollection of watching that show as a child. I mean, I was 13 when it came out, but you know, I think back, you know,

we released the penis movie as a big Hollywood event. We had blimps flying overhead with a penis movie and thousands of people down there. You know, I think, I think the expectations from the executives at CBS had probably downplayed it in his mind, but I don't recall at all any kind of a viewing party for that come out. You know, we did watch it every year. I think his favorite and my favorite, and I think most people agree that their favorite show

was the Halloween special because of the vibrant colors. Yeah, the background. And then obviously, you know, Snoopy taken to the air was so spectacular there that that kind of links in everybody's mind as kind of the best one ever made, I think. I give you credit too, of the best one ever made, I think. I give you credit, too, seeing the movie. I mean, you said it was a risky venture from the beginning.

And kudos to you because you had to tell a new story, but you also had to include plenty of nostalgic moments. You have the ice skating scene that it opens with. There's a lot of Snoopy and Red Baron stuff. That must have been a difficult compromise. I have a new story to tell, I have new generations of fans to introduce to this, and yet I have to give a nod to the people of my generation who remember this that way. Yeah, without a doubt. That show actually from the beginning, the original concept of it at the end,

probably took me 10 years to get that done. And when you say, you know, was it risky for me, it was terrifying for me on numerous levels. Number one, the family had always said that we would never do a movie. We didn't ever want to take the risk of doing a bad movie. So in creating this thing, I had this scornful look of my brothers and sisters and family members

and Jeannie's family and everybody else So in creating this thing, I had this scornful look of my brothers and sisters and family members and Jeannie's family and everybody else, beyond the fact of the people at Fox and Blue Sky and everybody else. So it was very, very risky to do. We spent a lot of time, a lot of heart trying to get what we need to. And then again, you're dealing with the classic things

everybody wants to hear. They wanna hear the Geraldi music. They wanna see some people fly. Yeah, it was really a tough balance to get all that in there hear the Giraldi music. They want to see Snoopy fly. It was really a tough balance to get all that in there and still tell a new story. Well, you did a beautiful job. Yeah, it's beautiful and beautiful to look at. And I told you those, we talked on the phone, I told you those flying scenes, the flying a scenes are absolutely breathtaking.

It's like an amusement park ride. It takes you somewhere. Well, it doesn't for me, you know, the beginning sequence that we came up with where you're asking you literally go into the commerce trip you live in The commerce trip for the hour and 20 minutes and every time I remember the first couple times I screened at my home theater When when when they go from animation to my dad's hand drawing thing of the kids and then the script Schultz comes across the screen I would just be bawling in tears. It was so emotional. I can imagine I Can imagine I I can imagine. I want to ask too about the lifelong collaboration, not lifelong, but many years that Mendelson and Bill Melendez and your dad stayed together. Your dad couldn't imagine working with other people

and doing it differently. No, he, I mean, like I said, I still love Bill, you know, how unforgettable Bill was. Bill was someone you'll never forget. And my dad loved going down and hanging out with Bill in LA. And we would go out and shoot guns. And it's interesting because I remember when I went down,

I was, I don't know, 13, 14 years old and Bill said, Craig, today we go shoot. And he took me out and Bill had a collection. He had a collection of like over a thousand guns. He had guns from the Revolutionary War, Civil War, all these things. So we go out, we were shooting shotguns at clay pigeons and stuff. And Bill was a tremendous shot. He, I think he shot like 24 out of 25.

And then he took me and says, Greg, now we will go have root beer freezes. And I have never, ever forgotten that day going to get in a root beer freeze with Bill. And to this day, I still order root beer freeze. And every time I order one, I think of Bill. He's just something that somebody just stuck with me for a lifetime.

I miss him tremendously. Are you in that documentary that your dad made with Mendelsohn in 63? Yeah, I'm sitting there in the back of the station wagon with all the other kids. Okay. Yeah, the other interesting thing that I kind of, holding on to, I did not get to be the voice

in any of the shows, but of all the kids in the family and all the friends, I'm the only kid that never got his name in the comic strip. I don't know why. It wasn't like I'm that bad. What's that about? But I never got my name in there. And, yeah. And your father said that he thought

James Thurber was a great artist. Because he said like, you know, it's different that there are some cartoonists who are not great artists, but it just comes across the feeling of it. Yeah, I think cartooning changed. He grew up in the era of the big, elaborate cartoon strips where, you know, it was their drawing. Every panel was a huge

work of art. Terry and the pirates and the phantom. Yeah, all this is in then George Herriman. And then when he came around and he did his, you know, super simplistic strips, and like I said, we got in the 60s, like Chip said, all of a also he became the minimalist and everything disappeared and the perspectives changed and so forth. And from that day on, literally every cartoonist will say they owe a bit of congrats to my

dad because he influenced their commerce strips and the commerce strips have changed ever since. And again, there's some people I I knew Stephen Passes, for example, co-wrote a penis special with me. And he admits that he literally can't draw, you know, in Pearls Before Swine, he goes, I can't draw, but he has great little stories to tell.

So I think the cartoonist's news changed quite a bit. And I remember there was a comic strip that was a total satire on Dick Tracy, and I think was called Fearless Fosdick. Fearless Fosdick. Yes. Fearless Fosdick. Oh, very good, Gus.

Very good. And that was Al Cap and Little Abner. Very, very good. Our friend Mark Avenir said, I saw, I was watching a documentary, he said, Craig, he would have loved to have seen the looks on the faces of those CBS executives. Yeah. Such a great story. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast, but first a word from our sponsor. Chip, in getting into this, in getting access to the families, to the families,

to the library and the archives back in 2000 and doing these two wonderful books, and there's another new book coming out, tell us about that. Well, I mean, the new book is really just, it's an offshoot of the second book, Only What's Necessary. It was proposed to my friend Charlie Kochman at Abrams.

We love Charlie. Love him. Let's do a book of peanuts posters. And so we then got permission to do it in the style of the Only what's necessary book So I mean you have lots of classic stuff in there But then they let us do a poster based on the Viewmaster reels Wow Which I have to say like Craig your movie reminded me of the Viewmaster reels

Which is like to me the highest compliment what a nice thing which is like to me the highest compliment. What a nice thing. Yeah. I think Chip should speak to the fact of the strips he tracked down because you think, okay, 50 years of comic strips, Chip, he got them all in all the books. They were not easy to find. We had to find some really rare lost comic. I still know how you even did it. But can you speak to that? Yeah, a big part of that was my dear friend Chris Ware, cartoonist Chris Ware, and he managed to buy on eBay

in the, what, in the late 1990s, when that was still a new thing, somebody had collected the strip physically from the very beginning for about four or five years. And Chris bought this thing. And then when I told him I was working on this book, he lent it to me. And so all the like the tape marks and all that stuff that there was this person collected all of them from the beginning and where you would see like one of Charlie Brown's eyes would be missing

because the printer thought that it was like a blot in the, on the printing plate so they erased it. Yeah, just really, really fascinating. What were the biggest surprises, Chip? I mean, what was the biggest discovery? Well, he, For you. Schultz, I mean, there's so many,

but for like two Sundays in the mid 1950s, I'd have to look up the year, he experimented with Charlie Brown and Lucy in the mid 1950s, I'd have to look up the year, he experimented with Charlie Brown and Lucy going to a golf tournament, and Charlie Brown was gonna be Lucy's caddy, and she was the one that was gonna be the golfer competing, and it's the only strips where you actually see adults,

but you only see them from like the chest down. And I mean, it's fascinating just because it's so outside of the peanuts cannon. And he obviously, he tried it and just decided, no, this doesn't work. This doesn't work. The kids have to stay in their own world and we're not going to see the adults.

And they're certainly, and it is kind of like, I don't wanna say off-putting, it's just so odd to see them, there's like this forest of adults around them on this golf course. And they're, you know, sort of like this forest of adults around them on this golf course. And they're, you know, sort of like, you know, totally intimidated and out of their element with them. But there was there was so many things. Yeah, there were numerous, numerous things that kind of came and went and didn't work.

He would experiment with things. And again, in those days, as Chip knows, in 1950s, he was experimenting. He really didn't think the strip was going to last necessarily, because in the meantime, he had associates that lived on the property with us. And he was experimenting. He really didn't think the strip was going to last necessarily because in the meantime he had associates that lived on the property with us and he was creating other other Commerce ships at the same time. He had a teenage Commerce ship going and he was doing comic books And he had other other people working with him not on not on peanuts But you know with the possibility of penis doesn't go I got something else I can submit. I think Probably one of the most shocking things that I ever heard and I think this happened after my dad passed on as we were talking. And I think it was probably around the time that United Features Center sold the strip to another

company. And around 1972 or so, it was the renegotiation of my dad's contract. And that was a time when he could, he was trying to get the rights to the characters. So he's fighting the United Featured Syndicate and he's literally threatened. He said, well, what if I just quit drawing the comic strip? And they're and they're like, well, I don't know. And he kind of threw that a couple of times. Well, years, years later, I don't think my dad ever knew this. They had actually hired someone to draw peanuts.

And this guy had drawn like 80 comic strips and they were ready to go to the press with them if my dad had threatened to quit, you know, during the negotiation period. And they showed up and I remember they showed up and I read about, you know, I read quite a few of them actually and they were what you would expect, you know. I mean the drawings were simplistic, but when you looked at the content of it and the sophistication of the artwork, it was terrible. It had been a disaster. But they kept that from him. They never told him that they had subvertly gone behind his back and hired a cartoonist to draw his commonship. That would have thrown him over the top.

Yeah. Wow. You know, another thing Peanuts introduced me to, Chip, and you mentioned before, you mentioned absurdity. They introduced me to absurdity and surrealism. Sure, yeah. And in going through the strips in your book, I found one that I had not thought of in a million years, and it's Linus becoming aware of his tongue.

Oh my God. One of my absolute favorite Charlie Brown strips. Such an amazing concept and like and of course then you read that and then for the next two days you're trying to wash it out of your head because then you become aware of your tongue. It's just so great or the fact that Snoopy had a had a fine art collection. Right, my Van Gogh. My Van Gogh. Right, his Van Gogh. Or the strip where they're looking at the cloud formations.

Oh, yeah. It's another wonderful strip. I look back at it going through Chip's books and reconnecting with those old strips and realizing what an effect it had on me. And so many people who tried to make a living being funny. You know, I think not only cartoonists owe him a debt, Craig, but so many comedians, so many comedy writers,

so many humorists, you know, who learn timing from those strips. The timing of playing out a gag in four panels. And then he would play with the space, too. He would play with the boxes, you know, the penmanship, where you're smearing the ink and writing up along the side of the panel. He learned over time too,

to work with that canvas in creative ways. It's great to look at Chip's books and see that evolution. Well, I think the other fascinating thing is really that you think of, you know, the conversation of which we kind of associate as 1960s America, but you know, the content that goes into the strips and the human emotions that deal with those things has really been able to resonate worldwide.

It doesn't make any difference whether you're in Japan, China, South Korea, whatever. They all deal with the same thing, loss, love, humanity. And that's what makes it so timeless because those feelings of loss and such never go away no matter where you are in the world. Yeah, yeah, it's universal. Now I'm getting, it matter where you are in the world. Yeah, yeah, it's universal.

Now I'm getting, it's just got stuck in my mind, the comic strips. There was Mary Worth, Family Circus, Gasoline Alley, Dundee, and oh, oh, the girl reporter. Brenda Starr. Yeah, yeah. I'm just, oh, that's popping back in my head now. And Peanuts was always the first one I read

when I opened the newspaper. If I got a paper, if I was out of town and I got an out of town paper or something, or somebody introduced a new newspaper and there was no Peanuts in the comic section, I was crushed. What, you know, you said he had a difficult time with his own celebrity in a way, Craig,

but then this isn't maybe a naive question. How aware was he of the worldwide impact, the emotional impact that he was having on millions of readers? Because in the Cavett interview that I dug up, Cavett tells him, you've got several hundred people, several hundred million people reading this strip on a daily basis, and he says,

that's something best not thought of. Yeah. I don't know, when you hear him talk and the way he acted and so forth, it's like, I mean, he hadn't been aware of the impact You know, I think Lee talks about there's one day in the 1960s when you had X number of hundred million people reading the comic Strip, but there's a show on Broadway the TV special Was playing and there was a movie in the movie theaters when you totaled up all the number of views and all the penis content On that one day was like half the planet was watching something.

Yeah. But he was such a humble person. And I think he always knew that it could disappear at any moment. Fascinating. In your cartoon, it can be ripped right out of your hands at any second. So I think he appreciated what he got to do.

And it's funny, when I look back at it again, I look back at it and study it, you think that certain people land at a certain time in history. And if they landed 10 years either side of that, it might not have happened. Look at Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, my dad, you know, if that commonship would have come in, you know, 20 years earlier or 20 years later, you know, I don't know that would have sold, you know, so I think it's almost like a destiny thing that certain people are meant to do a certain thing at a certain time, and whether it be luck

or whatever you want to call it, it's pretty amazing. It's a lot to put on a man who really just wanted to draw a comic strip, but Chip, I think you'd agree with me that he's as important an artist in the 20th century as Walt Disney. He's as important a humorist as Mark Twain. Well absolutely no question and what I continually try to remind people is between Schultz and Disney, obviously Disney's a great figure, but after the first couple of years I mean

he was not drawing Mickey Mouse anymore. He was running an empire. And Schulz was a hand-on artist who hand-drew over 18,000 comic strips and wrote them. And he was a hands-on, you know, creator who made this universe literally that, you know, creator who made this universe literally, you know, it was his hands, paper, ink, and a pen. He made it all out of that. Disney had casts of thousands to do his bidding, and there's nothing wrong with that, but they're different.

Yeah, it's just. Yeah, I don't think you can compare them. No, I agree. Disney was an absolute visionary. The stuff he created, you go to his museum and see what he created as far as film and his vision and what he was gonna do. It's reminiscent more of Steve Jobs.

People look at Steve Jobs, what he did, but he didn't actually make all the pieces for those computers and all those different things. He found people to do them. He would've stuck his name on the thing. And he gets the credit for it all. But, you know, it's the same way Disney. Well, I want to read this passage, Chip,

that you closed the second book with, which I found beautiful. The contributions to American and world culture by Charles M. Schulz are happily incalculable. It's simply impossible to know how many lives he touched, smiles he brought, spirits he raised, hearts he uplifted, or artists he inspired. But we know that he did it all using only his mind, ink,

some pens, and 17,897 pieces of paper. He made all of that out of nothing. And out of nothing, he made everything. It's quite beautiful and quite accurate. Well, it's all true. That's the amazing thing. It's all true. I mean, you know, the simplicity of it and the more I peel away the layers of the onion, Craig, and I learn more about your dad that he just wanted to draw, he just wanted the daily discipline, he just thought that having a comic strip

was the greatest thing in the world. And all of these other things that happened, the fame and the merchandising and the television shows and the movies and the world that was created seems quite accidental. Yeah, I think to sum it up right, and that wasn't that important to him. Not that important to him, ironically.

It was during the former ship and stuff. But it did influence his life. Luckily, he was sort of an unknown celebrity for the most part. If he would go somewhere, it wasn't like a Hollywood star walking down the street where people would flock to you and ask you for your autograph and so forth. But invariably, I remember we were watching World Team Tennis with

Billie Jean King one time and he's sitting in the stands, you know, and you see eventually one person looks over and says, you can hear him whisper, I think that's Charles Schultz. And then somebody will be bold enough to come down with a piece of paper. And once he signed one autograph, of course, that was it. Yeah, it would ruin the whole tennis match. On the other hand, he could cash in. I mean, that's a funny story. He takes us over to England to watch Wimbledon. So I think the whole family flew over first class of Wimbledon.

We get on the grounds and everybody's getting ready to play. We go, Dad, where are the tickets? He goes, I don't have any. So we mean we don't have the tickets. We're at Wimbledon. John Macon is over there. And he goes, we'll just go to the players' lounge and stand by. So he set the players' lounge and all of a sudden Billie Jean comes by and he goes, oh Sparky,

come on upstairs. And he starts getting, she starts introducing everybody and in no time he's handed all these tickets to all the different matches and stuff and we're like in. And that's what, you know, his celebrity and his ability to draw on this, and once they get recognized, the world would open up for him. But he wasn't one to kind of push his celebrity on anybody. Yeah, it's fascinating in a way. There's a gentleman who listens to this show, Craig, named B.W. Radley.

He says he's from your hometown. Craig and his family have lived near my hometown for years. His dad and stepmother were neighbors of my ex-brother-in-law. He remembers, he has a memory, he wants to know if you remember this, of Peggy Fleming and the Vince Garaldi trio showing up at the ice rink.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Does that ring a bell? Yeah, we had Peggy, the ice rink opened in 1969. In the early 60s, the local ice arena had got condemned because of water damage. So my mom was sitting in bed with my dad one night and she says, you know, we need to give Santa Rosa kids an ice arena. And my dad agreed to do that.

And they built what became the Robert Empire ice arena. And in 1969, we had Peggy Fleming, who was the Olympic champion come in opening ceremonies. And we've still seen her to this day. She comes in and we'll see her every now and then. And Coraldi played and we've had Bill Cosby. We had Liberace. We've had, I mean, all the great entertainers

played at the ice arena. I'm reminded of Snoopy's crush on Peggy Fleming. Yeah, that's why. In the strip. It's funny you mentioned that. Whenever he wanted to meet a celebrity, in this video, Billion King, he would put their name in the in the strip. It's funny you mentioned that like whenever you wanted to meet a celebrity in this video billion king He would put their name in the comic strip and invariably would contact himself

There was somebody he wanted to meet slip the name in the comic strip and then he would wait for the phone call to come up That's great Gilbert you've got to steal that put somebody in your act you want to meet Craig what is what is life like for you now? You you're involved to tell us about your duties and your responsibilities with Creative Associates and you oversee a lot. You oversee the ice rink and many peanuts related projects in Santa Rosa.

Yes, sadly, my career was in aviation. Basically as a flight instructor, I had my own air taxi service and I flew my dad's private jet whenever he wanted to go somewhere whether it be business or golf or whatever else and you know my career ended when he passed in 2000 so then the family got together and we decided you know who was going to oversee this company and since I was the only one in Santa Rosa the rest of them lived out the area I would kind of oversee it and

pass on to them that that sort of stuff. So myself and Jeannie, dad's wife, we collaborated on the oversight for the thing. And as years went by, I did a lot of different penis projects for fundraisers, stuff around the community and trying to, keep it in the spotlight. And that's when the idea for the movie came up

and my son had just graduated from film school and he had sold a film to Spielberg and so forth. And I approached him with the idea and said, hey, what do you think of this idea for film? And he said, well, dad, you need to do this, this, this, this. I was a little off on it. So I said, would you want to collaborate? So him and his writing partner, Neil Luliano came up and I paid them for a month to sit down and try to create this story, which we did.

And then we approached Fox and sold it to them. And again, that was the intent of just trying to get peanuts out there, try to drive people to the strip and get them to read. And I think it did a lot of that. It really kind of reinvigorated in Japan. And Japan was always our biggest market. And there's a huge resurgence in Japan. And now it's starting to take over in China.

So I didn't want the comic strip to end up as nothing more than a simple t-shirt. And that's kind of the direction it was going. We just had something characters on t-shirts. And I was so disillusioned in that because my dad had written so many bits of genius in that comic strip over 50 years. And for people not to read that was just disheartening to me.

So whatever I can do to drive them back to the comic strip and get them to read it, that's my objective. That's a good one. Well, congratulations. I think seeing how much the movie made and how popular it was, I think you've achieved it. But you're doing other projects, like I'm reading about these things.

The Christmas Tree Grove and Peanuts on Parade and outdoor movie and Halloween events. You're organizing regular peanuts related events. I mean, obviously not in COVID, but when this thing finally lifts. My dad, he put on a probably what was kind of named the kind of the greatest ice show ever in the ice rink every Christmas. He would have some of the top Olympic athletes come and the top entertainers in ice skating. And we put on a show for like a month. Well after he died, you know, we kept hearing you know, when are you going to bring that

guy show? What do you make that guy show? Well, he had the budget to do the ice show. I don't have the budget to do the ice show. So my wife and I decided, why don't we give back to the community? Let's create these special events that are free to everybody in the community. So we had like on Halloween, we had, well, Lee came up and spoke. We set up a big screen outdoors and people would watch the Great Pumpkin on the big screen

outdoors. We had a trick or treat trail. And then we had a big Easter egg hunt during Easter. And we had a Valentine's celebration day and that's when people come with their dates and skate and talk and everything else and reinvigorate their love. So we did a lot of that for you know 10 or 15 years of the community and they were nice because you would see people literally people come down the street and they put their hands on the fence they're looking through the fence things what's going on you say well you can go in that's free

to go in and they go I gotta go home and tell my mom that and they run home and bring their parents down they would come in and sit down and watch the show. So it was nice to give back to the community. It's nice to keep all this alive. And tell us, I assume the Schulz Museum is not operating during COVID, but will reopen at some point. Yeah, it definitely will reopen at some point. It sadly has sort of shut down. They kind of limited the next number of people for a while, but just as of tomorrow night, we're shut down for another four weeks. So everything we open has to close. You know, the ice arena,

you know, we opened it back up and then it shut down. So we melted the ice. So we put the ice back up and now we've got to shut it down again. So that's been a very frustrating thing. People should read about the museum. They can go on the website and learn about it and learn about everything they can see there.

And as I say, when this chaos finally passes, people who love peanuts and love Schultz should go. The museum is absolutely beautiful. It's so well done. It's just the best. The thing is, I think what's interesting is you actually get to go and see the comic strips the way they were drawn.

Because when the reality of it is, and this is so disheartening to my dad compared to a regular artist or fine artist, a typical comic strip would be taken from its original size which is probably eight by eight in each panel, sent to the newspaper, printed on the cheapest quality newspaper you could ever come up with, shrunk down to one inch by one inch and the average person read it for like four seconds and then it ended up at the bottom of a birdcage. You know, if you're an artist, that's probably the most insulting thing you can ever do with a piece of art you've created. So when you go to the museum and you literally see

the art work he created, and you can see the pencil lines before he put the ink down in the full scope of it all, you really start to appreciate his ability to do these things. And again, I watched him for years and years and years. He used India ink. And I don't think I ever saw him splatter India ink the way Charlie Brown does when he's writing his letters out of all his letters.

I love that one. Yeah, it was amazing. And your father had feelings about how cartooning was never considered an art form, like when you went to a museum. Yeah, absolutely. He always kind of created, felt it was beneath him as far as comparing it to a true artist and so forth. I think he's changed that perception though.

Absolutely. I think perception is now. Absolutely. Absolutely. For him to be in the Louvre, number one, was the highlight of his career, I think that. I think the other highlight of his career is to take peanuts and put it in outer space.

You know, one point on the Apollo 10 mission, the mission before we landed on the moon, you know, there was a capsule called Snoopy and one called Charlie Brown. If you listen to the old tape, you know, it's like you hear them learn to say that. So when you think of NASA, and this is like just mind-blowing to me, think of NASA in the 1960s and they asked the astronauts, what do you want to call your capsule? And they could deal with, you know, biblical things, mythology, history, any number of thousands of terms you come up with, and they decide they want to call their capsule

a lunar lander, Snoopy and Charlie Brown, if that isn't like the highest honor you could ever get in your lifetime, I don't know what is. How wonderful. I think it undersells him in a way too, just to refer to him as a cartoonist, as I said before, one of the great humorists of our time. Oh, absolutely.

Of the 20th century. And authors. And authors. And authors and storytellers. Chip, and I hope both of these books, we had John to talk about the Batman books. Sadly, one of them was out of print. I'm gonna hope that both of your, that we're not a video podcast,

but the books are visible behind Chip on his shelf. I'm gonna hope that these books are still in print and still available. So let's by all means promote them. Well, yes. So the two latest Peanuts books, the one's called Only What's Necessary, the Art of Charles M. Schulz. Beautifully designed. And then the new one is the Peanuts poster book. And I'm actually going to be doing a virtual event

for the Schulz Museum next Thursday night. I believe it's either seven or 7.30 East Coast time. Okay. And that's gonna be regarding the poster book. And we're gonna have a visual component to that. We will promote that on our social media and get the word out. Yeah.

And mention to your collaborator, Jeff Spear, and again, the great Charlie Kochman. Yes. Yeah, these are books that should be read because you really get, if you're a fan, you really get the experience. Not only do you get these wonderfully nostalgic feelings about the old strips, but you really see the journey

of this artist and this storyteller over time. And as I said, it's also wonderful to see his confidence grow. Yes. And his hand gets stronger and more confident as he starts to come into his own as an artist, and maybe buoyed by success. Do you have a strip?

It's an impossible question, I know. But do you have a favorite strip? Well, all right. And then I'm gonna ask Craig the same question. So you get to think about it, Craig. All right, I have a sort of sound bite answer to this, but it's a very early strip from the 50s and it's just four know, it's just

four panels and it's Charlie Brown and Patty. And so in the first panel, Charlie Brown has bought a waste paper basket at the store. And you know, and Patty's like, what, what do you have there? Well, I bought a waste paper basket at the store. Oh, it's in a bag. So he takes out the waste paper basket from the bag and crumples up the bag and puts it in the waste basket. Great. And that's the final panel. Gee, it's handy to have a waste basket like that. And it's just and then Lily Toblin stole that in the final panel. Gee, it's handy to have a wastebasket like that.

And it's just, and then Lily Toblin stole that in the 60s as part of her routine. Or she either stole it or got the exact same concept. But she- Well, we'll steal from the best. But she tells the story. Like yesterday I went to the store and I bought a waste paper basket and they put it in a bag.

And when I got home, I put the bag in the waste paper basket. And it's just this bizarre commentary on consumerism. But again, it's like, Voschultz did it in 1951 or two. And it's just such a great idea and simple and, but like deep. It's crazy. I'm reminded of the movie Moonstruck

when Nicholas Cage tells Cher that he's in love with her and she slaps him and she says snap out of it. And I remember snap out of it from a peanut strip. Oh yeah. Lucy screaming snap out of it as part of her cure. As part of her cure for Charlie Brown's depression. His depression. The strip that stays with me,

and it's not necessarily a sentimental one, but I think it's one that sums up the Charlie Brown-Lucy relationship, and I think it's a Sunday strip, is when Charlie Brown is desperate to get the Josh LeBotnik treatment. Ha ha ha ha! Josh LeBotnik! You guys know this one?

And Lucy opens up one, he's been trying for months, he's been buying every trading card pack in the store, desperate to get, and anybody who ever collected trading cards, bubblegum cards like I did, knows the pain of this. He's dying to get Josh Lobotnik. Lucy opens up the one pack that she's ever bought. And there's Josh Lobotnik. You remember this one, Craig?

And he offers to trade every player that he has. It also, I love the strip too, because it reveals your dad's love of Major League Baseball. So he offers her a Jim Bunning and a Willie Mays and a Hank Aaron and a Pete Rose and it's panel after panel after panel and she doesn't wanna part with it because he's kinda cute.

Do you remember this? Oh yeah. And he tries every card, every offer, he exasperates himself and finally he just sulks out of the, slinks out of the last frame or the next to last frame, saying, my whole life I'd do anything for a Josh Lobotnik card. And he's out of the frame,

and Lucy in the last frame looks at the card, and she says, eh, he's not as cute as I thought he was, and tosses it in the trash. And that one sums it up for me. Yeah, we got Josh Lob Josel Ballnick kind of kind of tied in and one of our latest ones that's come out on Apple TV. Oh, you do? Good. Oh, that's great.

We reference him. That's great. Yeah. And I like it too, as I said, because your dad was a lifelong sports fan. And the details, his love of baseball, he names every star player in that strip. And it just, it uses the space. It uses up every frame in such a clever way. You know, I love how easily he adapted to the extra frames on Sunday.

Oh yeah. Well, you know, the first two panels were what they call the throwaway panels. So when you have the opening sequence where it had peanuts, and that was just for him to be able to play with the artwork in that panel and the one next to it, because he knew most newspapers didn't print those two panels, those were throwaways. And so the story almost had two stories in one, because one was just a quick gag,

and then the real story started on the next line down for the Sundays. Yeah, I think he would use all of those panels to drag out a drama. Chip, I'm also reminded of the one where Linus is pouring the cereal. Then he wants the cereal to be crunchy and the phone rings and it's Charlie Brown. Do you remember this one? Oh yeah.

And every frame is just Charlie Brown just going on and on and on. And finally, Linus is sweating, he's got flop sweat. And then the next to last panel, he screams into the phone, my cold cereal is getting soggy. And the last panel is just Charlie Brown holding the other end of the phone, that deadpan stare into space. So it was great the way he, over time, would figure out how to best use what

he had to work with. Yeah, it was groundbreaking. The other groundbreaking one was the one where Charlie Brown standing beneath the cutting tree. And that went on for like five or six dailies in a row of him just standing, but there was nothing more than that. I mean, that was a bold undertaking to do that, you know, without getting some kind of rebellion from the syndicate. But you ask about my favorite strip. Yeah. So I think this is, for me, this is what's interesting

because, again, growing up with the thing, you see it from a children's perspective. And in those days in the early 60s, 50s and 60s, I think most kids literally learned how to read by reading the comic strips in the newspaper or in the books. That's how I learned to read. As you grow older, and now they look back being an old adult, you can see that there, that the strip in most cases always had two perspectives. There's an adult perspective of it and there's a childhood perspective of it. And

there's simply just the love of the art. So this is a very simple strip. For me, this hits home really personal. It's Charlie Brown walks up to the barbershop, and he says, my dad likes to have me come down to the barbershop and wait for him. The next panel goes, no matter how busy he is, even if the shop is full of customers, he always stops to say hi to me.

Then he goes inside. I sit here on the bench until six o'clock when he's through, and then we ride home together. And it's gonna almost make me cry because I think about it, because the final lines, it really doesn't take much to make a dad happy. You know, now that I'm a father, you realize it's the simple things that are important in life.

And I look back on when I was a kid, and I didn't really appreciate what my dad was doing. But in the later years, I would go in, and he might have like five or six comic strips laid out on his desk. And I would look at them, and I'd kind of point to him. I said, oh, that one's funny. Now I really regret I didn't compliment him more

than I should have, because you don't realize how important it is when you're a father, that your kids recognize the things you accomplished in life. They just kind of assume you're there and you come and you go and so forth. And now for me, it's a retrospective thing that has hit home. And that strip really sums it up. How beautiful. I had forgotten that one. I remember that, yeah.

It's perfection. It's high art. And thanks for sharing that with us, Craig. No, glad to. All right, we wanna thank some people too. We wanna thank Melissa Mento, who's somewhere on here. She's listening and observing at Peanuts Worldwide and Craig Herman. And of course, our friend John Murray, who is engineering the show, our trusty audio producer,

who never lets us down. And we want to thank a man who we've mentioned several times, Charlie Kochman. And I want to mention my friend Mike Dobkins, who is the biggest Peanuts fan I know. And he is particularly a fan of that strip. You just talked about Craig That's a that's a beautiful one. By the way, I think them you familiar with the movie Rushmore What's Anderson's movie? Oh, yeah, I'm pretty sure the character the main character's father is a barber because of peanuts and Charlie Brown I'm pretty sure he is like like our friend Paul Feig. He's a big Peanuts fanatic. So it's just nice to see other things turning up in the

culture, you know, that have been inspired by this wonderful comic strip. So we thank you guys for doing this. And I'll say this even though the show's not gonna, we're not gonna put this up in time, but A Charlie Brown Christmas will air on Saturday night on PBS, there was an outcry because it wasn't gonna be on free television. So PBS, PBS Road to the Rescue, it's gonna be on December 13th, will air after that, but we'll do a big,

we'll do a big push of it to remind people on social media. I think people of my generation worship that show. Absolutely. I was born in 61. True work of art. Even putting the DVD in the other day, Craig, and that opening sequence where you just see the tracking shot across the ice and the snow falling

and the Geraldi music starts, it just, of course I'm nostalgic for it because it's something from my childhood, but it's Charlie, excuse me, Chip talked before about the quiet of it. The simple beauty of it. I could watch it a hundred times. So thanks guys.

Well, listen, thank you. And Craig, what an honor to be on here with you. It was good seeing you again, Chip. It's been a while. I think it was 2008 I saw you. Yeah. I gotta say this too, Craig. People should find The Peanuts movie. Absolutely. Don't have to search for it. It's available everywhere and it's beautifully done. And there are two love stories at the center of it with Snoopy's girlfriend and the little red-haired girl. Not giving too much away,

but it's really, really exquisitely made. Well, thank you. So congratulations to you and your son, Brian. And we forgot to thank Lindsay, who did the tech on Craig's end. I don't know if she's still there. She's there, my producer. There you go, Lindsay.

Craig's daughter, Lindsay, who's been great and a real pro, and it takes a village to make these shows, so we appreciate everybody. So tell us about your podcast that you've been doing for a while now. Yeah, it's called Middle Brow, and it's a contemporary art podcast that we set out to make an unpretentious podcast which seems a

little bit impossible but we do our best. Okay and where can people get it wherever podcasts are sold right? Anywhere you find your podcast. Okay ironically Gilbert and I set out to do a pretentious podcast. But neither one of us had the intelligence to carry it off. We didn't know what the word pretentious meant. We weren't totally sure. Thank you, Lindsay, for your help.

Thank you, John. We'll assemble all this. And thank you guys. Again, happy Christmas, happy New Year. Thanks for being a part of it. Thank you. Thank you for the shout out. All right.

Thank you. Thank you for the shout out. All right. Thank you guys. So this has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. And this has been a total tribute to Peanuts and its creator, Charles Schulz, with his son, Craig Schulz, and the world's expert on peanuts. Shit. I think that's overselling me a little bit. He's certainly one of them. He's certainly one of them. Thank you, gents.

This was a lot of fun. Shit. I'm sorry we lost Lee Mendelsohn last year because I wanted to do this for a number of years. We got you guys and thanks for being a part of this and making it special. And Merry Christmas to everybody. All right.

Well, listen, thank you so much. Bye-bye. Same to you.