Bob Andelman, aka Mr. Media, makes a comment on one of my posts about Monte Schulz, at this link. Andelman has posted an audio interview with David Michaelis, the author of the controversial book Schulz and Peanuts.
I’m going to do something I don’t normally do, and that’s hotlink to Mr. Andelman’s MP3 file. I think he should give streaming audio a try, and this is my way of nudging him in that direction. I would also suggest editing the properties of the MP3 files to include an artist and title, so the player could display something like “Mr. Media” and “David Michaelis Interview.” First, the David Michaelis interview…
[audio:http://www.andelman.com/mrmedia-pod/MM-DavidMichaelis101707.mp3]I recommend listening to what Michaelis has to say, but as I’ve said before, while reading the book I’ve come around to an understanding what Monte and his sisters Amy and Jill are getting at in their criticism of Michaelis’ analysis of Charles M. Schulz as a man and as a father.
I’m very pleased to see that Andelman has also posted an interview with none other than Joe Sinnott, who I saw in New York a week ago. Thanks very much for this, Bob!
[audio:http://www.andelman.com/mrmedia-pod/MM-JoeSinnott071007.mp3]
And thanks, Monte, during the Shokus Net Radio program for answering my question about the 1800-page first draft. It was more of the same?? YIKES! The example from it you read on the show was pure psycho-babble!
In one interview, your father talked about something that only an artistically-inclined person would do. He explained that while talking to somebody he would notice how their shirt collar was folded over. This is so true! As my drawing instructor in college said when teaching the class how to be more observant, “You LOOK, but you do not SEE!”
As a cartoonist your father wasn’t a realist, but his development of a totally convincing abstract visual shorthand took a great deal of ability and practice, so of course he would notice details like the folds in clothing, just as he would admire the legendary cinematography of Gregg Toland in Citizen Kane.
Thank you, Monte, for answering my unasked question. As Doug has noted, it seemed obvious to me that Charles Schulz would be far more interested in Citizen Kane’s visual aspects as opposed to an obsession with the storyline. The opening sequence of the American Masters show, which used the opening scenes of Citizen Kane, really solidified this viewpoint. The camera angles, the closeups, the lighting, the storytelling, the composition of the frames – these are still riveting and visually exciting. I could then understand why Charles Schulz, as a young artist, would be so entranced with the film. As Doug mentions above, the effect on comic book artists at the time has been well documented. Many artists went to see it daily during the initial run in the early Forties. The film can easily be seen multiple times, each time revealing something new.
It seems odd to me that both the book and the documentary missed this entirely. They focus instead on the story of Rosebud and Charles Foster Kane’s loss of his mother, in order to explain Charles Schulz’s “obsession” with the movie. All of the visual elements are on full display during that opening sequence — and yet they fail to see it. Watching a movie forty times over a period of nearly sixty years does not mean that you must be searching for something that was lost. It could simply mean that you enjoy the visual innovations, the creative storytelling and the top notch acting which have made Citizen Kane the acknowledged “Greatest American Film of All Time”!
http://connect.afi.com/site/PageServer?pagename=micro_100landing
From taking to Dad over the years about Citizen Kane, apparently what really interested him was what made the movie so famous over the years, and that was the innovative cinematography. I never heard him say a lot about Rosebud or even the newspaper element (which, of course, he would have in common), but he did call that movie the best ever made, and he really did mean artistically, more than thematically.
I was waiting for my buddy Dennis, who has some things he wants to say here, as he did here, but while I’m waiting I’ll make a couple of points.
Michaelis went to Princeton — not Harvard, but Ivy League — and his saying that he was chatting with the Kennedy kids and they gave him the idea for the book, is indeed a twist that would be a curious story on the book circuit. I would hope that members of the Kennedy clan would want to steer Michaelis away from their family and towards Charles Schulz and his family simply because they’re fans of “Peanuts.” Their role in the genesis of “Schulz and Peanuts” is certainly nothing that Michaelis has said anywhere that I’ve heard or read, and if I’ve missed anything, it isn’t very much.
Your comments have been completely consistent, Monte, and plenty fair to Michaelis. Your efforts to correct wrong impressions are certainly justified. For example, just this past week one of the guys at work commented that he’d read a review of the book, and what he came away with is that Charles Schulz was a cold, troubled and depressed man. AAUGH!!!
Michaelis says the first draft of the book was 1800 pages! Which begs the question of whether those other 1200 pages offer a different portrayal of Charles Schulz? He doesn’t seem to offer that as a defense, yet Michaelis does use the word “distortion” in reference to the book as a full telling of Sparky’s life. These comments can be heard in the interview starting at 30:00.
One more comment about the alleged obsession with Citizen Kane — which is playing on Turner Classic Movies as I write this! — was suggested by my friend Dennis. It’s well known that MANY cartoonists of that generation loved the movie and watched it many times. To that I would add that “Citizen Kane” is about newspapers, and obviously newspapers were of great interest to Charles Schulz.
I want to add one thing about the Michaelis story and the Kennedy kids. I thought it was really interesting, as was David himself in the years we spoke as he was writing the biography. We shared many personal things regarding our lives that I would never speak about publicly, and I am grateful for having known him, and had him as a friend. My comments regarding David only concern the book he wrote, and not him as a person. Really, as I’ve criticized him for pretending to know more about my father than he did, or could have known, I cannot be so hypocritical as to claim to know more about David as a person than I do. I’ve said this before, but the biggest disappointment in all of this to me really is that I truly to believe David was capable of writing a far greater biography that he actually did. And telling the Kennedy kids story would be part of that. It was fascinating.
Yes, that’s true. There is no Rosebud in Dad’s life. He loved and missed his mother and that brief time of his life drawing and living above the barbershop, and that was that. He did, however, live in the present happily, even as he missed the past, as do many of us. And he brought joy to those close to him, and gave us many smiles.
By the way, while writing the biography, David always referred to Dad as “Schulz,” even in conversations with me. Never having met my dad, he felt uncomfortable calling him “Sparky.” Of course, it’s also odd that he would feel so comfortable with his analysis of Dad.
Incidentally, I do believe that David never tells the “Kennedy kids” version of how he came to write the book because he feels it would make himself appear too snooty. Don’t you agree? Better to create a more generic backstory about reading an obit.
I was taken aback at the outset by Michaelis saying he meets Sparky in his dreams, and they’re on a first name basis; although he then said that in person he would have called him Mr. Schulz, and overall it does seem that Michaelis has softened his position somewhat.
Over at Cartoon Brew, Douglas A. Puthoff comments that the thread reminds him of Citizen Kane. But in the movie there was a missing piece — Rosebud — that was out in plain view, but nobody picked up on it. In the life of Charles M. Schulz’s life, it’s my sense that the only missing pieces are the ones that Michaelis left out of his book.
What I like most about Bob’s interview with David is this part right here:
David: “I am hoping, as all writers do, that the book itself is read and is read as carefully as the blogs and the stories about the book, because I think that in some ways this whole debate misses the point of why biography, which is to understand Charles Schulz as Schulz understood himself, not as his children understood him or as the world understood him but as he saw his life.”
Because this shows us that perhaps he has, indeed, been reading the posts we’ve put up here and at other sites around the internet, and he’s hoping to get readers to accept his own viewpoint as being of equal validity to that of our family’s and Dad’s closest friends. And, of course, it should not be. And if he wants us to understand Dad through his own words, then we ought to take David’s advice, and skip his book, preferring instead to read interviews or Dad’s own short essays in the several books about the strip. So, thanks, David, for the advice.
One thing I haven’t written about yet, mostly because it seems to skip my mind, is responding to why David claims he wrote the book. In most interviews, he says something to the effect that he saw Dad’s obituary and thought about how ironic it was that Dad died the night before his strip ended and what a unique place Dad had in American culture. Fair enough. Sort of a generic explanation, but plenty reasonable, right? Well, the story David told me on a couple of occasions what that he was sitting in the Library of Congress (I believe, but could be wrong on the location) with the Kennedy kids, talking about his next biography which was supposed to be about Joe Kennedy, and they told him, no, that’s been done to death, David, you ought to write about Charles M. Schulz, a great story and a unique life. And though David’s editor at Knopf still hoped and argued for a biography of Joe Kennedy, David left to write about Schulz, and the rest is, as they say, history. In retrospect, I suppose I wish he’d stayed at Knopf.