STACK NZ APril 2016 Issue 72

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C harles M. Schulz’s beloved strips
featuring Charlie Brown, Woodstock,
Lucy, Linus and friends total almost
18,000 over a period just shy of 50 years, and have
been adapted numerous times for film and TV.
The latest big screen version comes from Blue
Sky’s Steve Martino (Horton Hears a Who! and
Ice Age: Continental Drift), who has combined
his longtime love of the Peanuts characters with
his experience in animated features.
“I grew up with these characters. I started
reading the comic strip before I could read,” he
says. “My dad and I used to share a love of the
comics and he used to read them to me.
“I’ll tell you, when I first started I thought,
‘wow’, what an honour to work these with
characters.”
While Martino had the passion and expertise
required for The Peanuts Movie, he did face
considerable pressure from friends and family to
not “screw it up”.
“That kind of pressure is a very good
motivator,” he notes. “Certainly it’s what was
in our tank for myself and the rest of the team
at Blue Sky. We wanted to do our very best to
uphold the tradition of what Peanuts has been
for us in our lives.”
To properly honour Schulz’s legacy, Martino
and his team undertook a tremendous amount
of research.
“We had access to every comic strip. We
were looking at the art, the writing, every aspect
of what Charles Schulz created, with a level of
detail now that I never had looked at before. I felt
as though we needed to do that to deliver a film
that felt right within the world of Peanuts.”
Bringing the gang to life also involved close
collaboration with Schulz’s family and members
of his team, and the director feels he gained a lot
of friends in the process.
“It was that really good kind of working
relationship where we would challenge each
other along the way,” he says.
Martino describes working with Craig and
Bryan Schulz – Charles’s son and grandson,
respectively – as a great honour.
“Craig and Brian in particular have a real
tremendous understanding of their father’s
written word and the cadence and rhythm of that
kind of dialogue – they provided a connection to
the source material. That was so valuable for us
in the making of this movie.”
Anyone who has seen a Peanuts strip will
recognise the unique artistic style that has since
become iconic. From Pig-Pen’s omnipresent
overlapping scrawl to Snoopy reclining atop his
kennel, Martino didn’t miss a beat when it came
to translating Schultz’s signature images into
animation.
“We went to great pains to draw our
inspiration for the movie from the comic strip,”
observes the director.
“I did look at the animation styling that Bill
Melendez developed on the specials, but
everything about the writing of the film, so much
of what we did in posing and designing the look
of the world and posing the characters, for me it
came from looking at the comic strip. That was
my guide.
“Even though we’re using computer
animation, I believe that we can create an
experience that would be rich
and detailed and worthy of a
feature film presentation,”
he adds. “I told everybody
on the team I want to find
Charles Schultz’s... pen line in
everything that we do.”
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10 APRIL 2016
DVD
&
BD
DVD&BD FEATURE
We went to great pains to
draw our inspiration for the
movie from the comic strip
• Snoopy and
Charlie Brown:
The Peanuts
Movie
is out April 6
You’re a good man, Steve Martino
Blue Sky's Steve Martino upholds the legacy of Charles M. Schulz’s long-running comic strip
phenomenon in the new film adaptation Snoopy and Charlie Brown: The Peanuts Movie. By Alesha Kolbe
GARFIELD
Born in 1978, Jim Davis’s fat feline
became the world’s most syndicated comic
strip. The 2004
film version proved
less successful,
however, even with
Bill Murray voicing
the CGI cat.
THE PHANTOM
Lee Falk’s costumed crime-fighter, aka
The Ghost Who Walks, first appeared in
1936. 60 years later an
awful film adaptation
starring Billy Zane
came and went,
but the strip is still
running.
DICKTRACY
Chester Gould’s lantern-jawed detective
debuted in 1931 and is still read today,
in a world where
smartwatches are
now a reality. Warren
Beatty brought him to
life in a not bad 1990
live-action version.
DENNISTHE MENACE
Hank Ketcham’s mischievous moppet has
been playing up since 1951.
His big screen debut
came in 1993, with
Mason Gamble as
Dennis, and Walter
Matthau as neighbour
nemesis Mr. Wilson.
FROM STRIP TO SCREEN