Drew Turney
Animator and director Steve Martino had risen through the ranks on ”Robots” and the ”Ice Age” movies before he was handed his first directing gig in 2008’s ”Horton Hears a Who”, which did pretty well for studio 20th Century Fox and their go-to animation house, Blue Sky Studios.
He went on to helm the last ”Ice Age” movie, Continental Drift, and then got the gig animators across Hollywood were either terrified or thrilled about when producer Paul Feig tapped him for the big screen version of Peanuts.
It was something of a mystery about whether the 65 year old comic strip would have any traction among the crucial demographics – especially as they’re all on their way back to school in most of the big movie markets of the world – but early reviews and box office seems to be placing Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the gang among hallowed turf occupied by Jack Sparrow, Minions and Buzz & Woody.
Martino spoke to Moviehole.net in LA.
How did the idea of doing a Peanuts movie start?
For me it was three years ago when Craig [Schulz, son of peanuts creator Charles M Schulz, who passed away in 2000] and I had this power lunch in Hollywood right near the Schulz Museum.
It started with a very small group of us and then it was Jeanie Schulz [wife of Charles] who opened my eyes in a bigger way to the work Charles had created and to the history they have at the museum.
I came back and shared with my family and friends that we were going to be making a Peanuts movie and between everyone the response was almost exactly the same; ‘I love Peanuts’.
They’d all share a story about Snoopy or the comic strip of the TV special and there was great enthusiasm and it always ended with the same kind of response ‘That’s great, I can’t wait to see a new movie with the characters… don’t screw it up.’
I looked at the picture of Charlie Brown going ‘good grief’ but I never felt that way, I was honoured to work with these characters. I love Peanuts, I was 7 when the Christmas specials were on TV, it was a big part of my life growing up.
I grew up in the Midwest and I thought those characters and that life was reflective of the life I was living so I’m a fan first and foremost.
Talk about collaborating with the Schulz’s and the Museum to get the project underway.
I was joined by close to 400 people at Blue Sky studios on the journey and what I found from day one is that there were 400 more fans as well. They shouldered this responsibility and as we began the process I’d say the first year a lot of the motivation was driven out of fear, responsibility and knowing we were going to share our work with a lot of people around the world who were fans of Peanuts. We wanted to do it right.
We had lots of tours of the Schultz Museum and we bought all our artists, designers and animators and everybody who was out there was looking at this work through the filter of the work they’d do on the film.
We did a lot of our meetings at the museum at Santa Rosa and it was a challenging start. We do a lot of our storyboarding these days digitally on tablets so we still have ‘undo’ commands when you make a drawing that’s not so good.
We sat there and were drawing on pencil and paper and looking down on us were collections of the best drawings of each of the characters in the film and it was almost like they were looking down and laughing at us as we tried to draw them the first time.
Obviously the blessing of the Schulz family was pivotal.
Jeanie and Craig made a trip to Blue Sky Studios and one of the greatest moments for me was very early in the production when Craig got up in front of the entire staff at Blue Sky and said ‘my father’s friends and people who collaborated with him referred to him as “Sparky”. That’s his nickname. I want you as you’re working on this film to call my Dad Sparky too’.
That was a really powerful thing, it was an opening of his arms and welcoming us to collaborate together and that kicked off our work.
The folks at the museum provided so much material. We have an exhibition in our gallery that’s been up for the entire run of the film, wonderful reproductions of the comic strips, so every time we had a question we’d go into the gallery and look at drawings.
