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ALPINE — You probably wouldn't need to check the street number to know you'd arrived at the home of Amy Schulz Johnson. The large stone statue of Charlie Brown out front speaks for itself.
Johnson grew up with a famous father: the late Charles Schulz, creator of Charlie Brown, Snoopy and all the other characters in the "Peanuts" comic strip. As a child, she didn't really understand what her dad did.
"My dad worked at home, in a studio," she said. "We would just go visit him and walk in, in the middle of what he was doing, and he'd just put his pen down and start talking to us. He never said, 'Well, just a minute,' or 'Let me finish drawing this Snoopy.'"
Johnson grew up and came to have a better grasp of what her dad's job was. She remembers him as a man who constantly fought for control on behalf of the characters he created.
"Dad was pretty stubborn," Johnson said. "Sometimes he would send things in, and New York was 'Oh, you can't do that, and he'd say 'Well, I'll quit then,' and they're like, 'No, no no no, don't quit.'"
Johnson says her dad controlled every single aspect of his creations from beginning to end, which was a little unusual in the world of comic strips.
"People would usually buy ideas, or maybe get ideas from other people," she said. "They may have someone letter the strips for them, so he was the only one that drew, lettered and thought of all 18,000 strips by himself."
Johnson has especially strong memories of the television special "A Charlie Brown Christmas." She says her father refused to allow anyone else to change his vision, despite objections from the network about the Biblical quotes, and nearly everything else about the cartoon.
"They didn't like the children's voices, they didn't like the scripture, they didn't like the jazz music, they didn't like that there wasn't a laugh track, they didn't like anything about it," Johnson said. "They said, 'We'll play this one time. This is a disaster. We're not ever playing this again.' And it's played more than anything."
Upon Schulz's death in 2000, his family continued to fight to protect what he'd created. But they also wanted to introduce the "Peanuts" characters to a new generation of children, and the obvious answer was a movie, but Johnson says it had to be done right. She says the idea came from her brother, Craig Schulz, and his son Bryan.
"Offered it to Fox, and said, 'If you want it, then we have to have all the creative control,'" Johnson said.
In the same way her dad once did, Johnson's brother and nephew insisted that the only way the movie would happen is if they had the final say on all creative decisions. But for Craig and Bryan Schulz, who wrote the newly-released "The Peanuts Movie" and served as producers, maintaining Charles Schulz's vision wasn't easy; Johnson says Charlie Brown and Snoopy don't exactly fit in with a lot of modern movies.
"When you go to most movies, you get what they call the 'bathroom humor,' and just crude jokes or innuendos, and they struggled for three years of trying to do that, because that's what's normal," Johnson said. "So the people working under the producers and directors, they're younger people, maybe didn't grow up with Peanuts, so that's what's normal for funny, but not for 'Peanuts.'"
Johnson says her nephew Bryan was especially passionate about maintaining the integrity of the characters her grandfather created.
"People were trying to put things in, and it was literally down to certain words," Johnson said. "Not necessarily a bad word, just a word, and he would say 'No, if that word hasn't been said in the comic strip, it's not going in the movie.' So he would look through hundreds of books, trying to see, 'Did that character ever say that word?'"
Johnson recently attended the movie's big premiere in Los Angeles and saw what her brother and nephew accomplished.
"It was amazing," Johnson said. "I could not believe how perfectly it was done. I feel like somehow, my dad drew all those things. The foundation of this movie is my brother's personal gift to my dad."
Johnson hopes people don't just walk away entertained, but are left with one of her dad's biggest messages.
"I don't see Charlie Brown as unlucky," said Johnson. "The part you've got to see about Charlie Brown is that he never gives up. That's the most important point."
Contributing: Deannie Wimmer
Ray Boone is a photojournalist for KSL-TV. Contact him at rboone@ksl.com
