I'm Jean Schulz, and I'm excited to be back again on reddit to answer your questions. My husband created the PEANUTS comic strip, which started 64 years ago yesterday, and now I am participating in the PEANUTS redditgifts exchange. Ask away!

Hi Jean! As a guy (now into my early 20s) who grew up loving the peanuts, and I live in the St. Paul, MN area have a pretty basic question. Knowing your husband went to school here, (Central High School! Same as me! And yeah they love letting people know your husband was an alumni) I am just puzzled why the Charles M. Schulz Museum is in California instead of Minnesota. We had those statues that went up a while ago of all the characters and whatnot. We had Camp Snoopy (I miss this the most) and now we have Planet Snoopy at Valleyfair. I know I want to visit the museum one day but its all the way in California. So what gives? Why wasn't the museum put here in his home state?

P.S. I am excited for the peanuts movie and I obviously will be going as soon as it is in theaters!

Well, you know, I suppose it's a good question, why isn't it where he lived until he was in his late 20's. But the reason it is where it is is that was where Sparky lived and drew - the place where the museum actually is is where he lived and drew for the last 25 years of his life, and it's right next door to an ice arena that he and his first wife Joyce built in 1969 and it was like a second home to him, he played hockey, he refereed hockey games, he loved to watch his children skate there, so he was very attached to that little corner of Sonoma County. So that's why it's there.

Hi Jean--thanks for doing an AMA. While the 'final' Peanuts strip certainly serves as a fitting close to the strip (I have a framed copy in my house), was there ever any talk about giving 'closure' to any of the long-running gags (i.e. letting Charlie Brown legitimately kick the football, having Linus give Sally a peck on the cheek, letting Snoopy 'catch' the Red Baron, having Marcie call Peppermint Patty something other than "sir", etc.?)

Sparky used to answer that question about "poor Charlie Brown, why don't you ever let him kick the football?" or "Why don't you ever let us see the red-haired girl and let Charlie Brown dance with her?" (I think he dances with her in his dreams in an animated show) but the truth of the comic strip is that once all those running gags, if they were to be resolved, you have no more story there, and you can't use it anymore, same with all those other things - that is the nature of the comic strip is that it has un-resolved things. A novel mostly wants to wrap things up, a movie mostly wants to wrap things up, but a comic strip is a different animal. If you compare the comic strip and the animated specials, you will see that the animated specials take things a little further and have more resolution and more - if you want to call it - "satisfaction" to people because they are frustrated because Charlie Brown can never do this or that. But the animated shows tend to have more resolution, have more freedom, and I think that's because the comic strip is 4 seconds, once a day, and maybe a minute on weekends. It's not - the story may end, but then it picks up later and goes on, but the television specials have to have (like any other drama) a beginning, a middle and an end. So they have to start out with a problem, get to the peak of the problem and then have a resolution. But a comic strip doesn't have to work that way.

What's the best gift a fan ever gave you or your husband?

Well, you know, that's an interesting question, and I didn't know how to answer it - now I can't tell you the best gift a fan may have given Sparky. But one of the best gifts I ever received from a fan was a wonderful lady in Japan who sent me wonderful little shadowboxes of the characters, she hand-made the characters, and she sent me a number of them, she began when the museum opened, and I had them in my room , in my office at home, and i thought "Other people need to see these, these are too darn cute!" so I had our facilities man make a "peekaboo" box - so in one corner of the museum there is a pillar, and inside the pillar, going up about 7 or 8 feet with holes all along, you can peek in and see these shadowbox figures. And they are so sweet, the littlest one is 8 inches off the floor, the highest one you would need to lift a kid to see, but the reason that is such a special gift is that the whole WORLD that comes to the museum can see it. They are really, really beautiful. I have now finally begun emailing her, but in the beginning we were only writing letters - "Thank you for the beautiful gifts you sent" - but I was able to ask her if she would care if I put them on display, so I wanted her permission, so it's one of my favorite things. When we go in the museum, I always say "Oh, you have to come over here and look at my Peekaboo box! It's one of the best things in the museum!"

Greetings Jeannie, once again thank you very much for replying in the previous AMA session. It undoubtedly thrust the /r/peanuts community into life, unforgettably bringing the most genuinely nice and friendly people. Equally considerable was your confidence in asking a very challenging question, demonstrating admirably humble.

I'm ever increasingly excited about the Peanuts movie in 2015, do you know how finalised the dates are? For a little while the dates were set such that the UK would be the second to see it on October 14th 2015, two days after the Netherlands. Completely changed now, unfortunately it will be released some time later after the US. Have this idea mind to organise a meetup to see the premier, in /r/peanuts the idea of a midnight showing has been entertained.

Well, I'm really sorry that the first question is the hardest one! The truth is that I don't have any information about it, and I think the truth is that it is a bit of a moving target. The last that I think I heard was that it was - all I can say is in the last quarter of 2015! I think that it may be true that it will an international release before it opens here. However, I think these things are very fluid, so I don't know much more than that and I wouldn't count anything as set until we get much closer. Sorry 'bout that!

Hello Jean. I'm a huge Snoopy fan. I have had a Snoopy teddy with me all my life and love your husband's characters. My question is, if Snoopy could actually talk to Charlie Brown what do you think he would he say?

I think he would say "You're about the best owner a dog could have." And then he would probably lick his hand, hoping that it had peanut butter on it.

What did your husband want the legacy of Peanuts to be?

You know, I think that's really simple, because he always said "I can't worry about what this is going to mean years from now because i have no idea what the world is going to be like." But he said "If I have made people happy, that is what I would like on my tombstone." He made people happy.

Which Peanuts character do you relate to the most? Why did all the adults in Peanuts cartoons only say mwah mwah mwah mwah mwah?

Well, the PEANUTS "muwah" is the most clear-cut part - because there are no adults in the comic strip, then when they did the animation, they wanted to be true to the comic strip, they didn't want to have adults voices, so Bill Melendez (the animator of the television shows) just used a trumpet and with the silencer, you know, I think that's what he used or had someone else use for the "wah wah". That's very funny! We sell in the museum a little thing about 3 inches across that has the "wah wah" voice on it. And the funny thing about it is that it seems to serve - as the young people say nowadays "Whatever" when they don't want to be bothered answering - the "wah wah" sort of serves the same function! People, when they are tired of someone saying something, say "wah wah" to avoid saying something. I think it's dismissive - "wah wah" sort of dismissing what you're saying.

And which character do I associate with, and I just say Sally. And that's because (and I've said this before) though people may be tired of hearing it, because I used to call my husband Sparky "My sweet Babboo" - and so he took that and used it in the comic strips, so I guess I'm a little bit clueless like Sally too, sometimes.

Jean, my fiance and I are huge Peanuts fans, and while we realize there may be some issues with attending we'd love to send Snoopy, Charlie and the whole gang a wedding invite. Where would be the correct place to address it?

The correct place to send it would be:

Number One Snoopy Place Santa Rosa, CA 95404

And I thank you in advance.

Hello, Jean. Your husband was an idol of mine growing up and my mother got me started with my love of Snoopy and the Peanuts gang as a young child. I'm now 36 and that love hasn't faded. I was so thrilled to finally be able to visit the Schulz Museum a couple years ago while I was living in California... such a dream come true.

My question is kind of a silly one, but hopefully fun: If Snoopy could talk, what do you think he would say his biggest wish in life is?

Well, since you know Snoopy pretty well (this is the questioner), I would think that his biggest wish in life would be to have a full Supper Dish and maybe a pillow under his head.

How do you personally feel about the application of Fair Use to create derivative, non-commercial works using the art of Charles Schulz?

Well, I think that Fair Use is Fair - you can't stop people from using ideas, characters, relationships, and things that mean something to them. And it would be silly to try to! For example, Lucy kicking the football - editorial cartoonists use it all the time, and they usually say with apologize to Schulz- but that is fair use, and I think you have to do that. You couldn't possibly go around and find all the people who used a reference to PEANUTS in something - and some of them are very clever, and in general, they tend to reach, have a broader reach, so they are reaching different viewers, different listeners, so basically it's a fair enough legal position, I guess.

Hi, Jeannie, thank you for participation in this Q &A. Can you tell us if there are any plans to release 'Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown' & 'Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown' on blu-ray/dvd? Thank you.

You know, I don't know any plans, and it's terrible, because I have a distant relative in France who LOVES that movie. The rights to them are owned by - and now my mind is going blank... it's the company that we did them with originally... and they don't, I guess, have any interest in exploiting them? And i suppose from their point of view, it's too small a market, so they might sell 1,000 or 5,000 but in their world, you need to sell 10,000. I don't know. I can't think of the company that owns the rights to that, I'm sorry. So it's a shame, because I think they are fun, and even though the animation is old-fashioned, and people would say they are slow-moving compared to today, I still think there are people who would enjoy them.

is happiness really a warm puppy?

Probably! Hahaha! I'm down at K9 Companions because they have a graduation as soon as I'm off the phone, and when the little puppies come in here for 2 days to get their vaccinations and be shipped off to their foster homes, the people who will raise them, they are SO CUTE. And make you happy! You can't help laughing!

They are only in here for 2 days because they don't want them to get any diseases, they want to get them to their homes as soon as possible.

I did a - what do you call it when they have the camera on? - someone was whelping puppies and they set up a puppy cam so they could turn on the camera anytime to watch them, so I sat in this big puppy area and talked to people about K9 Companions and some things that were happening with the puppies and how we whelp them and some of the training that goes into early puppy days. But that was very cute, because you could see them - I don't know how often they do that. It was a very savvy board member who was also a caretaker.

Did the release of the Schulz and Peanuts biography in 2007 cause any backlash from fans due to some of the dark revelations about Charles M. Schulz's life?

D'you know, at first I think that many family members were distressed because it focused so much on Sparky's - what the author called his depression, and his gloominess. But I think that we probably found it gloomier, because I talked to other people who read it and they didn't come away from it all "doom & gloom," so maybe we were hyper-sensitive to it. So I don't think it caused a backlash - after we settled down ourselves, we realized that it wasn't that big a deal to people who read the entire book.

Hi Mrs. Schulz! Your husband and "Peanuts" are still an inspiration. I've always loved "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving." Could you please offer any thoughts as to what inspired the storylines?

Well sure! Basically, Sparky wasn't necessarily a big fan of Thanksgiving dinners - it was fine, I could remember doing one, cooking a Thanksgiving dinner we had so many people we had to sit in the garage, anyway, we had all the different traditional things, but he wasn't necessarily a big festive-things fan when we were together. One makes more of a fuss about holidays when kids are small. In any case, Sparky thought it was funny that for kids, the image is "We'll go to Grandma's house" and then first of all it was funny that Grandma's downsized to a condominium and she doesn't have room to everyone, and it was funny to him the idea of kids putting on their own dinner - of things that they liked and could make, like toast and popcorn and jelly beans. So when they conceived the television shows - the 3 principals, Bill Melendez, Sparky, and Lee Mendelson - they would talk about the things, so the elements I remember now is Grandma doesn't have a big house, they want to have their own dinner and what can kids do, and then there's a whole thing about Woodstock being a bird and that being what people eat on Thanksgiving and at least we're not eating him - so I think it was all that silliness.

Snoopy dancing on the piano and then getting embarrassed and slinking away. Amazing, right? Right.

I know! I think that you have the essence of the comic strip. We know Snoopy, we know that he's sort of - how would we describe his character? Snoopy just goes out, busts out and does what he wants, and "don't jump on the piano!" and then he realizes he shouldn't have done that! But all of it is expressed with out words, and it's because you know his character and you love his drawing. And Sparky would say "it is the drawing that makes this all funny."

Thank you for keeping the Peanuts brand true to itself. I'm happy I'll never live to see Snoopy with dreadlocks, a hipster beard or whatever the current trend is.

Was Sparky ever pressured to give in to such trends?

Well, Sparky actually did do trendy things if they appealed to his funny bone. And the dreadlocks are funny because I think that he did a drawing for one of the Williams sisters with not dreadlocks but those little braids, so Snoopy has those little braids that one of the Williams' sisters used to wear, and in the strip, of course, Joe Cool put on disguises of one sort or another, but he wasn't pressured to. He followed those trends - I remember he heard his teenage kids in the arena all talking , and they said "Oh that's groady to the max" and I think he threw that in the comic strip because he thought it was so funny and outrageous. But he wasn't pressured by other people, he did what he thought was funny.

What was your favorite comic of Peanuts ever published? Also, what was your favorite movie adaptation of Peanuts?

Well, my answer to the favorite comic strip: well how can you pick a favorite out of 17,000! Because i keep looking at new strips and finding them delicious for one reason or another. But I always say the one where Lucy says to Schroeder "How come you never give me flowers" and he says "Because I don't like you" and she says "The flowers wouldn't care." And i like that because it's enigmatic, you know!

I'm not exactly sure what that means, and maybe it means favorite animated show? And i sort of answered that.

What is your favorite Peanuts holiday special?

In some ways, I think - well, Christmas of course is so iconic, but in some ways, I like the Thanksgiving a lot, and favorite is hard to say, but I like it a lot because it was being worked on when Sparky and I were together, so I saw pieces of it coming together, and that's always fun, to feel like you were in on parts of it as the time. And I remember we went to Hollywood to see Bill Melendez's studio when Sparky and Bill talked about some of the elements finishing it up. And then I remember going to Hollywood for some sort of an opening. So that particular special stands out in my mind.

Last year, at the Museum, we had a PEANUTS Thanksgiving dinner, and we had stations with toast, and popcorn, and jelly beans, so all the things kids love that parents would never serve them, and it was very very funny, and I think we are going to do it again this year because it was so successful! This will be Saturday, November 15, from 1-4 pm in the afternoon so kids can come in and eat all this unhealthy food and MAYBE watch the movie, I'm not sure, and then we have crafts and other things to go on. So we've made it just a fun thing for the kids to come into.

That sounds fantastic! The Christmas and Thanksgiving specials are my favorites too. Thank you so much for answering my question, I am and always will be a huge PEANUTS fan - beagle hugs! :)

Oh, thank you!

Do you own a dog that looks like Snoopy?

No! As a matter of fact, sadly, my last dog died a few years ago and I'm not home very much, so I'm not a good pet owner. Pet owners should be home to take care of their pets, that's what Sparky would say. I toy with the idea of taking a very small pet that i could drag around with me, but even that wouldn't be a very nice owner. I think dogs are better if you pay attention to them, and Snoopy's pretty demanding.

Hi Jean, I have a simple question: what was it like to be married to him? Like, what was he like as a person?

Well, I want to say he was very complimentary, which is very sweet if you're a woman. I suppose men like compliments too, I'm sure, so I'm not sure why I said that. He was very simple, I always said his favorite dinner was tuna casserole, but he liked potato chips on top, crumbled potato chips. Maybe it's a Midwest thing? Anyways - he was very simple, he was pretty much a homebody, he was happy at home, I dragged him places, and I suppose he had a good time when he got there, but he would have been just as happy at home. He loved being at home with his dog. And I think the fact that he was mostly involved, probably all the time when he wasn't sleeping, he was involved with those little characters, meant that he didn't have a lot of time for other things. So if I wanted to do something, it was ok with him. So he was pretty simple. A simple answer to your simple question.

Jean, What is the most unique, clever, or quite simply your favorite bit of Peanuts memorabilia that you ever saw?

I have to say that Karen Johnson, our museum director, in her office, has a Snoopy telephone with a rotary dial, and it's not - I mean a lot of them were made, but you don't see them anymore, and somehow, picking up that phone which is Snoopy's hand and putting it to your ear - we have one that works - is just kind of funny. So I don't know how unique it is in the pantheon of memorabilia, but it's funny and useful too, so that makes me smile every time I see it. And I get to use it once in a while if I'm not making a long distance call!

Hi Jean, do you think the musuem will ever do a world tour? I know it sounds a bit odd and difficult but... It would be amazing. (I'm in the UK by the way. also very excited for the movie)

Well, well I don't know we would do a world tour, but we are certainly open to taking exhibitions to other countries! Last year, this time last year, we had an exhibition in Japan that lasted from maybe the 10th or 11th of October through the New Year, so it was there for a good 2.5 months. And it was in a marvelous museum, I'm sure information on it is still around on whatever, but it has 13,000 square feet of exhibition space available, and I told people this was the most complete viewing of what was in our museum at one time, because in our museum we only have 8,000 feet of exhibition space. So there are certain things we can't have up at the same time. SO we always hope we will have the opportunity to do it in another city in the world, but a world tour wouldn't work because every venue would be different and want something different for its own cultural biases or whatever, but we are certainly open. They are expensive to mount, because just the framing and packing and shipping and insurance and all of that in addition to whatever it costs a museum to mount an exhibition - but we will, I know we will, over the years, as time goes on it will happen, it just takes the right set of circumstances which happened in Tokyo last year. The Tokyo exhibition was called "Ever and Never" and I don't know if you can find it online because i don't look for things on the internet.

Hi Mrs. Schulz, thanks for doing this.

How much are you or your family involved in the creative side of the new Peanuts movie? Making sure it stays true to the Peanuts 'ethos' as it were. We all grew up loving the strip, and are really hoping the movie stays true to the quality your husband gave it.

Well, Sparky's son Craig is credited as the writer on this - he's actually writing this, collaboratively I suppose, with his son Bryan who's about 30 I suppose, and Bryan's writing partner, Cornelius Uliano. And I think that the process - as I said in my last answers - that did Sparky worry about he didn't want them to do animated specials? The answer is no, because he recognized that animations, any movie, you have to give and take because you are not the sole creator of it, and I think the same sort of answer is going to be true for this movie, that there are I don't know how many animators working on it, and yes there's a director but there is also FOX Animated Division that also needs to weigh in, so it's a combined effort and of course their primary concern is to keep it true to the PEANUTS character's lives and what they represent to other people. But they have to have some elbow room to move beyond the squares of the comic strip. So people who watch any of the shows have to recognize that we're not in the comic strip.

One of the things nobody has asked about, but i recently went to NY for Snoopy & Belle in Fashion, which was an exhibition of 24 pairs of Snoopy and Belle dolls that were dressed by 24 fashion designers. And this is one of - someone asked back an hour ago, what's some new things that might be happening? And I didn't think of it at the time, but this is one of the new promotions or outreaches that PEANUTS is doing, and these fashion dolls will probably travel also to other venues around the world.

http://www.vogue.com/946343/snoopy-belle-designer-dolls-new-museum/ https://twitter.com/belleprgirl

And then as far as the movie, I personally am looking forward to the movie because I think the characters will just be the same lovable characters and I'm anxious to have people fall in love with them over again!

Hi Jean, I purposely just created a reddit account for this because I am a life-long Peanuts fan! I remember hearing that Sparky didn't one anyone to continue the strip once it ended. Where his views different for continuing animated specials and movies?

That's right, they were. His view with the strip was "this is MY work. I think about it, I draw it, I feel it." The animated specials he always knew were a joint entertainment, 3 people conceived them, 25 people animated them or however many, so he understood that television was a totally different thing. It was based on his work but not his work.

what's your favorite kind of soup?

Probably lentil! Is this another Rorschach test?

What underwater creature are you most afraid of?

Oh, I suppose sharks! I mean, I don't thinK I would ever get anywhere near sharks, although I was scuba-diving in Australia on the Great Barrier Reef and our guide went into a cave and scared out some little sharks, but they were tiny little reef sharks, and he said they don't hurt anybody. But I actually don't like touching sea slugs. But I can tough them when I'm scuba-diving with my gloves on, so I don't like squishy things. I don't dive anymore, and went abalone diving a few times, and there the kelp can be disastrous, but I don't do that anymore.

The Simpsons recently signed a syndication deal with FXX that included streaming for all episodes online. South Park also signed a deal to provide all episodes to Hulu for online streaming (they previously had all episodes available on their own website).

Are there any plans to release all the Peanuts movies, TV specials, and episodes through a streaming service, such as Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, or something similar?

You know, I can't answer that because I don't know about any offers being made to do that. So I can't answer, sorry.

I know that Schulz's son, Craig, is involved in writing the script for the new 2015 Peanuts movie. After reading rumors about the Little Red Haired Girl and Genevieve being involved in the plot, will the movie pull more ideas from the animated shows or the comic strip?

I think that, in the way that the animated shows expanded on the comic strip, this movie will expand on the basic ideas seated in the comic strip, but the questioner is right that it will pull on animated action and it will stretch the boundaries of the comic strip the way the animated shows did. I don't know that they are taking anything from the animated shows in particular, because it's different than the comic strip, because almost all the elements in the animated shows came from the comic strip, they just expanded them from beyond what the comic strip could do, so the same could be said of this. So you are on the right track, but I think it would be to the strip as the animated shows were to the strip, except that it's longer.

Hi Jean, I assume there will be a marketing and sales campaign around the 2015 film to introduce new fans to the 60+ years of Peanuts. Are there any exciting ideas in the works that you can speak of that involves promoting the Peanuts brand, both new content related to the movie, and the old strips, books, TV specials, and memorabilia we all love?

I have a marketing person sitting on my left, she may be able to tell you! No, I can't tell you how much people talk about marketing, and it's also difficult to say how little it interests me. Because I do believe that we all, all of us in the family who love PEANUTS and loved Sparky's work, all want people to know and understand and love the characters and the comic strip, and so we have a lot of books coming out (because we do feel we haven't had a lot of books coming out for young people), we are doing some gaming things, of course Fox will do PR around the movie, and who knows what that will be, but everybody wants to - how can we make the most out of this movie, and transfer it into marketing for other things? But that's not my field, nothing that gets me excited, I guess. I love the Museum, I love people coming in, I love to describe to them what i think is the depth of things that Sparky put in the comic-strip, and that's really my strong point.

Of all the animated features and specials, did any one in particular have a place in your husbands and your heart? i ask because they helped me watching them once as an adult during some trying and difficult times

Well, I think that's very interesting, and the explanation that they helped, yeah! I think they do, and I think reading the comic strips is medicine, if you will, for people, because it takes us back to simple things that are true to all people. And the animated shows - I have the comic strip, I think, probably helped Sparky. Being creative is probably a way out of your depression and your sadness, so I think creating these things, not any one especially, but being able to be creative and having the wonderful gift of being able to create these shows and have them be on television was medicine. It was like medicine. So I that just doing what he did got him through any times when he was low and feeling bad.

What is your favorite shape to draw?

You know, I'm not an artist at all, so I think - you know how you draw a star, you learn that when you're young, and then I draw lines out from it, and then I draw circles around it, sort of scalloped edged circles - I doodle. But I don't draw. I'm just fiddling around. You know, I sort of feel as if that might be somebody's Rorschach test, depending on your answer they characterize you!

Where do you get your ideas from?

Now I'm not sure - I think you might be asking "Where did Sparky get his ideas from?" and the answers to both of them are probably similar. I mean, ideas are everywhere, you run into them every day, you think ideas all the time when you see something or hear somebody say something, and then mostly people roll those around in their minds, and if it's something that captures your attention, and then you use it later - that was true with Sparky. He saw things and heard things, and then once he said "I had to wait 25 years before I could figure out how to use that idea in the comic strip." So I think that -and I'm sure that's true for everybody - they say your mind is even working when you're sleeping, so thank heavens!