PBS' American Masters the Life of Charles Schulz: Good Ol' Charles Schulz

PBS' American Masters, The Life of Charles Schulz: Good Ol' Charles Schulz was a show that could do no wrong in this viewer's eyes. It's what I've come to expect with most everything PBS' award-winning American Masters series covers. Whether it's been Charlie Parker, Norman Mailer, or Charlie Chaplin, PBS' American Masters series always delivers high-quality programming in covering our most outstanding cultural artists. Again, The Life of Charles Schulz: Good Ol' Charles Schulz was no exception. The film biography brilliantly, succinctly, yet thoroughly, delves into the iconic Schulz's life from beginning to end.

Sparky, that's what his mother called him, and wound up sticking with him throughout the remainder of his life, described himself as "a nobody, an uncomplicated man with ordinary interests." And as the chronicle of his life worked its way out, he lived from 1922 to 2000, paradoxically it didn't always seem so. How else could a man so simple and ordinary manage to have his very last comic strip Peanuts run the same day in the newspapers as the day he dies? Yet, therein lied the answer to what he knew and professed of himself his entire life. He never worked ahead of himself, i.e, he never sought to create a few weeks worth of the Peanuts strip ahead of time that he might have time off from working everyday. He was quoted as saying, (paraphrasing) "I don't work at something so that I can get away from it someday. I work at something so that I can do it everyday." His work on the comic strip was his life-long love.