The Peanuts gang is alive and well and battling a golf course in their latest AppleTV+ special, “Snoopy Presents: One-of-a-Kind Marcie” streaming Friday.
As charming, insightful and entertaining as this world Charles Schulz created over 70 years ago, the Peanuts landscape wouldn’t be complete without some reflection on behavior, identity and self-acceptance.
Marcie, we can now see in this special, says director Raymond S. Persi, as more than a sidekick. “We’ve always known her as Peppermint Patty’s sidekick. Someone who’s always there to help Peppermint Patty in whatever she’s doing.
“So in this special we get a chance to focus on Marcie and see her mindset. We dive a little deeper into that aspect of Marcie, the person who really, really wants to help out and do good things in the world. But who isn’t looking for the spotlight.”
Because, as the film repeatedly emphasizes, she’s an introvert.
“Marcie kind of has to offset everybody’s character. In this she has to offset Peppermint Patty’s crazy, athletic personality,” said Craig Schulz, Charles Schulz’s 70-year-old son and guardian of the Peanuts legacy in a joint Zoom interview.
“For me, she represents 99% of us in the world who are there in the background to support somebody else and put in all the hard work and get very little credit.”
A Peanuts special takes two full years’ production to deliver and each one is emphatically about something without ever being preachy.
“With my son we set out four years ago writing these stories that really have relevance to today’s world. We touched upon subjects like the environment, teachers, Mother’s Day and now we touch upon being an introvert,” Schulz said. “Or being what we refer to as a hidden figure doing all the work behind the scenes. And that’s where the inspirations come from: We like to tell the stories that explain what my dad did in the comic strip.”
Charles Schulz’s Peanuts legacy is both cherished and burnished. “We’re coming up on the 75th anniversary in 2025, so, yes, it definitely has legs,” Craig noted. “It’s because we all can relate to one or more of the characters that are all within us. We’ve been through their struggles. We all have a piece of Charlie Brown –and that’s because we all lose way more than we win. And that’s something that is universal.
“For myself and my son Bryan our number one goal is to preserve the legacy of what’s been created and not let it go off the rails.
“What I mean by that is we lock the characters into the 1960s and ‘70s. We don’t let them have cell phones and iPads. We don’t let him use rude words. My dad never swore one word in his life — as hard as that is to believe. But he never did and he said, ‘There’s always room for innocence in this world.’
“That’s been our mantra: We keep the innocence. We keep it pure. We keep it to what he created.”
“Snoopy Presents: One-of-a-Kind Marcie” streams Friday on Apple TV+