A Charlie Brown Christmas

"I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I'm not happy. I like sending cards and getting presents and decorating trees and all that, but I'm still not happy. I always end up being depressed." Best opening lines ever.

"I've killed it. UUgggh! Everything I touch gets ruined!"
Schulz was fucking brilliant
You need involvement!
I could collect five cents from every person posting on this thread to tell them what is wrong with them and have enough for a trip to get away from the Schultz-infested holidays.
Okay, any gay man who likes A Charlie Brown Christmas is an honorary Frau! Sorry! You can't have it both ways.
The music on Charlie Brown's tv specials is fantastic
"Lights, please."
"Linus & Lucy"
http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DJgoPl35n_AY
Vince%20Guaraldi%20Trio
Why do you say that, r5? Charlie Brown's 'outsider' status is something that many gay kids identified with. Fifty years after it debuted, it is still the least cheerful of all Christmas TV specials. It isn't even a bright cartoon - the skies are heavy and dark. It's permeated with melancholy. And even at the end, Lucy manages one more backhanded insult: "Charlie Brown is a blockhead - but he did get a nice tree!"
Christmas Queen
The Peanuts cartoons were surprisingly intelligent, philosophical, and literate. I loved them growing up. I identified mostly with Linus but also to some extent with Charlie Brown. I eagerly anticipated the holiday specials and loved every second of them.
Favorite line from the special: "Boy are you stupid Charlie Brown"
Charlie Brown, you're the only person I know who can take a wonderful season like Christmas and turn it into a problem. Maybe Lucy's right. Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you're the Charlie Browniest.
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The Vince Guaraldi score must be one of the best ever done for a cartoon. Sheer perfection.
Hey ya, Charlie Brown!
http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D-sKrwsHweGc
R11, that's Violet who says that line. She's such a bitch; she also says to Charlie "I didn't send you a Christmas Card Charlie Brown!" Gunt. Also eagerly await Shermy's one line of the year ("Every year it's the same. I always end up playing a shepheard.") (Note to Shermy: maybe next year you can play Cybyl Shepherd.)
Love the dancing muppet twins
You're an absolute mess. Just look at yourself.
Frieda%2C%20Queen%20of%20the%20Plastics
I love that they used actual kid's voices. It makes it that much more charming.
The dancing twins
I always wanted to step off Charlie Brown's back porch and walk to town by all those yards with no fences.
r15: Those twins are "3" and "4", sisters of "5". "5" is a rare character in the strip, but "3" and "4" appeared for only a handful of strips in the early '60s. A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS is the only animated special where they appear.
The Christmas Queen
Peppermint Patty was the first cartoon character I thought might be gay as a child before I fully understood what that meant.
I identified with Schroeder, the tortured guy who wanted to concentrate on what he cared about without being bothered by the unwanted and crude mass of humanity.
Vince Guaraldi was a genius. "Linus and Lucy" suited the characters of those two Peanuts characters perfectly. I must have heard that song hundreds of times and I never get tired of hearing it.
Charlie: Rats! Nobody sent me a Christmas card today. I know nobody likes me. Why do we have to have a holiday season to emphasize it? Charlie: Thanks for the Christmas card you sent me Violet. Violet: I didn’t send you a Christmas card! Charlie: Don’t you know sarcasm when you hear it?
I never realized how dark and adult all of the cartoons that I loved as a child really were.
Do they still air Warner Bros. cartoons?
Lucy: You DO think I'm beautiful, don't you, Charlie Brown?... You didn't answer me right away. You had to think about it first, didn't you? If you really had thought I was beautiful, you would've spoken right up. I know when I've been insulted. I KNOW WHEN I'VE BEEN INSULTED. Best Christmas show!
R26, that sounds like all the boyfriends I've ever had. I like pretty, shallow twinks.
Me too, r22. Lee Mendelsohn had first considered Dave Brubeck or Cal Tjader before settling on Guaraldi.
"Lee Mendelsohn had first considered Dave Brubeck" I guess Brubeck was a day early and a dollar short.
'Snoopy, you'll have to be all the animals in the play.' I love that part, Snoopy us just hilarious.
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[quote]I know nobody likes me. Why do we have to have a holiday season to emphasize it? r23 That's the most poignant line in the entire special.
[quote]Fifty years after it debuted, it is still the least cheerful of all Christmas TV specials. It isn't even a bright cartoon - the skies are heavy and dark. It's permeated with melancholy. Its closest contender is THE LITTLE DRUMMER BOY, made in 1968 by Rankin & Bass (the people who made Rudolph.) It seems likely that R&B were taking a cue from Charlie Brown when they conceived this sad, brooding and overtly religious tale. Airing annually on NBC well into the 70s, it was about an embittered orphan boy who loses his faith in humanity until he arrives by chance at the Nativity. To judge by the responses on imdb.com, I was not alone in finding it grim and even horrifying when the Little Drummer Boy's parents are murdered and their house burned down with graphic animation and real fire. I swear they used to show a flying knife entering his father's belly, but the "restored" version only shows an extreme close-up of the father's face as he is stabbed by thieves. This was obviously meant to be a prestige project. In addition to the talents of Jose Ferrer and the Vienna Boys' Choir, it was narrated in grand fashion by "Miss Greer Garson as Our Story Teller." My sisters and I would imitate her piss elegant voice bidding the viewers farewell, "This is G'dee-ah Gahhson wishing you a veddy MEDDY Ch'distmas!"
I say this every morning to my foot. Replace "Linus" with "foot" and that's my speech as I wake up.
[quote]I know nobody likes me. Why do we have to have a holiday season to emphasize it? I've related to this line all of my life. Loved the Vince Guaraldi music--even when I was a kid I knew that having such sophisticated music on a cartoon was really out of the ordinary and great.
Here is Charlie Brown celebrating Kwanzaa
http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DB2wbEpIKFFc
I always found that Marcy chick to be a sexy little panty-dropper.
Peppermint%20Patty
Those kids were assholes to Charlie Brown. Like borderline abusive stuff. I'm surprised he didn't pull a Columbine on them.
The kids' voices were so interesting too. Just compare it to the later Charlie Brown specials and those kids just sound like.....well, like ordinary kids. But there was something cool and different about almost all the voices in the Christmas special, especially Charlie, Linus, Sally, and even Pigpen. "On the contrary, I didn't think I looked that good."
Next time there is a really cold, grey day, or at night, turn out the lights, look out the window, and listen to "My Little Drum". The most hauntingly beautiful Christmas tune.
Vince G. was a friend of my dad's. Apparently he was well-respected in the jazz community. But I just knew him as my dad's friend.
When studio execs saw the finished product of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" they figured they had a bomb on their hands. They didn't like that it didn't have a laugh track. They didn't like that the voices were done by actual children instead of adult voice actors. They didn't like the "religious" theme. They didn't like Vince Guaraldi's jazz score! They didn't like anything about it and figured it would end up being a tax write-off. Which goes to show you what idiots tv executives are.
I fear that as the 47% grows, our precious white Christmases will become more brown.
Rev.%20Pat%20Robertson
Now, when I think of 'A Charlie Brown Christmas', I will picture the 'aftermath' of that traitor Charlie Christ being taken from behind...his holiday tree.
Sean%20Hannity
Charlie felt like such a loser. But dear God what a bunch of freaks and weirdos he was surround with. Linus was fine, but Lucy was a mega-cunt. Violet wasn't much better. (I bet she grew up and changed her name to Victoria Grayson.) Sally was on her way given that Lucy and Violet were her role models. Pig Pen's family was either so poor they couldn't afford hot water or they just didn't believe in hygenie. Schroeder was a closet case. Shermie was boring and indifferent. Fredricka only cared about her 'naturally' curly red hair. Snoopy? As Charlie said himself: "Man's best friend?"
Grow up, people. It's a cartoon.
[quote] I know nobody likes me. Why do we have to have a holiday season to emphasize it? [quote] I've related to this line all of my life. MARY!
What%20a%20bunch%20of%20losers
R45? Hisssss!
The Hissing Eldergay (THE)
It only took 45 posts for the young faggots to arrive!
I don't get the love for this movie either R45. I've tried to watch it twice, but truth be told I get pretty bored and end up watching something else. The animation just doesn't do it for me, and that one song is catchy, but enough to go gaga over this cartoon?
[quote]Fredricka only cared about her 'naturally' curly red hair. Fredricka? The character's name is Frieda.
R48 = elderly piece of shit.
I'm watching it on tv right now. It wouldn't seem like Christmas without watching it.
Everytime I watch this is brings flashbacks. I had the record of it, and would listen to it over and over in my room.
R21 thinks she's special.
The printing of the credits at the end of the show remind me of the booklets of Christmas carols we used to get for free at the bank.
I wish there was a version without the jesus bullshit.
Is Chuck so unhappy because he is closeted?
My father slapped the shit out of me when I cried during The Little Drummer Boy. True story: I told that to someone I dated and after they broke up with me, they sent me a VHS copy of it to watch. You know that asshole must post here. Thankfully, I have no bad memories of A Charlie Brown Christmas and just love the heck out of that thing. I even have the 2' version of the ugly tree he picks out and have it on display in my office. I love when people get the joke of the tree bending over due to the weight of just one ornament.
I never understood why Lucy was such a bitch to Charlie Brown...HE IS NOT A BLOCKHEAD!
The dancing is probably the best part of the show. And, whatever happened to the twins?
Graphic Blandishment.
Yeah%20bitches%20you%20know%20what%20I%27m%20talking%20about.
R50, I sit corrected.
Freida
The story opens with Charlie Brown bitching about how he has no friends. Linus tries to console him that he's not alone, but Charlie Brown is so wrapped up loving his misery that he ignores Linus's advice that he's not the only one. "No one likes me," becomes the theme of the story Lucy decides that befriending Charlie Brown, a man so caught up in his own ego that he demands all his friends call him by BOTH first and last names, is worthless so she offers him some advice at a nominal price. Thus establishing that while she cares about him, he isn't going to be friend material until he gets his act together. Lucy going above her duty then gets Charlie Brown a job directing the Christmas play. Lucy details the jobs requirements. However, the passive-aggressive Charlie Brown goes into the play and demands everyone do EXACTLY what he says, ignoring all pleas and consensus, stating he is director so he not only deserves respect but assumes dictatorial powers. While this is going on, Snoopy happily decorates his house. Thus, he expresses his outward joy and inspires people to feel happiness, by seeing how he decorated his doghouse. Charlie Brown sees this and instead of feeling joy, seethes with anger, at the fact that no matter how hard he tries, he isn't as creative as Snoopy and thus his own house; if he tried to decorate it wouldn't be as pretty. Thus he again misunderstands Christmas isn't a competition. The kids ask Charlie Brown to get a tree. They are all being supportive of Charlie Brown, who is still rejoicing in his self induced crisis of misery, by telling him EXACTLY what to do and what kind of tree to get. Linus sensing Charlie Brown may not follow direction, he goes with him. Once again, Charlie Brown says to Linus he doesn't care one hoot about anyone in the world but himself, and he'll get whatever Goddamn tree he pleases. Of course, the kids are very disappointed that Charlie Brown failed at such a simple task. Several suggesting medication or other electroshock. But Charlie Brown is all "boo-hoo, poor me, no one likes me." Instead of seeing all his problems as a direct result of his masochistic neurosis, he blames not himself but Christmas itself, for his misery. As if the mere holiday caused him to do whatever he wanted and not listen to anyone, then complain when they were unhappy. Therefore, after blaming everyone from the neighborhood kids, to Santa, to Madison Avenue, Linus tells him what Christmas is about. Linus reads a passage about how Jesus was born and concludes by saying "That's what Christmas is all about." Thus telling the TV audience that unless you are Christian Christmas doesn't apply to you. In other words out of the 7.5 billion people in the world the 5.5 billion people who AREN'T Christians don't count. Finally, the neighborhood children sick of Charlie Brown simply decide to make the best of Charlie Brown's bad choice and of course, Charlie Brown decides to steal the decorations of Snoopy's doghouse for the tree he bought.
This is an allegory of the subject of intolerance. Charlie Brown represents Christianity. Charlie Brown is intolerant of any other viewpoint of his own. Even though to see others reasonable views would bring him acceptance into the clique of neighborhood children, he demands other submit to his own views, even when other views don't detract from his viewpoint but merely add to it. This show is cute but offensive for the way it glorifies the treatment of Charlie Brown who is clearly mentally disturbed. Although we have a problem of overmedicating children, Charlie Brown's passive-aggressive behaviour is intolerable. In all I feel the message is good intolerance but it's so subtle many won't get it.