“Dear Mr. Watterson” is a documentary directed by Joel Allen Schroeder which is a love letter to Bill Watterson’s beloved comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes". Schroeder, who was a kid when the comic debuted in 1985, has been a fan of the comic for as long as he can remember. When he undertook the process of making his documentary “Dear Mr. Watterson,” it was a chance for him to revisit what he loved so much about the comics in the first place. While his love of the comic inspired the making of the film, spending so much time with the comic, only deepened his appreciation, Schroeder said. The brilliance of "Calvin and Hobbes" he realized was simply the “perfect storm” of an artist and a writer and a time.
Schroeder spoke with dozens of fans and fellow cartoonists who were inspired by Watterson. He felt the most interesting interviews he conducted over the course of filming may have been with fellow influential comic creators Berkeley Breathed, of Bloom County and Stephen Pastis, of Pearls Before Swine. Breathed was particularly compelling, Shroeder said, because he was “very willing and very honest and a straight shooter about things,” because he offered a perspective different from many other cartoonists, and because he carried out a correspondence by mail with Watterson in the ‘80s, where they would both write, and draw cartoons for one another. Pastis, Schoreder felt, had a particular nuanced take on Watterson’s famous refusal to license his characters due to Pastis’s unique background of both writing his own comic strip and being an attorney.
The film is a testament to the everlasting power of "Calvin and Hobbes" and how ten years of strips, a relatively short span by major comic standards (Peanuts, for example, lasted 50 years), had such a wide impact on so many people’s lives, both at the time and today. The sheer strength of the emotional connections people had and continues to have with "Calvin and Hobbes"surprised and cheered Schroeder. Fans talked about how the comic helped them smile in difficult times. They recalled not just their love of the comic itself, but memories associated with their reading it. They “can remember that their grandmother used to send them and cut them out and send them because you didn’t have 'Calvin and Hobbes' in your paper,” Schroeder said.
I asked Schroeder if he was content with the ten years, or if he wished that Watterson had continued to churn out comics for at least a couple of years more. He said that he was more than content and grateful for all the ten years of brilliance that Watterson gave us. Schroeder argued that it was better to have ten consistently wonderful years rather than a potentially watered down or repetitive comic, and that ten years’ worth of strips constituted the perfect amount for the brilliant three volume compendium "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes". His biggest point though was that that relatively limited quantity both reinforced the specialness of the strip and ensured that we didn’t take it for granted.
The film ends with a discussion about the fact that against all odds, "Calvin and Hobbes" is still being discovered by youngsters almost twenty years after the strip left newspapers. Simple quality plays a large part undoubtedly, and an X-factor which makes people who read it in the past or present instantly want to pass it on to others.” It’s something that you have no hesitation sharing with someone else,” Schoeber said. Additionally, though, "Calvin and Hobbes" additionally though has a timelessness that’s not necessarily as present in other comics like Bloom County or Dunesberry that were truly products of their era. “You don’t have to be knowledgable about what was going on from 1985 and 1995” noted Schroeder, “You just have to have had a childhood and have an imagination.”
Read our review of "Dear Mr. Watterson" here: https://stagebuddy.com/film-tv/review-dear-mr-watterson/
