Dear Mr. Watterson
dearmrwatterson.com
Dear Mr. Watterson
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Re: Dear Mr. Watterson
#2In case you can't get through, here's the kickstarter link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fingerprintfilms/dear-mr...
Re: Dear Mr. Watterson
#3http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.d...
A documentary film about the impact of the best comic strip in the history of the universe: Calvin & Hobbes
Re: Dear Mr. Watterson
#4I'm very excited for this film.
Re: Dear Mr. Watterson
#5http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.d... A documentary film about the impact of the best comic strip in the history of the universe: Calvin & Hobbes
Thanks, I saw the .html in the URL and assumed the OP had a good ol' fashioned static site.
Here's the Vimeo channel for the documentary: http://vimeo.com/dearmrwatterson
Here's the synopsis:
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Calvin & Hobbes dominated the Sunday comics in thousands of newspapers for over 10 years, having a profound effect on millions of readers across the globe. When the strip’s creator, Bill Watterson, retired the strip on New Year’s Eve in 1995, devoted readers everywhere felt the void left by the departure of Calvin, Hobbes, and Watterson’s other cast of characters, and many fans would never find a satisfactory replacement.
It has now been more than a decade since the end of the Calvin & Hobbes era. Bill Watterson has kept an extremely low profile during this time, living a very private life outside of Cleveland, Ohio. Despite his quiet lifestyle, Mr. Watterson is remembered and appreciated daily by fans who still enjoy his amazing collection of work.
Mr. Watterson has inspired and influenced millions of people through Calvin & Hobbes. Newspaper readership and book sales can be tracked and recorded, but the human impact he has had and the value of his art are perhaps impossible to measure.
This film is not a quest to find Bill Watterson, or to invade his privacy. It is an exploration to discover why his 'simple' comic strip made such an impact on so many readers in the 80s and 90s, and why it still means so much to us today.
Re: Dear Mr. Watterson
#6I have this a permanent tab in my browser for when I need some downtime.
Re: Dear Mr. Watterson
#7I can't wait for this. I have fond memories of reading the Calvin & Hobbes strips as a kid. 20 years later I still find myself flipping through the anthologies and appreciating just how well written and imaginative the strips are.
Re: Dear Mr. Watterson
#8When Calvin & Hobbes shut down in 1995, Bill Watterson wrote a letter explaining why:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Watterson#End_of_Calvin_an...
His two stated reasons were the pressure of coming up with seven strips a week and a distaste for the tiny space newspapers gave him to work with:
" I believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic compromises."
Then, almost immediately after this happened, the web took off and solved both his problems. For years I waited for his announcement of his webcomic. But it never happened.
I guess he wasn't so eager after all.
Re: Dear Mr. Watterson
#9When Calvin & Hobbes shut down in 1995, Bill Watterson wrote a letter explaining why: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Watterson#End_of_Calvin_an... His two stated reasons were the pressure of coming up with seven strips a week and a distaste for the tiny space newspapers gave him to work with: " I believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. I am eager to work at a mor…
The page you link to gives the reason from an interview he did in 2010:
"This isn't as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of ten years, I'd said pretty much everything I had come there to say. It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, ten, or twenty years, the people now "grieving" for Calvin and Hobbes would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them. I think some of the reason Calvin and Hobbes still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it. I've never regretted stopping when I did."
You could read that as being about Calvin and Hobbes specifically but it feels to me that it's about cartooning in general.
It's understandable that someone who had achieved what he has achieved in the medium felt that there wasn't too much more to do and that it was time to try something else.
Re: Dear Mr. Watterson
#10When Calvin & Hobbes shut down in 1995, Bill Watterson wrote a letter explaining why: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Watterson#End_of_Calvin_an... His two stated reasons were the pressure of coming up with seven strips a week and a distaste for the tiny space newspapers gave him to work with: " I believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. I am eager to work at a mor…
Knowing so little about him (I think this documentary claims to have the first audio recording of him in 10 years), it's hard to know how he's viewed the Web age...it's possible that he, being someone who grew up and was inspired by Peanuts in newspapers, still believes that is the prime medium (that, and books), and may not feel compelled to produce for the web, especially if his success so far has allowed him to live the life that he wants, in privacy.
That said, it's so rare to see an artist quit out of artistic principle...and also, refuse to sellout. He's fiercely protective of his copyright...not because he's selling his own C&H merchandise, but because he doesn't want his characters to be watered down in the same way that Peanuts has been. I would love to have C&H t-shirts, dolls...but I have to say, about a decade later, the scarcity of C&H has made it even more sacred and beloved to me.