On Screen

January 30 - February 5, 2021—3 The Greeneville Sun, Greeneville, TN The Greeneville Sun, Greeneville, TN January 30 - February 5, 2021 — 3 2 x 3.5" ad a) greene cnty farmers b) swango's 2 x 4" ad williams electric 2 x 1.5" ad ymca 2 x 1.5" ad doughty stevens 2 x 1.5" ad midway const. By George Dickie For those who have delighted in the adventures of the Peanuts gang over the decades, "The Snoopy Show" offers up pure red meat. Indeed, the half-hour series that pre - mieres Friday, Feb. 5, on Apple TV+, presents the further adventures of the care-free beagle made famous in late ani - mator Charles Schulz's 1950-2000 comic strip and subsequent TV specials, joined by his best friend Woodstock. Charlie Brown, Linus and Lucy and the rest of the crew serve as background characters here. Each episode consists of three seven- minute vignettes that are based on the iconic comic series and features the signa - ture animation style that has entertained audiences for more than seven decades. The objective, says executive producer Mark Evestaff, is to stay as true to Schulz's original creation as possible. "For a lot of the people working on the show, they're all fans first and all the artists are fans first, so the opportunity to give Snoopy his own series felt like the right thing to do," he explains. "And certainly there was enough material with Charles Schulz producing like almost 18,000 strips over the years. and a lot of our stories are mined from those strips specifically to create stories in the show. ... We really did go back to the strips and re - ally looking at the details of Schulz's poses and even of course lines from the strip, if we can use them and it still works, then absolutely. We tried to stay as close and faithful to that spirit." And part of that spirit lies in the dia- log — or lack thereof. As a dog and a bird, Snoopy and Woodstock don't speak human English so Evestaff and the team had to come up with ways to tell stories without the use of words. "It really was just more animation, more acting and then adding, of course, the odd vocalizations to what we do have and carried that through ...," Evestaff explains. "You throw enough artists at it, enough talented artists that have a pas - sion and bring that passion, we're able to tell these stories and it's really wonderful how that some of our best stories are almost without dialog at all through seven minutes and are some of our most heart-warming and our best friendship stories." In the end, this is a story of a friendship between two iconic characters with whom viewers have had a long relationship and Evestaff didn't want to betray that. "There's, of course, a lot of trepida- tion off the top — are we going to ruin Snoopy in all these things?" he admits. "But truthfully, I think if you pack it with enough of the right people and they bring enough of that passion and hard work, then the results sort of speak for themselves." Celebrity Scoop Celebrity Scoop The iconic beagle flies high in Apple's 'The Snoopy Show' Cover Story Cover Story By Jay Bobbin There's never a guarantee how long someone will have a televi- sion job, certainly not for 40 years. Then, there's Pat Sajak. The multiple Daytime Emmy winner was a Los Angeles weath - ercaster when series creator and executive producer Merv Griffin invited him to become the host of "Wheel of Fortune." As the game's weeknight version continues in syndication, Sajak and "letter turn - er" Vanna White also are presiding over the famous-player-driven "Ce- lebrity Wheel of Fortune" Thurs- days on ABC. "Part of that is just through lon- gevity, not to be too modest," Sajak reflects of his enduring popularity that "Wheel" has helped solidify. "If you put a well-trained Labrador Retriever on for 30 years, people would say, 'Hey. that's Rusty! I know him!' " Still, Sajak believes Checking in with Pat Sajak he has succeeded through recog- nizing that "the game is the star. Otherwise, you can wear out your welcome pretty quickly." A measure of how welcome Sajak remains was the response from "Wheel of Fortune" fans when he required emergency intestinal surgery in late 2019. Allowing that he's "a pretty private guy," he recalls that outpouring as "very nice. It was just one of those fluky things, I have no underlying health issues, and my life is back to total normal." Had the situation happened at a time when "Wheel" wasn't in pro - duction, Sajak notes, "it's possible no one even would have known about it ... but they had to tape those shows, because it was our biggest promotion of the year, a big sweepstakes that had to be done by a certain date. So, they had to make the announcement, and what a trouper for Vanna (to substitute as host)." Birthdate: Oct. 26, 1946 Birthplace: Chicago Current residences: Maryland and Los Angeles Marital status: Married; has two children, son Patrick and country-singer daughter Mag - gie On having gone to the "Wheel" studio while recover- ing from his 2019 surgery: "I dragged myself in for a couple of reasons. I wanted to assure the staff, because our produc - er was leaving after 25 years, and no one likes change ... and now, the host was in the hospital. I wanted to show them that I was OK and was going to be fine. I was not strong enough to host, but I got to stand backstage and and support my daughter (who filled in as guest letter turner). And by the way, she did a fabulous job." 921 W. 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