Pee-Wee as Himself

This will be my third substantial post on the late Paul Reubens a.k.a. Pee-Wee Herman (1952-2023). I was among the many for whom Reubens was a professional hero. That guy had a LOT of vaudeville in him. My first post, from back in 2013, consisted of a rather vague conjuring of old memories of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.The second one, penned just a few months before he died, was an appreciation of Reubens’ overall career, with Pee-Wee’s Playhouse as the centerpiece. Matt Wolf’s new two-part HBO documentary Pee-Wee as Himself contains so much new information that a third one is more than warranted.

The title is interesting to me. Oughtn’t it to be called more properly Paul Reubens as Himself? As you’ve undoubtedly heard, he talks openly and at length about his gay identity for the first time here. But it’s more than that — we’re also seeing Paul Reubens the human being for the first time, as well. We’re not just hearing about his love life, we’re hearing everything about him, expressed in his real voice. There have been the tiniest of glimpses of this in the past, but this is a lot. It’s every bit as earth shattering as hearing Harpo speak. Much of this I was already acquainted with, but only as words on a page. Photographs and film footage make a huge difference.

Reubens’ background had a lot in common with Andy Kaufman’s: a privileged, indulged upbringing by Jewish parents, initially in the suburbs of New York (Kaufman was in Great Neck, Long Island, Reubens was in Peekskill, Westchester County, before the family moved to Florida). Both were obsessed with children’s television and kitsch and reflected it in their work (Kaufman even starred in that TV special Uncle Andy’s Funhouse). Both hid themselves behind characters to an obsessive degree. Kaufman died just before Reubens attained national fame, but I’m assuming their paths crossed more than once in the L.A. comedy scene. It seems likely that Kaufman influenced Reubens at least a little by pioneering such an unconventional career path.

Which is not to lowball either a) the relatively unprecedented number of similar performance-art style “alternative” comedians coming up in the ’70s and ’80s, or b) Reubens’ innate originality, which was prodigious. In the film he talks about growing up near Ringling’s winter quarters in Sarasota, and his teenage participation in local theatre, followed by his stint at CalArts, where his fellow students included Katie Sagal of Married with Children, Futurama, Sons of Anarchy and The Connors, and David Hasselhoff of Knight Rider and Baywatch. There is copious footage of the youthful long-haired Reubens performing with dead seriousness in self-conscious art projects in the early ’70s. During this brief of flowering, he was essentially out as gay, pretty much as a natural extension of his flamboyance as a human. He liked to don costumes and perform. There are plenty of images of him in drag, and with those big soulful, eyelash batting eyes, he made a pretty gorgeous chick. In the film he talks about being influenced by the likes of Andy Warhol and John Waters, and his desire to join a splinter group of The Cockettes.

One of the film’s more moving revelations concerns what is apparently the one serious romantic relationship Reubens had in his entire life, a young black painter named Guy with whom Reubens cohabitated for a time. He speaks with some regret about his decision to break off the relationship to focus on his career, after finding that he was losing his drive as his impulses gave way to domesticity. This was also an era (the 1970s) when there very few out gay people in public life. He decided not to take the risk. A few years later, his former lover died of AIDS.

Then came the famously meteoric showbiz career, which seemed charmed for a period of about 15 years. Reubens became a member of The Groundlings, where he played a wide variety of characters, one of which was Pee-Wee Herman, and that one was so successful he mounted an entire midnight show around it. Underground cartoonist Gary Panter designed the sets. Reubens accurately describes his shows as combining art, punk, and comedy — that’s surely among the reasons people my age loved it so much. The ’70s and ’80s were a time of kitsch Renaissance. For a 100% parallel on the music side, think of The B-52s. And of course Danny Elfman of Oingo Boingo and Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo would end up doing Pee-Wee’s music. (This post, prompted by Pee-Wee’s death, talks about all three bands). Much cannabis was involved in the production of Pee-Wee’s vehicles, surely no revelation to his audience, most of whom (the adults anyway) were tuned to the same psycho-active wavelength.

So many people came to check out the live Pee-Wee Herman Show that it transferred to the much larger Roxy Theatre and then went on to a 22 city tour, climaxing with Carnegie Hall and the Universal Amphitheatre. Then came his national spots on David Letterman, his popular children’s tv show, prime-time specials. and a series of movies. In the early years he was also on The Gong Show,Cheech and Chong movies, and Steve Martin’s Comedy Is Not Pretty special. He was even on The Dating Game! Lee Leonard interviewed him for CNN, which I was thrilled to see — the late Mr. Leonard interviewed me and clown Al Calienes when we opened my American Vaudeville Theater at the Duplex in 1997).

Sadly, many of the folks who worked with Reubens in the early years (including Reubens) have passed on, including Phil Hartman, John Paragon, and Lynne Marie Stewart. The latter thankfully lived long enough to be interviewed for the film. Other good gets include fellow Groundlings Laraine Newman and Cassandra Peterson (Elvira); director Tim Burton; Playhouse cohorts like Laurence Fishburne, S. Epatha Merkerson, and Natasha Lyonne; personal friends like David Arquette and Debi Mazar (who was essentially his platonic girlfriend during his low period) and Judd Apatow, who produced Reubens’ last movie Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday (2016).

This wouldn’t be a biographical show biz documentary without a big fall to mirror the big rise. Pee-Wee’s was notorious of course, and came in the form of three strikes. The first was the failure of his sophomore feature, the money-losing Big Top Pee-Wee (1988), which was unfortunate but recoverable. But then there were his two busts, for public obscenity in 1991 and for possessing some manner of naughty pictures in 2002, and these two hits seriously damaged his reputation and his career, tarring him with a taint of pedophilia he did not earn. He did come back from oblivion both times, though he was no longer the king of the world he once had been.

The knowledge that he was dying of cancer surely motivated the normally hyper-private Reubens’ participation in this highly personal documentary. About 40 hours of interviews were recorded before Reubens abruptly stopped participating — at around the same time the interviews were reaching the topic of his 2002 woes with the law and the media. He literally relented that withdrawal on his death bed, less than 24 hours before he died, by recording a final message to his fans, and giving the green light to finish the film.

It seems significant that Reubens chose to stop cooperating when they began talking about his legal troubles, and by that I don’t mean that I think he was guilty of a crime, but rather that you get a strong sense of his nervousness and fear, born of distrust and many bad experiences. And the fact that he couldn’t control the messaging. It’s not surprising to learn that Reubens was a control freak. Every aspect of his art speaks to an obsessiveness about detail. I strongly suspect that if Reubens hadn’t died, this would have been a much different movie. Naturally, his recent passing demands a certain sensitivity, and a need for the film to partially serve as a kind of funerary statement. As well as a need to honor the man’s last wishes about what the film would contain. In other words, this would not be the time or the place to pull back the curtain even more to get at the WHOLE truth which I suspect is there — that Reubens was a bit of an S.O.B. to work for.

There are hints here. A handful of the talking heads vent a little bit, though they are generally presented in such a way as to make THEM appear unreasonable. An even better clue, of course, Exhibit A, is staring right out at the camera through most of the film. Reubens the interviewee is in fact, hilarious, touching, and even honest in most of the footage we get to see. But, like SO many comedians, you get a strong sense that he is a bear to wrangle. What is initially charming quickly becomes obnoxious. A compulsive joke-maker, he is constantly subverting the process with performance. He does a lot of leg-pulling with a semi-straight face. And of course, if you ask him to say A, he’s GOTTA say B. That’s his only reason for existing. But you know the drill. The same would be true of so many people you could name. Can you imagine having to do a sit-down, long-form serious interview with Milton Berle, Jerry Lewis, Robin Williams, Martin Short, Jim Carrey? Pretty soon you’re up to “Sit the fuck DOWN and answer the question or this movie’s never gonna get made!!!”

But of course I have been conditioned by that sub-genre of stories about the cynical, horrible people who bring joy to millions, from Berle’s Always Leave Them Laughingto The Oscar to The Simpsons‘ Krusty the Clown. There may be some pirate booty buried under the playhouse as far as that goes, but, to use the least favorite phrase of Reubens’ old rival for a slot on SNL, Gilbert Gottfried: “too soon”.

As for the good he did in the world, there was a lot of it. As the film reminds us, one of the virtues of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse was its matter-of-fact inclusiveness. And you can say “What a pity that he didn’t come out then so LGBT kids could benefit from the same kind of positive onscreen representation kids of color got to see” — until you recall the prejudice a good portion of society displayed on the occasion of his 1991 and 2002 legal troubles. His fears were not unwarranted. In an odd way there is resemblance to the fate of Oscar Wilde. It seems like Reubens was punished less for what he did or didn’t do than for who he was.

Ironically, Reubens’ best defense may have been in his back pocket the whole time: “I know you are, but what am I?”

For more on vaudevilleplease check out No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous; for more on clowns like Pee-Wee Herman see Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube; and please stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.