PLOT: The life and career of Pee-wee Herman as told by Paul Reubens himself.
REVIEW: Shortly before his death, Paul Reubens sat down with documentarian Matt Wolf for an exhaustive forty hours of interviews to be used for a potential documentary. Reubens, who was notoriously press-shy throughout his career, was always reluctant to talk about himself, especially in light of the various scandals that sometimes overshadowed his legacy. However, later in life, he felt the need to set the record straight, making Pee-wee as Himself a stunningly insightful view into the legacy of one of the eighties’ biggest (and most unconventional) pop culture icons.
If you weren’t alive during that decade, it’s hard to explain just how big he was. He held a unique place in the entertainment industry, as everyone loved him, with him appealing equally to adults and children thanks to his hit film, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, and his children’s TV show, Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Yet, at the height of his popularity, it all came crashing down when he was arrested in a porn theatre. However, he re-emerged as a character actor thanks to roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Murphy Brown, Blow, and Mystery Men. Then another arrest happened, which seemed to do even more damage to his reputation, although he recaptured some of his legacy with the well-received Netflix film Pee-wee’s Big Holiday.
Through it all, Reubens was seen as elusive, as typically when he appeared on chat shows – if at all – he would only do so as Pee-wee Herman, rather than as himself. So we’ve never really heard from him at length, making Wolf’s documentary pretty mind-blowing for long-time fans of the man, such as myself. Reubens is mostly an open book, even if he can’t resist hamming it up for the camera, prompting Wolf to try to re-steer the conversation constantly. Reubens- for the first time ever – opens up about his sexuality, with him admitting that he’s gay. However, he says he avoided relationships during the time he was Pee-wee, as he was afraid of being outed. Even in these interviews, he’s reluctant to reveal too much about himself, especially as far as his sexuality goes, with long-time friend David Arquette revealing in an interview that Reubens is old-school and wouldn’t even open up about it to him, despite them being friends for thirty years.
For fans of Pee-wee, this documentary, which is set to air in two parts on HBO, is a treasure trove, jam-packed with fantastic footage taken during his rise to fame and eventual eighties domination (as Reubens admits – it was awesome to be him during the eighties). While celebrating his genius, Wolf gets Reubens to open up about his perfectionism and occasionally cut-throat dealings, admitting it caused a massive rift between him and his former creative partner, the late SNL legend Phil Hartman. Revealingly, Reubens admits he was responsible for the failure of Big Top Pee-wee, as he was jealous of Tim Burton’s acclaim following Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and didn’t want to share the credit this time.
Despite all this, virtually everyone interviewed has nothing but good things to say about Reubens. Burton credits Reubens for launching his career, while Laurence Fishburne fondly remembers his time on Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which everyone praises as great children’s programming, even if it didn’t survive Reubens’s eventual downfall.
As far as his arrests go, Reubens is an open book about the first one, with him having a good sense of humour about his arrest and what it did to his career. Yet, the second arrest, where he was accused of possessing child pornography, proves to be a thornier topic, with Wolf admitting Reubens stopped cooperating with the documentary before they could dive into it. However, in a controversial – but necessary – addition to the documentary, Wolf includes an audio statement Reubens himself sent to Wolf less than 24 hours before he died, where, on his deathbed, he swore he was innocent. The documentary tries to explain how it was a frame-up, with him possessing a huge collection of vintage gay erotica, none of which contained any images of children. But, as Reubens himself says in his final statement, once you’re slammed with this label, it’s hard to escape it, and it’s horrifying to think that – on his deathbed – it was the one aspect of his life that haunted him. All this ends the documentary on a bittersweet but honest note. However, the documentary, which is a blast, still serves as a celebration of his work, and fans will be blown away by how much unseen footage is in this. It will be the definitive work on Reubens’s life, and had he lived to see it premiere, it might have led to the final resurgence he never got to enjoy.
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