Roush Review: Paul Reubens Reveals the Man Behind ‘Pee-wee Herman’
Review
Pee-wee as Himself
Separating the artist from their art is especially tricky when the creator hides within his creation, adopting it as his alter ego. Filmmaker Matt Wolf triumphantly rises to the challenge in Pee-wee as Himself, HBO’s revealing, rewarding two-part documentary profile of Paul Reubens, who for years we saw and knew only as the irrepressible Pee-wee Herman.
Culling from 40-plus hours of candid on-camera interviews before Reubens’ unexpected death in 2023 at 70, with a wealth of archival footage and photos, the film presents its subject as droll, witty, and playfully combative, reluctant to cede control of his life story to the director. He needn’t have worried.
Pee-wee as Himself is a fascinating, endearing, and moving portrait of an entertainer who as a child was mesmerized by early children’s TV like Howdy Doody: “I wanted to jump into my TV and live in that world,” he says. He got his wish when, after schooling himself in avant-garde performance art and comedy improv, including appearances on the infamous The Gong Show, Reubens created the impish man-child persona of Pee-wee in the 1980s.
Shattered when he was rejected by Saturday Night Live (“the holy grail”), he went all in on Pee-wee, developing the character in a buzzy underground stage show that eventually caught the interest of HBO, which produced a special that helped launch Reubens and Pee-wee into the pop-culture mainstream. He became a semi-regular on Late Night with David Letterman, a full-fledged movie star in Tim Burton‘s 1985 Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, and achieved cult immortality with the sweetly subversive Saturday-morning classic, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which ran for five seasons from 1986-90.
“My plan was to make people think that Pee-wee Herman was a real person,” he says, only allowing himself to be seen or interviewed in full Pee-wee regalia. “There wasn’t like a moment in the ’80s that wasn’t really super cool to be me.”
His ride to the top was derailed when Reubens, who spent most of his life as a closeted gay man, was arrested for indecent exposure in an adult movie theater in 1991: “I lost control of my anonymity, and it was devastating.” He was later falsely charged with possession of child pornography, following a raid on his personal collection of homo-erotica.
In a poignant audio recording made the day before his death, Reubens notes that his hope with this film was “for people to see who I really am and how painful and difficult it was to be labeled something that I wasn’t. … I wanted somehow for people to understand that my whole career, everything I did and wrote was based in love and my desire to entertain and bring glee and creativity to young people and everyone.”
Mission accomplished, beautifully.
Pee-wee as Himself, Documentary Premiere, Friday, May 23, 8/7c, HBO (stream on HBO Max)
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