Pee-wee Herman Rides Again – Details

amywallace — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:28:26 +0000

After Carrying Tabloid Baggage For 18 Years, Paul Reubens Is Back In The Saddle — And In The Playhouse. Ready For A Big Adventure, Boys And Girls?

Originally appeared in Details November, 2009

BY: Amy Wallace

Paul Reubens is doing one of the things he does best: obsessing. “I am constantly hoping that, like, I’m still relevant at all,” he says in a voice—higher than most men’s, slightly nasal—that’s still familiar, even after all these years.

Wandering around the Hollywood Museum, just a few blocks from his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, he has lingered over the red-and-white vintage bicycle that he rode in his 1985 movie Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. He has appraised the display containing the skinny gray suit (with red bow tie) that was his uniform on his Saturday-morning TV show, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which aired on CBS from 1986 to 1991. But it’s not the Pee-wee Herman memorabilia, which sits near W.C. Fields’ top hat and Brendan Fraser’s George of the Jungle loincloth, that sets off Reubens’ OCD. Instead, the trigger is Bob Hope’s honorary Oscar. “When I was a kid, I’d always watch Bob Hope and go, like, ‘I know he must’ve been funny, but is he past his prime?’” Reubens says. “What I’m trying to prove now is that I still have it, I’m still around—I still am Pee-wee Herman, and Pee-wee Herman is still funny. So I’m feeling very Bob Hope—hoping I don’t see a parallel.”

Yes, that’s right: The 57-year-old actor, best known for embodying the oddball man-child with the puppet friends (and also for two tawdry scrapes with the law), is about to don the skinny suit again to perform as Pee-wee for the first time in 19 years. Starting in early January in Los Angeles, Reubens will star in an elaborate live show in which Pee-wee yearns to fly, gets his wish, and then gives it away. For anyone who likes allegories, as Reubens does, this one is a doozy.

Consider: Since the age of 5, when he asked his father to build him a stage in their Peekskill, New York, basement, Reubens wanted to entertain. After completing high school in south Florida, he went to art school in Los Angeles, where he joined the improvisational comedy troupe the Groundlings and developed a skit about a man-child who wanted to be a famous comic. He took the first name from Pee-wee-brand harmonicas. In a fit of pique, after he lost out on a role on Saturday Night Live—to Gilbert Gottfried, of all people—Reubens borrowed $5,000 from his parents to turn that skit into a stage show. It spawned an HBO special (The Pee-wee Herman Show), two feature films (Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Big Top Pee-wee), and ultimately the hit TV show. Then, while on a self-imposed hiatus from Pee-wee’s Playhouse, the once-high-flying Reubens fell to earth.

In July 1991 Reubens was arrested for indecent exposure in an adult theater in Sarasota, Florida. He pleaded no contest while maintaining his innocence, but the resulting media feeding frenzy derailed all things Pee-wee. With his alter ego sidelined, Reubens spent several years out of the public eye, writing and collecting—obsessively. He fervently hoards everything from sunglasses to foot-measuring devices, fake food to yearbooks (he has amassed 8,000 of them). He played the occasional bit part before finally landing a career-resurrecting role: as a hairdresser turned drug dealer in Ted Demme’s 2001 drama Blow. Then, just when things were looking up, police raided Reubens’ house and, in 2002, arrested him for having what authorities called a collection of child pornography. In fact, the offending “collection” comprised a VHS tape of Rob Lowe’s sex romp and turn-of-the-century erotica images featuring men and women—but no children. Friends vouched for Reubens, saying he was an insatiable collector who often bought in bulk, books and magazines in particular, and that there was no way he could know everything he’d amassed. It didn’t matter. Even though his child-porn charges were ultimately reduced, 16 months later, to a misdemeanor possession-of-obscenity rap, the damage was done. To most people, Pee-wee was a kiddie-porn-purveying perv.

“All this stuff that happened—the quote-unquote treatment I received—was not an inducement to come back to work,” Reubens says now. He looks good—clean-shaven and pale, with a closely shorn Pee-wee ‘do, trim blue jeans, a black-and-green retro short-sleeved button-down, and black Cole Haans. “To wait for somebody to give me permission to have a career wasn’t going to happen, you know?” Now Reubens is perched on a couch under a photo of Carole Lombard in the museum’s private ballroom. He’s friends with the institution’s owner (nutty collectors stick together), and when she enters the room, he jumps up and thanks her profusely for hosting us. When she asks him to attend a benefit, however, he balks. “I’d love to come,” he says, his eyebrows leaning together. “But I have no life outside of writing my show right now.” She asks if the museum can borrow one of his Emmys for the event. (He has two—one that he won, another that the Academy gave him when his first one was damaged.) “Are you kidding?” he asks, his voice squeaking higher. “I don’t know where they are. They’re in storage somewhere.”

Amy Wallace » Details

Pee-wee Herman Rides Again – Details

After Carrying Tabloid Baggage For 18 Years, Paul Reubens Is Back In The Saddle — And In The Playhouse. Ready For A Big Adventure, Boys And Girls?