The Real Pee Wee

The biggest revelation coming out of Pee Wee as Himself – the two-part 205 minute Matt Wolf documentary on Paul Reubens, the actor-writer comic genius who created Pee Wee Herman now streaming on Max – may be what a compelling, direct, and charismatic screen presence Reubens was, literally, as himself. We never got to see enough of that Paul Reubens.

The one we mostly saw, as Pee Wee, or Gerhardt on 30 Rock, or Amilyn on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and many characters, performed under wigs, with voices, and behind make-up. For Pee Wee as Himself, Reubens stared into Wolf’s camera for 40 hours of direct conversation, often contentiously with Wolf over his line of questioning.  In this film and his life, Reubens wanted complete control.  He found it inside Pee Wee Herman, then lost it in celebrity scandal.

In 1991, Sarasota police arrested Reubens for indecent exposure at an adult movie theater, leading to a pop culture implosion that ended Pee Wee Herman.  In 2002, the LAPD falsely charged Reubens with owning child pornography, which now looks more like pure homophobic harassment.  Reubens’ owned a Charles Foster Kane-size collection of vintage gay muscle magazines and erotica, but authorities could show nothing that exploited children in any way.  They later reduced charges to a $100 “obscenity” fine for owning gay art.

After a year of filming with Wolf, Reubens stopped cooperating when it came to a final interview over these arrests. He never gave that interview.  Rather than submit to it, he made his own final audio recording. In it, he said, “The moment I heard somebody label me as – I’m just gonna say it – a ‘pedophile,’ I knew it was going to change everything moving forward and backwards. I wanted to have some understanding of what it’s like to be labelled a pariah … I wanted people to understand that occasionally where there is smoke, there isn’t always fire.”

Pee Wee as Himself goes to great lengths to do that, and does it convincingly, and, unfortunately, exhaustively. There’s a before and after with Reubens’ career. In the first half, Wolf captures the late 1970s and 80s L.A. comedy world that Reubens came up in that made a character like Pee Wee possible.  There was a punk-adjacent audience on Melrose Avenue ready for something like Pee Wee, and the Groundling Theater company offered collaborators like Phil Hartman, Lynne Stewart, and John Paragon.  Reubens and Pee Wee drew early fans like Steve Martin and Cheech & Chong, and it led to his Pee Wee tour, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and Pee Wee’s Playhouse.

Wolf also captures Reubens controlling nature and ambition.  It’s what drove him to keep his personal life so private (and closeted) that when Pee Wee’s Big Adventure came out, Reubens grew frustrated that people did not understand that the Paul Reubens co-credited on the screenplay was also the creator of, and man who played, Pee Wee Herman. It rankled Reubens that much of the credit went to Tim Burton.  That side of Reubens’ ego distanced himself from Hartman and Burton, which explains the flat follow up, Pee Wee’s Big Top. Certainly, Reubens had reason to believe he did not need them.  Pee Wee’s Playhouse had four incredible seasons on CBS without them, before Reubens’ scandals led to its cancellation.

The second half of Wolf’s movie bogs down its legal history of Reubens.  It was Reubens’ main motivation for participating in this grueling self-examination of his life, but it’s also a waste of time.  His offenses were misdemeanors.  No one ever accused him of anything like Kevin Spacey or Michael Jackson, and it’s here the film devolves into a celebrity-driven true crime podcast, complete with a glowering Stone Philips interview.  It’s not a matter of ignoring any of this, it’s a matter of giving a $100 crime the five minutes it’s due and that’s it.

Yes, it’s what Reubens wanted, but this is one area where Matt Wolf should not have acceded to his wishes. When Spike Lee made his Michael Jackson documentary Bad 25, Spike Lee made a bold choice, considering Jackson’s history, to ignore all that and simply focus on the music. “For too long, people focused on that other stuff,” Lee told USA Today. “When you do that with an artist, you do it to the detriment of the art.”

Spike was right. Jackson was gone by then, the scandal covered endlessly, and the art remains. Paul Reubens created an iconic American comic character in Pee Wee Herman, one we can favorably compare to anyone from Harpo Marx or Buster Keaton to Steve Martin’s white suit days and The Jerk. The incredible collection of talent, artists, and genius that went into creating Pee Wee Herman is why we’re still here, not the other stuff.