Some notes on ‘Pee-Wee as Himself’

On the subject of the current Pee-Wee Herman doc on HBO and its streaming platform (neither of which I subscribe to), there’s a documentary (The Humiliated, 1998) about the making of Lars von Trier’s The Idiots, where the director asked to interview von Trier, who said no, definitely not. Then Lars presented the director with a “diary”-like narration that he thought the director would want. When the director had fitted his making-of film around the narration, he realized that Lars had, indeed, controlled his documentary and changed the way it was shaped and structured. 

That’s exactly what Paul Reubens did to his docu-biographer Matt Wolf in the current HBO offering, Pee-Wee as Himself. Reubens did consent to interviews but then proceeded to badger Wolf about how he’d handle different topics and asking why it was exactly that he (Reubens) couldn’t direct his own life story. 

Of course by doing this Reubens *was* co-directing the film and making sure that it went in certain directions. (He was also hiding a cancer battle he was going through, so he most likely thought he couldn’t work on the completion of the film, which drove the perfectionist in him totally nuts.) 

The film’s title was carefully chosen. The other result is that we see Reubens for the very first time speaking at length about his life and the Pee-Wee Herman character. In fact, the more we see of the real Paul Reubens, especially when he’s badgering Wolf, the more we see that Pee-Wee was an extension of his own personality: 

Making the filmmaker his straight man.
[in a manner of speaking]

He was clearly a detail-oriented perfectionist (even when dealing with the smallest of gags), but he could also be caustic and obnoxious — and then incredibly charming on top of it all. To wit, my favorite moment [to Wolf, about wanting things his own way]: "Really, if you don’t agree with me, you’re wrong. No, I don’t really think that…. All right, maybe I do think that a little bit. No, I don’t. I’m kidding. Or am I? I don’t know.… I don’t know if I’m kidding. I know. [chuckles] But you don’t."

All in all, it’s a fascinating look at a man who did indeed hide himself completely behind his character, until the first of two life-changing arrests went down. 

A rarely seen view of the Playhouse set.

Personal disclosure: I own a "talking Pee-Wee Herman" doll. Before I discuss the other key themes and touching moments in the film, I should note that I began being a Pee-Wee Herman fan when I saw him do his shtick in the early Eighties on Merv Griffin and then a series of guest shots on Letterman. The latter are included in the documentary, reminding one of just how intentionally fucking awful Letterman was as a straight man (unless you were one of those horrific standups he came up with — George Miller, Jimmy “J.J.” Walker, etc.).

I was fresh out of school when “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” began its run (thus, an actual adult), but by then I was already sold on Reubens’ character, thanks to Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and his appearances on television. Thus, I came to the Wolf documentary with vivid memories of Paul/Pee-Wee at his most famous and then at his most infamous. 

That last becomes an issue in the doc, as we get to see various entertainers (Sam Kinison, Soupy Sales, former collaborator Phil Hartman) condemning Reubens for the porn-theater masturbation arrest. Although that arrest did put the damper on doing the Pee-Wee character (until a 2010 Broadway run of the original Groundlings-era show and a 2016 final Pee-Wee film on Netflix), it did not squash the ardor of his diehard followers, who liked him more when they found out he had some normal, everyday traits, like horniness. Thus, those condemning Reubens (incl. the former “dirty” and then pious [and always-drab] Howard Stern) wound up looking like narrow-minded scolds. 

Filling in the gaps: Who was Paul Reubens? What was Wolf able to get from Reubens, even at the height of Herman-hectoring that Reubens put him through? A full portrait of his life from childhood through his 30s. It’s the first time Reubens openly addressed his life as a gay man at any length, going so far as to talk about the one deeply committed relationship he had with another man (an artist named Guy) and how he broke it up so he could further concentrate on his career. 

P.R. in drag.

As Native American
lounge singer
"Jay Longtoe."

That fact alone is fascinating, as is Reubens using the phrase “duo” instead of “couple” when describing his relationship with Guy. (“Duo” does sound a lot more show-biz than couple.) He notes how much comfort he found in the relationship, but that he wanted a flourishing career more than that connection with another person, and so… he was off!

The doc also addresses the fact that he discarded some other people on his rise to the top (including the manager who got him the movie deal for Big Adventure, thereby making Pee-Wee pretty much a household name). Thus, Reubens was okay with airing some of his dirty laundry. Wolf additionally adds in (via the Stern interview with Phil Hartman) one of the most persistent rumors about the Pee-Wee character — that Reubens developed the character and the Playhouse concept initially with several other members of the Groundlings and then used their contributions on the “Playhouse” TV series without giving them credit. 

His proudest moment. Of all the reflections on his work, it seems particularly interesting that Reubens prized above many other big moments his being able to create and air a prime-time Christmas special set in the Playhouse. Although Reubens was committed to never “breaking the bit” in the ’80s, he recruited numerous gay/camp icons to be on the Xmas special.

Grace Jones on a prime time Xmas special.

In fact, the guest list has always struck any viewer who knows the score as a kind of gay honor roll: Little Richard, Cher, Grace Jones, k.d. lang, Joan Rivers, Dinah Shore, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, with a few other camp personages like Charo, Frankie and Annette, the Del Rubio Triplets, and Whoopi Goldberg. (The inclusion of Oprah and Magic Johnson has always been a matter of “What was going on there?”) 

The mug shot and the arrests It’s most interesting that the only time that Reubens drops out of the “narration” of the doc is when the chronology reaches his two arrests. According to intertitles, he never “completed” those interviews, but it appears like he said nothing about them, or Wolf chose not to use anything he might have said about them.

Thus, we are left with the many other talking heads holding forth on what it was like when the infamous goatee/long-haired mug shot appeared in the press and on TV, and when the second arrest accused Reubens of having pedophilic images in his house (which was a repository of kitsch artifacts, and also a very big collection of homoerotic magazines, films, and photos). 

Going back to the idea that Reubens can be said to the “co-director” of the film by guiding Wolf along certain pathways, it is most interesting (and definitely the saddest moment in the film) when we hear a final audio recording of Reubens (sounding much, much older and obviously far sicker) talking about how he did not want the label of pedophile to be part of his legacy. (He was cleared of the charge, legally — his lawyers had him take a plea for possession of a lot of porn, which is hardly a crime, but it was something to get the enterprising DA of L.A. off his back.) 

An early mugshot found online.
(This arrest not mentioned in the doc.)

He clearly left that bit of audio as the crux of his reflections on himself and his life — and thus Wolf has a beautifully poignant end to his portrait of Reubens. UPDATE: A newly uploaded article by Wolf notes that Reubens' publicist informed him that "Paul recorded something for you the night before he died." (The sarcastic sprite that was Pee-Wee was indeed the guiding hand behind the film.) 

Sidebar: Will the Morrissey movies soon be available again? One side-note for Warhol/Morrissey fans: Wolf was able to include brief clips from Trash and Women in Revolt as an example of the kind of underground film that Reubens wanted to be a part of, and was for a time in L.A. in the ’70s. Women is owned by the Warhol Estate, but Trash is totally owned by Morrissey’s estate (which, one presumes, is his family).

Joe Dallesandro revealed on Facebook a few years back that a documentary about his life and movie work was stalled indefinitely because Morrissey was refusing the filmmakers the right to include scenes from Little Joe’s work for Morrissey (who made a deal with the Warhol Estate to outright own Flesh, Trash, and Heat). The inclusion here of footage from Trash, with an acknowledgment to Morrissey himself (the filmmaker died in Oct of 2024), hopefully means that his films will come back into print on disc and will be allowed to be used in documentaries from now on. 

Why not a Reubens museum of kitsch and camp? On the whole, the documentary is both informative and wonderfully invigorating, especially when Reubens gets all Pee-Wee on Wolf and goes into verbal gymnastics and charming looks straight into the camera while writing Wolf off. The one question that remains, though, is what has happened to Reubens’ collection of kitsch and pop culture ephemera. 

One very tiny corner of the collection.

We see the collection being taken into a storage area that is the size of a warehouse, presumably after Reubens’ death on July 30, 2023. But where has all this stuff wound up and will it simply be auctioned off by his heirs, or will someone consecrate a neat little museum to it? The latter is just a daydream of an old Pee-Wee fan (who knows that Reubens included looks at his crazy collection in various filmed interviews and contributed items to Pee-Wee’s wall of stuff in Big Adventure). But it could happen, couldn’t it? I mean it. No, I don't. I don’t know.… I don’t know if I’m kidding. Oh, I know. [smiles] It should.

Seemingly the present state of the collection.
(Screenshot from the documentary.)