Paul Reubens was a fascinating man, and for that reason I had to do a “deep dive.” Let’s start with the title of this documentary. “Pee-wee as Himself” sounds a bit like the documentarians are playing off of who we know Reubens as, but as you watch the doc, you will understand that he, himself, only allowed himself to be Pee-wee. He crafted this character as a character but slowly morphed him into an actual person (we’ll dive more into that later).
Paul Reubens and Cassandra Peterson, better known as Elvira, are the only people I can think of that I only knew as the character they played. Peterson, surprisingly, is in the documentary, but I’m not sure if she intentionally meant to only be Elvira like Reubens with Pee-wee. Watching this documentary reintroduced me to the idea of self-made. As a Black woman, I always had Master P as an example of someone who was self-made, but I never knew that everything to do with Pee-wee was helmed by Reubens (this is probably why he was so arrogant). For a man who came from a family who was well off, he had so much ambition. Not as if people with means can’t have ambition, but Reubens’ ambition was as if he needed to prove to someone that he was worth more than what you could see of him. He speaks about how opposite he was from his dad, so maybe subconsciously, he wanted to prove to his dad and himself that he could be just as cool and suave but in a different way.
Let’s dig more into the idea of being self-made. Reubens created Pee-wee as just one of his random characters he did with the Groundlings, never knowing that Pee-wee was his ticket to doing the acting he wanted to do–performance art. Reubens did what I think I’ve only see drag queens do. He created the character. He created the branding and marketing of this character and his act and he was able, mainly by himself, to get this character into the homes of millions of people. Now, did he have help from some people on the way? Yes, but the heavy lifting was done mostly by Reubens. That’s extraordinary to me. Every other character and celebrity I can think of has had their image crafted in some way by someone else. Everyone else has had someone help them get to the stardom they have no…except Reubens. There’s a blessing and a curse in this. Let me explain.
The blessing is that he was able to control everything that happened to Pee-wee (not himself). For however long, Pee-wee was the main character and everything that Pee-wee did or didn’t do was masterminded by Reubens. Here’s the downside to that. Exhaustion and anonymity. Reubens made a conscious effort very early on in his career that in order to become as famous as he wanted to be, his personal life had to be non existent. Here is where Pee-wee stepped in. I didn’t realize that when Paul Reubens died we had no idea who Reubens was because of him and not us. Think of Jaleel White or the late Malcolm-Jamal Warner. We knew them as their character but they wanted us to know them. Reubens didn’t want that at all. This could also be due in part of the fact that Reubens was a serious performance artist and he wanted it to remain that way, but I digress. The problem with this lies in the fact that Pee-wee’s time in the spotlight didn’t last forever, and I don’t think Reubens accounted for that. Going back to White and Warner, “Family Matters” and “The Cosby Show” ended at some point, and those actors had to find work that didn’t surround those characters. I don’t think Reubens thought about what would happen if there wasn’t a “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” or a “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” In his mind, this could last forever or he could just keep making films. This was not the case.
Fast forward to after “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” ended and Reubens is arrested for indecent exposure. Because he never let us know Paul and not Pee-wee, the two merged even though Pee-wee is a “person” and Paul is another. I often wondered throughout the doc what could have been if Paul had introduced us to him earlier in his career with Pee-wee and not kept him in secret for so long. We see, soon after the arrest, that Paul got to debut in several movies, not Pee-wee. Imagine if he actually continued to do interviews as Paul and Pee-wee. Think of what else Reubens could have done outside of Pee-wee. His other characters were brilliant as well. The show “Martin” comes to mind with all the characters Martin Lawrence played. That could have been Reubens after “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” ended or even before. He could have had his own variety show with him and celebrity guests with Pee-wee has the host.
It’s hard to say but I don’t know if Reubens really knew just how special he was. Literally everyone they spoke to talked about how brilliant he was on his own outside of Pee-wee. It’s never really discussed by he settled only on Pee-wee for the remainder of his career, but to know that I was only seeing a fraction of this man’s brilliance as a child is infuriating. To know that the whole set on the show, the opening sequence, and the characters within the show were all created by one man is astounding! This man was able to create a time capsule of excellence that lives on even though he is no longer with us.
Last but not least, to the documentarians. I love how the director, Matt Wolf, tried so hard to put Reubens in his place as a subject and not a director, but in the end, he ended up getting what he wanted. He wanted to control his image in the documentary, and guess what Wolf? He got to do exactly that. He didn’t want to tell the story of Paul Reubens. He wanted to tell the origin story of Pee-wee Herman. He also wanted to clear up his arrests which he did just as he wanted. The documentary says he never finished his interview about the arrests, and even though he was battling cancer, I don’t think he ever intended to finish those interviews. He kept harping on the fact that he felt the documentarians wanted to tell a specific story about him and his legacy. From my vantage point, he steered them as far as he wanted them to go and left it at that. I don’t think he anticipated that he would die while they were making the doc, but I do think he was steering the ship the entire time. Whether Wolf and the team knew that or not, I’m not sure, but I had a good time.
Did you watch this doc? What did you learn? What nostalgic “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” moments did you remember while watching this documentary?
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