Director: Matt Wolf
Cast: Paul Reubens, Lynne Marie Stewart, Cassandra Peterson, John Moody
Have I Seen It Before: Nope! Bereft that it has taken me this many weeks to finally watch it. My parents had to tell me how good it was. Which feels like more of an injury than anything else.
Did I Like It: Any deep dive into the career of Reubens and the reign of Pee-Wee was going to be a must-watch for me right out of the gate. When Reubens died in 2023, I was more than a little sad, but I got philosophical about the whole thing after watching a few episodes of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, I got kind of philosophical about it all: Paul Reubens was an incredibly talented writer and performer who passed away too soon. Pee-Wee Herman is an idea, and incapable of dying.
Pee-Wee was a vessel designed to show people that you could be so thoroughly weird that most people might find you annoying* and still be worthy of friendship, love, and celebration. Attempting to unravel the relationship between Reubens the actor and Pee-Wee the character would be a minimum requirement of the film, and it delivers on that in spades. There’s plenty of other honest examinations of Playhouse, the downsides of the success in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985), and a defenses of the commercial failures of Big Top Pee-Wee (1988) too. It’s everything I could have wanted from a Pee-Wee documentary.
What elevates the film from the competent to one of the best films of the year lays in the friction between subject and filmmaker. One of the essential standards to measure the quality of a documentary is the degree to which the filmmaker has access to the subject. Not knowing that Reubens was battling the cancer that would eventually end his life, the filmmakers were resolute in not letting Reubens’ perfectionism and instincts as a storyteller take over the direction of the film.
Reubens withdrew his cooperation with subsequent interviews, but managed to try and say his peace the day before he passed away. Reubens tried to exercise control over the affair because after all of these years, the bifurcated nature of his identity, coupled with his intermittent legal troubles, and his sexuality, he wanted to be understood for who he was.
It turns out, the guy who needed a character like Pee-Wee the most was Reubens. It might be a sad end to a story about a man who was willing to give up everything for his creative endeavors. But now, after the end, Reubens may be a bit better understood. He got what he wanted, even if what he wanted was never quite under his control.
*I had a talking Pee-Wee doll when I was a kid. That doll talked a lot. Eventually, he talked so much that he wouldn’t talk anymore. I tried to nurse that doll back to health for days. It wasn’t until my 30s when I realized my mother probably just removed the batteries and got everybody on board with the con. I did not plan to make this review a lot therapy. But then again, Reubens didn’t really think the film would be confessional, so it all becomes of a piece.