I can’t remember a time before Pee-wee Herman.
As an elder millennial, I was exactly the right age to be permanently molded by Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Each Saturday morning I would park myself in front of the TV, dutifully chanting along with Jambi the Genie (“Mekka lekka hi, mekka hiney ho!”) and screaming at each mention of the Secret Word (this didn’t bother my parents as much as it likely could have; my father was a fan of Pee-wee’s frequent appearances on Late Night with David Letterman, and was at least as excited as I was to tune in every week). Pee-wee’s Playhouse was unlike just about anything that had aired on television previously (or since, for that matter), but of course I had no way of knowing that; it wasn’t until I rediscovered Pee-wee as a teen (thanks to reruns of his hilariously un-kid-friendly 1981 HBO special) that I realized how radical and subversive he truly was. It isn’t that Pee-wee taught me it was “okay to be weird,” as the saying goes, so much as he got to me before I learned there was any other way to be.
When Paul Reubens, the man who was Pee-wee, passed away last month at the age of 70, I was overcome with the sort of honest-to-goodness grief that comes with the loss of a childhood hero. It had frankly never occurred to me that Paul Reubens could die, or even age; I had just kind of assumed he would always be out there, occasionally popping up in offbeat character roles and launching periodic revivals of the alter-ego who made him famous. Pee-wee Herman dying would be like Mickey Mouse dying, or Santa Claus; it just didn’t make sense.
Of course, the silver lining that comes with the passing of any beloved public figure is the excuse to revisit their greatest work, which is why the Brattle has booked three screenings this weekend of Mr. Herman’s 1985 opus Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. Pitched somewhere between the Saturday morning version of the character found in Playhouse and the original after-dark iteration of the HBO special, Adventure is perhaps the platonic Pee-wee ideal: sweet and subversive, aesthetically eye-popping and laugh-out-loud funny. When the subject of “perfect movies” comes up, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is almost always the first, and sometimes only, film to pop into my mind.
You probably don’t need me to recount the story, but for the people in the back: Pee-wee Herman is sent into an existential spiral when his cherished bicycle (a rad-as-hell red Schwinn with tailfins and a little rubber lion face) is stolen. When a clearly fraudulent psychic tells him it’s been taken to the basement of the Alamo, he packs his belongings into a comically tiny bindlestick and hitchhikes his way across the American countryside. Along the way, he encounters convicts, bikers, hobos, and the most infamous trucker in cinematic history. The journey would break a lesser man, but this is no mere man we’re talking about; this is Pee-wee Herman.
The world of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is not the puppet-filled fantasia of Pee-wee’s Playhouse (which confused me initially as a child), but it’s most certainly not the world we inhabit either. Rather, it’s a cartoonish daydream of 1950s Americana– picture Jacque Tati’s Playtime filtered through a stack of technicolor truck stop postcards. Pee-wee is an acknowledged eccentric in any world, but the “normal” people he encounters here are only a degree or two more grounded: a diner waitress with the soul of a poet, a biker gang who can be won over by a well-choreographed dance routine, whoever the hell Amazing Larry is supposed to be. Everything in this film feels handmade, but it doesn’t feel like it was made for the film; rather, it is as if we are looking into an existing world in which a person like Pee-wee makes perfect sense.
In the days that followed Reubens’ death, I saw more than one commenter describe Pee-wee’s outlook as an example of “radical kindness.” This is a nice sentiment, but I’m not sure it entirely applies. Reubens was often at his funniest when playing Pee-wee at his most petty and dickish; consider the scenes in which he gleefully gives the runaround to the bike shop clerk who is clearly in love with him (E.G. Daily at her most adorable), or when he subjects his friends and neighbors to an excruciatingly pedantic presentation on the case of his missing bike. Rather, what makes Pee-wee so special is the infectious joy he takes from his silly little life. He loves his bike and his toys and his tiny dog, Speck. He can’t help but make friends wherever he goes; the only person who seems to dislike him is spoiled rich kid Francis (who is, after all, the anti-Pee-wee). He’s got an elaborate Rube Goldberg device to make his breakfast every morning, but he’s just as amused and delighted by a box of Mr. T cereal. To live the life of Pee-wee Herman is to elevate the mundane to the point that mundanity no longer exists.
Revisiting Pee-wee’s oeuvre and the role it’s played in my development, I believe it is this sense of lightly ironic wonder that has had the most profound impact. Consciously or unconsciously, I have aspired to live every day of my life as Pee-wee as possible, whether through filling my home with novelty items that make me smile, setting off on some hairbrained adventure or another, or simply setting some time aside for a daily cartoon. Pee-wee was the consummate outsider: a flagrantly queer public figure in the middle of Reagan’s America, who used his network TV soapbox to give exposure to genuinely underground artists like Gary Panter and the Residents. But, crucially, he was never portrayed as an outsider. Pee-wee was so comfortable in his eccentricity that he bent the world around him– not only on film and TV, but, for a few years anyway, our world. Pee-wee’s gift to a generation of children– and adults– was to teach them to own their silliness and to treasure the high weirdness around them.
Paul Reubens may be dead, but Pee-wee Herman will live forever.
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure
1985
dir. Tim Burton
91 min.
Screens Friday, 8/18 & Saturday, 8/19 @ Brattle Theatre – click here for tickets and showtimes
In tribute to Paul Reubens
