You had to admire the comic anarchy of Paul Reubens’ singular character Pee-wee Herman, even if you didn’t quite get it. Even if what Reubens was doing with the character wasn’t “your thing,” it’s hard to argue that any creation by an adult better captured the id of being a child. Despite the buttoned-up dress of Pee-wee Herman, there was an anarchy to the character that could be both hilarious, or even unsettling. The former because Herman was often genuinely funny, the latter because Reubens clearly wasn’t playing it safe. Had Pee-wee Herman not connected with audiences, that outcome could have been a humiliating death knell for both the character and the person residing within him.
That didn’t happen though. In one of the most unlikely outcomes for any oddball creation ever, Pee-wee Herman was not only loved, but revered and referenced to this day. I don’t know how many of us would have predicted such a long tenure in the pop-culture consciousness for a character so deliberately strange, but it did indeed happen. A fact that seems hard to wrap your head around if you spend any time thinking about it.
Here was a grown man in suit that was accented in all the right/wrong ways, in pancake makeup, with lacquered hair, a strange voice, and an even stranger sense of humor that had a hit movie (Tim Burton’s 1985 full-length big screen debut, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure), a 1988 sequel (Big Top Pee-wee) and a children’s’ show called Pee-wee’s Playhouse that ran from 1986-1991. I can recall look-alike contests as I was growing up as a kid in my incredibly small town, and some of them were pretty damn good.
Perhaps the most iconic moment in the history of Pee-wee is him dancing in a bar to “Tequila” and winning over the patrons. I also loved the moment in the Big Adventure when he fell off his beloved bike, bounced up off the grass, looked at passers-by and deadpanned, “I meant to do that.” Hell, I use that line to this day.
Of course, Paul Reubens’ career wasn’t just Pee-wee Herman. He played a waiter in The Blues Brothers, and made a somewhat disturbing impression on me in Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie as a demented Desk Clerk in 1980 and then again as Howie Hamburger Dude in Cheech and Chong’s Nice Dreams. Never would I have guessed that such an odd performer would go on to be loved by millions, but the life of an artist can take many twists and turns.
After Pee-wee peaked, Reubens made notable impressions in Batman Returns, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the film), Blow, and in numerous guest spots on TV, as well as an extensive amount of voice work. Reubens career was negatively impacted by a public lewdness charge, but in the end, it was all so easy to forgive (not that it was that big of a deal anyway). Because through this one incredibly specific character, Reubens brought joy to the cliched “kids of all ages.”
And if we remember him for nothing more than Pee-wee Herman, well, that will more than do.
Paul Reubens died on July 30, 2023. He was 70 years old.