Movies

Image: Warner Bros., Live Nation

Pee-wee's Big Adventure: 35th Anniversary Tour with Paul Reubens
Paramount Theatre
Denver, Colorado, USA
21 February 2020
@PeeweeHerman

This was a special treat. Pee-wee Herman came to town to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Pee-wee's Big Adventure. It turned into quite the epic Pee-wee experience; the movie was bookended by archival pre- and post-premiere MTV footage from outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood — hosted, of course, by the movie's star, Pee-wee Herman. That was followed by Paul Reubens giving a live, on-stage presentation about the making of the movie. All told, it was roughly 3.5 hours of pure Pee-wee.

The movie itself was, of course, highly entertaining. It's always been a creative expression of pure joy and in that regard it seems even more timely than ever. It was a sold-out crowd and everybody knew all the lines. All the best jokes still get huge laughs. It's certainly one of the most quotable movies ever. It's right up there with Monty Python and the Holy Grail. See the sidebar for a roundup of the best lines.

The crowd was filled with all ages, young and old. Quite a few in Pee-wee costumes. Others were in more tangential (but still appropriate) costumes, including one dude in a Godzilla getup.

But the best part was seeing how sincerely Paul Reubens, now 67, appreciated the audience's enthusiasm. It was indeed Paul Reubens on stage, not his Pee-wee Herman character. Dressed in a black suit and looking dapper, he carried a comically ginormous stack of paper on stage and placed it on the table in front of him. He had a lot of notes to work through, so the joke goes.

Unfortunately, no cameras or phones or other recording devices were allowed inside the auditorium, so the following list of some of my favorite tidbits is purely from memory (yikes, exercising the mind!).

• From the MTV footage, hearing Danny Elfman talk about how this was his first job as a film score composer. In truly classic form, he acknowledged he went into it not knowing how to do it, but he figured it out. "I will figure it out" are five oft-repeated words in the world of Mattopia Jones, so Elfman is most definitely a kindred spirit. As for his score, it's perfection.
• It was also great hearing about how Reubens modeled his studio negotiations after Sylvester Stallone and his mandate that he star in the movie he wrote, Rocky. Reubens took that to heart as he drafted a list of a hundred or so top directors he thought would be great for the movie. Instead, Warner Bros. execs presented a director whose work Reubens didn't even like. A mad scramble consulting with friends (including Shelley Duvall) surfaced one name with unfettered enthusiasm: Tim Burton, who was making waves with a Disney animated short called Frankenweenie. The perfect guy was found.
• Pushback on naive studio notes, including the request to remove "Amazing Larry" since nobody knows who he is. Reubens had to argue it was a sight gag. Amazing Larry is a character populating Pee-wee's world and audiences would get the joke. Hah! Before the show I was spouting off some of my favorite lines. "Is this something you could share with the rest of us, Amazing Larry?!" was one of them.
• Acknowledgements of life in the pre-internet era, including the challenges of researching things like the Alamo by having to go to someplace called a "library." Reubens confessed to visiting the Alamo some time ago and having a tour guide take him off to the side for a one-on-one chat: there is a basement in the Alamo. But Reubens also took the defensive: the Alamo is a complex of buildings and the basement is not in the building he tours in the movie. Well, seems to tour. He went on to reveal he traveled down to San Antonio simply to be filmed running into and back out of the main building on the Alamo campus.
• Originally, the movie was going to be — as Reubens put it — a frame-by-frame remake of Disney's Pollyanna. He was obssessed with the movie as a kid. He loved the story about a girl who brings so much joy to a town, only to suffer from an accident at the end. As part of the happy happenings surrounding this tour, there's the possiblity Paul might get to meet Hayley Mills.
• Great story: Collaborating on the screenplay with Phil Hartman and Michael Varhol at Warner Bros. and being upset about not having a bike to navigate around the studio lot. After all, everybody else had one. After constant complaining, he was finally given the ultimate bicycle. Shocked. Stunned. And all of a sudden, their screenplay took a wildly different direction.
• The bike will be on display in the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (opening in December) — and the Tequila shoes will be in the same room with Dorothy's ruby slippers. This is revealed after explaining why the Smithsonian won't get the bike: they wanted it to be part of a 40-year exhibit and were essentially going to keep the bike. It took a few rounds of explanations for the underlying message to sink in: in theory, Reubens won't be around to take it back after the exhibit closes. The Smithsonian will, however, get a pair of Tequila shoes, since a couple were used in the production.
• Reubens spoke of the potential for a new documentary about the making of the movie, including new interviews with cast and crew, as a supplement to a filmed version of this anniversary tour. DO IT, PAUL!
• Different stars from the production will make appearances at various shows along the tour, depending on scheduling. Reubens teased Morgan Fairchild (and, hopefully, James Brolin) in Hollywood. He hopes Mark Holton (who played the rich bully Francis Buxton) doesn't get booed right off the stage in Dallas.

Paul Reubens, as I mentioned at the start, is 67. While watching Pee-wee's Big Adventure for the first time in quite a while, I was struck by how well the movie's aged. Originally released in 1985, it doesn't suffer from the time-locked trappings of many, many movies. It's a wholly separate world of fantasy that's almost completely detached from the 1980s in terms of fashion, hair and so many other aspects that date most movies. Pee-wee himself is a throwback to the '50s and '60s. His world is a playland. It is timeless, a pre-Toy Story toy story.

And this thought crossed my mind repeatedly and has haunted me ever since: there should be a new Pee-wee adventure on the big screen. Think about James Bond in Skyfall: an aging spy has to contend with a world in which politicians debase the importance of counter-espionage and techy upstarts undermine in-the-field activity with remote-controlled devices like drones. In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indy contends with the challenges of getting older and ... ummm... keeping up with the Joneses as his adventure finds him fighting with the Russians in the 1950s. There's also the gravitas of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, following Bruce Wayne's character arc from traumatized child to battered hero looking to retire from the crimefighting grind.

So. What's Pee-wee up to now? What's his outlook on life now that he's older? Does he have children? The potential is there for a fascinating story, a story no-doubt, of optimism. Look around at people like Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Marin Scorsese, Harrison Ford... all doing great work well after the old-school age of retirement. So, what's Pee-wee up to these day? I'd love to see that story.

I have to tell this to people time and time again: age is just a number and it should not be allowed to define a person. More so now than ever before.

Photo taken with the iPhone 11 Pro Max