Paul Reubens is dead, but Pee-wee is forever

A creator, his character, and the world they built

My son must have been around four when we introduced him to Pee-wee’s Playhouse. After watching an episode or two, he dumped all of his toys onto the rug to recreate the playhouse in our living room.

After setting me to work stacking blocks, he began populating the scene with figures of all sorts. Other than Pee-wee himself - portrayed by a rubber Mr. Bill doll that my dad had bought him as a gag - he wasn’t concerned with whether anything matched the show. There didn’t need to be a Chairy or Magic Screen or Puppet Band - he was just filling the space with things he loved. Every toy he pulled out, no matter how random or broken or weird, had a place within the playhouse. The aesthetic was every aesthetic at once - you didn’t have to worry about how all the pieces fit together, because all that mattered was the fact that they were there. 

This type of heterogeneity is common to childhood, but Paul Reubens built a long and influential adult career around it. His immortal character, Pee-wee Herman, was painstakingly, precisely peculiar, but the world he inhabited was open to just about any surprise. Long past the point when most of us have dug our holes and stuck our heads in them, Reubens stayed open to the serendipitous absurdity that represents the world at its best. In his creative world, the house is always filled with guests, everyday utensils spring to life, and the adventure of a lifetime is just a bicycle ride away. 

There will always be forces that decry this perspective, grown-ups who insist a grown-up should act like a grown-up. I was nine years old when Pee-wee’s Big Adventure was released on the big screen, but my mom refused to take me. “‘Pee-wee,’” she sneered, rolling it around in her mouth like a new slur, thrilled by how disgusting it felt to say it. Many (by no means all) who find the character most off-putting were from my parents’ generation, which was also his own. Though many of Reubens’ images and tropes were mined from the mythical template of the boomers’ All-American childhood, his vision of the past was keyed to the energy of the future. 

The following year Pee-wee’s Playhouse was announced as part of the CBS fall lineup, but, having missed the film, I figured I’d aged out of it. But for some reason I was home alone on the Saturday morning it premiered, so I decided to give it a try. I’m not sure what I expected, but oh my god, I remember how it felt. The show starts with a soft, tropical overture as the camera beatifically pans around the model of the playhouse, little stop-motion gewgaws swaying the breeze. Okay, cute. But suddenly we zoom in on Pee-wee, the tempo picks up, and the entire vibe explodes. Cyndi Lauper’s uncredited helium-tinged vocals kick in, and we’re treated to a bouncing, frantic parade of all everything the cooler-than-school ‘80s had been trying to deny - awkwardness, clutter, silliness, weirdness, vulnerability. There aren’t many 60-second spans I recall more vividly than the time I spent cackling at my first unmediated experience with Pee-wee. I remember thinking, with the relieved world-weariness of a 10-year-old, “I’ve never laughed so hard in my life.” From that moment on, I was a die-hard. The boys at school had been into Rambo, but now I had a hero of my own. 

I had my ups and downs with Pee-wee, as I’m sure many kids did. My mom never came around, and I had to sneak my Saturday Playhouse visits alongside the similarly-disapproved MTV. But a year or two later, more interested in Marvel comics and girls, I stopped prioritizing this Saturday-morning mass. Then Reubens was arrested for indecent exposure in 1991 and it was a big joke, ha ha, but despite being weirded out by his actions I found myself effortlessly rooting for his comeback. I squealed with joy when I heard about his surprise appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards, and there was no better synergy than learning that he’d be playing a small role as the Penguin’s dad in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns. 

I can’t remember the first time I saw Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, but I rediscovered it as a stoner classic in college. As a theater major with an interest in stylized comedy, I was able to appreciate not only the antic world around Pee-wee, but Reubens’ strengths as a performer. He inhabited the character fully with every word and gesture, and his aura was so potent that it allowed Burton to build a warped world around his mad energy - an antic clarity that the director has been chasing (and generally failing to catch) ever since. 

Fittingly, my most recent viewing of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure was just a few weeks ago. Hosting out-of-town guests on a steamy, pouring Sunday afternoon, we couldn’t figure out anything to do. After frantically scrambling for options, we discovered the film was playing at Museum of the Moving Image in less than an hour. I can’t imagine many other things that would inspire a mixed group of adults and adolescents to hop in an Uber and rush to Queens in miserable weather, but Pee-wee did it. 

It was a bittersweet experience. When the film started rolling, it crackled and streaked like an ancient print. What had once gleamed with originality was now an artifact itself. Eight years had passed since playing Playhouse on the rug, and I worried that, through the jaded eyes of an older youngster, the fresh world that Pee-wee, Reubens, and their many collaborators worked so hard to create would hit my son as cutesy or dated, a victim of its own influence. But it didn’t take long for all of us to fall right back into Pee-wee’s childish rhythms.

Yet, I was now watching the cracked logic and subtle longing of Reubens’ and Burton’s vision from a different angle. When I was young, Pee-wee was a child, just like me. But now, as an adult, I had a clearer view of the intention behind the illusion. 

We all progress through our lives with a little kid living inside of us. We spend a lot of time pretending he’s not there - we stuff him in a box, sit on him, silence him, yell at him. One of the worst things we can do is sentimentalize him. We forget that this kid can have a mean streak (as when Pee-wee bullies Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello into doing sweatshop labor in his Christmas special). He can be paranoid and obsessive (as when he pushes away his friends after the theft of his bicycle in Big Adventure). And he can even be cringingly sanctimonious (as in this infamous anti-crack PSA, which reminds you that kids too are susceptible to moral panic).

Childhood isn’t a wonderland - it can be weird and gross and unpleasant, and no wonder so many of us want to push it away. Some of us, though, have the gift of dialogue with that little guy inside us. We can invite him up from time to time and revisit the world as it looked through his eyes. If we’re especially kind and imaginative and lucky, we can summon him at will. And if we’re truly gifted, we can find a way of sharing him with the world. 

And maybe that’s why, in its prematurity, this particular celebrity death has hit me harder than so many others - harder than any since Bowie. There was an implicit immortality to Reubens’ achievement - a promise that the child within can be kept alive throughout an entire lifetime. It’s always been easy to imagine Reubens donning the suit in his 90s, oblivious to the deterioration of his physical body because the soul inside was still so young. But I guess immortality is immortality - it doesn’t matter when he died, because as long as we’re connected with our inner kid, we’ll always be welcome in his world. 

Thank you, Pee-wee. Thanks, Paul.