Pee-wee Herman, the hilarious invention of actor/writer Paul Reubens, would often incorporate schoolyard insults into his everyday discourse. It was one of the character’s signature lines.
“Why don’t you take a photograph?” It’ll last a lot longer!”
“My name is that!” “Don’t overdo it!”
And, maybe most notably,
“I know you are, but what exactly am I?”
Of all, when it came to Pee-wee, with his tight grey suit, red bow tie, crew cut, rouged cheekbones, and ruby-red lips, the actual question was “What am I?” – the one he posed just by being.
Reubens, 70, died of cancer on Sunday. He was an actor, but he spent a long time convincing the audience that Pee-wee was a genuine person, not a fiction.
At first, no one knew what to make of Reubens’ irritable man-child. Pee-wee was created in 1977 by Reubens when he was a member of the Los Angeles comedy team The Groundlings. He was half prop comedian, part brat, and part mischievous spirit. Pee-wee had a brazen quality about him, something unrepentant and boisterous that took a second to register. The role was clearly and purposefully what people used to call a sissy – but how could a sissy control the stage as he did? Do you want to bask in the limelight as he did? How could a sissy so comfortably and plainly tell his audience how to enjoy him?
The Pee-wee Herman programme at The Groundlings Theatre quickly had LA hipsters queuing up around the block for a midnight performance that merged puppets and satire with archive instructional films – the same fuel combination that propelled Reubens’ famous CBS Saturday morning programme, Pee-wee’s Playhouse.
What he was doing was never Peter Pan. Yes, Pee-wee was a youngster who never grew up, but he was also one adult’s reminiscence of what it was like to be a kid. Specifically, the narcissism, selfishness, and complete lack of fundamental human empathy that we pretend not to notice in our own children. The horrific elements.
It expressed itself in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure as his comically obsessive desire to regain his stolen bike – a mission that would lead him to trampling on the sentiments of pals like Amazing Larry (Lou Cutell) and Dottie (E.G. Daily). It took the form of enthusiastic admonitions to his viewers to “scream real loud” anytime somebody mentioned the week’s secret phrase on Pee-wee’s Playhouse. (Think of the parents who assumed that putting their kids in front of the TV would give them a few minutes to complete their coffee.) Reubens focused in on kids’ voracious need for goods in 1988’s great holiday standard Pee-wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special, turning Pee-wee into a monster who only unwillingly sees the light after guilted into it. (Like Scrooge, he’s a lot more entertaining to be around until his last-minute enlightenment.)
To watch Pee-wee’s Playhouse was to relive childhood the way we’d forgotten it was – pure, concentrated, distilled to its core, when riding your bike, playing with your toys, and screaming very loud was all it required to fill a day. Pee-wee was a creature of impulse, anarchy, and id, which is perhaps why Reubens’ repeated appearances on Late Night with David Letterman helped catapult him to fame.
Letterman understood how to play up his own tetchy, aggrieved displeasure with Pee-wee’s antics for hilarious effect, but Reubens’ foolishness functioned on a different frequency. Pee-wee was wilder and much less restrained than Letterman could ever aspire to be. The two guys were on opposing sides of the humorous spectrum, yet they worked beautifully together. You chuckled at Reubens’ ability to take total control of the experience, and at Letterman’s very uncommon readiness to hand over the reigns, during those interview parts, which swiftly descended into Pee-wee’s distinctive laughter.
Our social media feeds will be flooded with Pee-wee’s biggest hits in the coming days – Large Marge; “Tequila!”; Jambi the Genie; Chairy; Reubens’ long and fully improvised death scene in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer film; “I’m a loner, Dot. “You’re a renegade.”; and, of course, “Come on, Simone. Let’s go into your major ‘but.’”
But I’ll be watching the aforementioned Pee-wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special because it will remind me of one of Reubens’ most underappreciated talents: his ability to slip an artisanal mix of fey subversion into the mainstream. That programme brought a militant, but matter-of-fact, gay sensibility onto Reagan’s America’s CBS primetime airwaves: The Del Rubio Trio! Gabor, Zsa Zsa! Richard, Richard! Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello! Lang, KD! Charo! The Los Angeles Men’s Chorus dressed as a Marine choir! And, maybe most notably, Grace Jones as green Gumby, drag singing a disco version of “The Little Drummer Boy.”
Maintain your “I meant to do that.” Continue dancing in the biker bar to ‘Tequila’. The picture of Reubens that will stay with me the most in the coming days is of him rocking out in the background as Jones sings in the foreground.
Because you can see the mischievous delight he’s taking in what he’s unleashing on an unsuspecting public in the way he holds his body: Grace Jones, ladies and gentlemen, delivered unto your living rooms, pulling up to the bumper of your cosy family holiday special, an entirely unique brand of weirdness served up to you hot and fresh, with a high, unselfconscious giggle.
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