PARK CITY, Utah — Better known for his broad smile and silly voices, Pee-wee Herman actor Paul Reubens becomes rawly emotional in the documentary “Pee-wee as Himself,” which premiered Thursday night at the Sundance Film Festival.
The revealing two-part movie, which will eventually air on HBO, features the final interviews with Reubens, who died of cancer last July at age 70.
Director Matt Wolf sat with the funny actor for 40 hours over the course of a year to reflect on his life as a closeted gay man, his showbiz career and agonizing sex scandals.
The moving doc also includes the last audio recording Reubens made on the day before his death.
“More than anything, the reason I wanted to make a documentary was for people to see who I really am, and how painful and dreadful it was to be labeled something I wasn’t,” he says in a weak voice. “To be labeled a pariah; to have people be scared of you, or untrusting.”
The movie also gave ailing Reubens a chance to tell his side of things. Early in the film, the actor, who had kept his cancer diagnosis quiet, says, “Death is just so final… To be able to get your message in at the last minute, at some point, is incredible.”
Born in Peekskill, New York, Reubens never publicly came out of the closet while he was alive. But well before Pee-wee became a worldwide sensation, the doc reveals the actor had a boyfriend named Guy from Echo Park, Los Angeles, whose humorous vocal tics were a vital inspiration for his defining character.
Guy had a bit where he’d say things such as, “Mmmm! Buttery!” in a Yoda-like brogue.
“You can see where that led me,” Reubens says.
As Pee-wee Herman exploded into a popular stage show in LA after Reubens debuted him at the Groundlings in 1981, the actor chose to conceal his private life entirely.
“I was out of the closet, and then I went back in the closet,” he said. “I wasn’t pursuing the Paul Reubens career, I was pursuing the Pee-wee Herman career.”
The actor went to visit Guy in the hospital as he was dying of AIDS.
“To talk about seeing someone at death’s door,” he says. “He probably died a couple hours after that.”
While Reubens admits “I had many, many secret relationships,” his personal life took a backseat to a gray suit and red bowtie.
Pee-wee became a staple of NBC’s new, risk-taking “Late Night with David Letterman,” appearing every few months from 1982 to 1985. Those popular segments led to a sell-out national tour, and impressed Hollywood execs signed off on his 1985 movie — “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.”
During the iconic “Tequila” scene in the trucker bar, Reubens came to blows — with the set.
“While I was up on the bar, I banged the hell out of my head on a beam,” he said. “It’s the take we used.”
Tim Burton’s first feature was a huge hit — grossing $40 million of a $6 million budget. Pee-wee was riding high, but the world was growing darker for Reubens.
“I hid behind an alter-ego,” he says. “I spent my entire adult life hiding I was a huge weed-head.”
And he was concealing something weightier. “I was secretive about my sexuality even to my friends… [out of] self-hatred or self-preservation,” he added. “I was conflicted about sexuality. But fame was way more complicated.”
In 1986, CBS offered Reubens a Saturday morning kids show — “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.”
“I never really thought about being a children’s show host,” he said. “But the moment I heard it, it felt right.”
The brilliant, innovative program was out-of-the-box quirky and meticulously designed. Characters like Chairry, Cowboy Curtis, Jambi and Miss Yyvonne became weekend favorites. One reviewer praised “Playhouse” as “Caligula in Kiddie Land.” Behind the scenes, Reuben was a demanding taskmaster.
“Paul had conflicts with most everyone he worked with — that’s just his nature” said show designer Wayne White. “Paul could hold a grudge. He didn’t forgive easily.”
He became estranged from Phil Hartman, who helped develop the character and played Captain Carl on “Playhouse,” after Hartman was cast on “Saturday Night Live” and left the show. Decades later, Reubens still speaks of the friendship breakup in the doc with bitterness: “He rose to the top. Good for him.”
“Playhouse” was a massive success. And in 1988, Pee-wee — not Reubens — received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
However, that same year his film followup “Big Top Pee-wee” was a maligned flop (“I went into shock,” he says). And soon, Reubens’ life became engulfed by scandal.
In 1991, Reubens was arrested and charged with indecent exposure at an adult movie theater in Sarasota, Florida. He pleaded no contest.
“I kept who I was a secret for a very long time,” he said. “That really backfired when I got arrested. People had never seen a photo of me other than Pee-wee Herman. And all of a sudden, I had a Charlie Manson mugshot.”
“I lost control of my anonymity. It was devastating.”
With the help of friends, Reubens snuck out of Sarasota outside of the gaze of paparazzi by donning fake teeth, glasses and cutting his hair. He hid out for two weeks at his pal Doris Duke’s home in New Jersey.
“It’s shocking what horrible, awful stuff people think about me,” Reubens said. “It’s still a significant footnote… 30 years later I still feel the effects all the time.”
To recuperate his image, Reubens appeared as Pee-wee at the 1991 MTV Music Awards to a euphoric reception and was a guest as himself on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”
A crisis PR firm also staged a photo of Reubens on a date with a woman at an LA restaurant.
Reubens was occasionally seen dating the opposite sex at the time. He was often spotted being cozy with actress Debi Mazar, who maintains their deep connection.
“He was my boyfriend,” Mazar, 60, says in the documentary. “I know people will say, ‘He was gay!’. So what?”
In 2001, Reubens’ home was raided and he was charged with possessing images that were thought to be child pornography. The actor, who was an enthusiastic collector of all manner of rare memorabilia, insisted the photos were “vintage erotica.” Some collections could be found in college libraries. The charges were dropped in 2004, and Reubens pleaded guilty to a lesser obscenity charge.
Mazar, friend David Arquette and his wife Courteney Cox stood by Reubens throughout the ordeal.
Later, the actor’s career bounced back somewhat. He starred in “The Pee-wee Herman Show” on Broadway in 2010. The Post said the performance was “like eating a huge ice-cream sundae topped by a mountain of whipped cream and exploding sparklers.” And, in addition to small roles and voice acting, made the film “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday” in 2016.
When the obscenity topic comes up in “Pee-wee as Himself,” onscreen text reveals that Reubens stopped cooperating with Wolf and the filmmakers and never sat down for one more interview. Ever the control freak, the actor harbored concerns over how his complex story would be told.
Intensely private Reubens also kept his cancer a secret from the crew throughout the process. His health failing, the beloved actor eventually changed his mind and decided the documentary should be completed and sent his final audio message to Wolf. It’s the most heart-wrenching moment of the movie.
“My whole career, everything I did and wrote, was based in love,” he says.
