Watch a Trailer for Paul Reubens’ Pee-wee Herman Documentary Pee-wee as Himself
Photo by Dennis Keeley, courtesy of HBO
Paul Reubens’ death still hurts. This July will mark two years since the man who played Pee-wee Herman left us, and it somehow still feels a bit like a shock. It’s not just because Reubens himself was relatively young—70 isn’t the ancient age that it used to be—but because Pee-wee the character always seemed ageless, a true man-child who always acted decades younger than he looked. Reubens obviously spent a long time in the entertainment woods, with Pee-wee disappearing even longer, and that also made both seem younger and fresher than they otherwise would’ve; Pee-wee Herman never had a chance to wear out his welcome after his ’80s peak, or diminish the memory of Pee-wee’s Playhouse with inferior spin-offs or follow-ups throughout the ’90s like so many other ’80s cultural touchstones did. And although Reubens made a number of public appearances as Pee-wee between 2007 and the 2016 film Pee-wee’s Big Holiday—an awards show, an SNL appearance, an acclaimed revival of his Pee-wee stage show that had a run on Broadway—the character never had the full, sustained return that it deserved. Indeed, Reubens never played Pee-wee again after that 2016 movie. Reubens’ death brought an end to a tremendous career and to the life of his most beloved creation, and bringing an official end to a number of potential projects announced in the 2010s.